h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why is ë not considered a letter? I mean, I always *thought* it was....


Shee

I'd guess because it looks like ye ('e') with an accent on it. Mind you, the short i also looks like the normal i with an accent on it.

Okay... Like che and n(tilde; sorry-- I don't have that key) not being considered part of the Spanish alphabet anymore? (I think it's those two.) That's just rather odd....

Thank you for the answer!
the Shee

What are the actual Russian names for short i, hard sign, and soft sign?

I'm not sure what you mean by "short i"--if you mean the pair to (oh shoot, I don't have the font on this computer!) the one that looks like a backwards "N" (ee), it is "ih"... um, it looks like bl, in rough terms (and a Latin font). That's the one that's hard to pronounce--like ee with a pencil between your teeth was one way it was explained....

The hard sign (looking like b with a little slash off the top--oh, these installed fonts are *awful*), is the tvyordy znak, as I remember it. The soft sign (b--no mark off the top) is myagky znak. As I recall.

Is that what you mean?

If I can install the Cyrilic font, I think I will, and then leave those letters here, because the Roman just doesn't do the letters justice.... Sorry about that.


the Shee

Oh, I know what you mean! You mean the two letters that both look like our N, backwards.... The one with an accent is a consonant, the one without is a vowel--they aren't both "i"s. That help any? ("ee"--vowel, and "ee kratkoye"--consonant).

Peace,
the Shee

Another reason why ë is not a fully fledged letter is that, when used in hand-written russian, the letter is simply written as e - the double dot is omitted.

Mir Miru

Mm hmm... That makes sense. I never actually got around to learning handwritten Russian ... I only know some of the letters. I can read printed things okay, though. (Well, except for recognising words... again) I haven't gotten very far in my Russian studies at all. I need to take a class; it is next to impossible to learn on my own!

La la la...

Peace, and thanks!
~the Shee~

Thanks for the names... I'll see if I can spell them in Cyrillic.

The backwards-N with an accent is a 'semivowel', isn't it? Like 'y', or (more consistently) German 'j'. (Another semivowel in English is 'w'.)

I just had an idea... there should be a version of this page written in Unicode so that people with the relevant fonts can see what the characters actually look like. Or otherwise somebody could make little pictures of the letters, or of the whole alphabet.

*I* consider it a letter, but I've read a couple of sources that didn't, so I thought I'd better mention the confusion. I think there's every reason to count it as a separate letter, especially since they don't have it in Ukrainian.
Glad someone cares!

Sorry for it taking ages for me to respond - I'm going through my final year of Irish secondary school, which is very time- consuming. Checking in over Christmas after a prolonged absence in favour of homework.


Nora

I replied to the first posting without realising there were others! Dead right about hard and soft sign. I don't have the font either, which is one of the reasons I didn't put the names in the entry.

I didn't realise e kratkoyeh wasn't a vowel. Does anyone else find it hard to distinguish between the two "ee" sounds?

Heh... I don't speak Russian, I just try. German and sign language (and of course English) are my languages of choice... I love Russian, I want to speak it, but I have to find a teacher... Somehow, somewhere... I have a lot of book learning, but no actual experience.

I think it was Pete who replied right after me--I never saw those posts! Sorry...

Actually letter ё is considered to be letter along with й. Sound ё is actually a combination between sounds й and o. )

Erm.. those don't work in conversation forums (as you've probably noticed ) You've just illustrated the problem I was having up above with describing letters instead of just *writing* them....

Are you Russian?

Yeah, I am. Well, at least that is what my passport says... Where are you from?

Describing some of the russian letters can be real tough.

Especially for Latin-based brains.


The USA... Great land. *laughs* (That's only funny because I don't believe the propaganda. )

Are you new to h2g2, then? This really is a great place...

Yeah, it's great... I can teach you some russian if you want
But it would be easier if you had an ICQ or something that has facilities for different fonts...

Are you on a Windows machine? I can make it give me letters like ë, because those are also found in Latin-based alphabets... And if I installed the Cyrillic *font* I need, I could make the actual letters show up. But that font is not installed on this computer; it is on the one that doesn't have an internet connection. Anyway. The character map is useful, and the commands it gives don't turn into bunches of numbers.

You'll have to teach me that.