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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A602191
This is an entry about Russian. It discusses the origins and influences of Russian, its alphabet, grammatical structure, what makes it difficult to learn, and where it is spoken. There is no entry in the Guide that covers the same ground. It's hard to say objectively what's best about it, having written and edited it (with help from Yelbakk), but I think my favourite bit is the second paragraph, which covers the Cyrillic alphabet. I would very much like to see my entry in the Edited Guide.

Nora

Hi Nora!

I think this entry's great and I'd love to be able to find out about loads of languages in the guide.

It might be easier to read, however, if you divided it into sections - each of the current paragraphs could be one section - and the sections into separate paragraphs. This would mean that there would be less information to take in all in one go.

Hi Nora,

I love seeing Entries about languages in the Guide, esp. if they explain relationships between languages, just like this one does. Some additions/hints/corrections:
I have learned that Latin has six cases as well:
Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative.
Please check if I'm right.

I also agree with Liz that the overall appearance of the Entry would benefit a lot from some more structure (paragraphs, headers, ...). Beyond that: A very goood Entry and definitely a valuable addition for the Guide! And always remember: It's a good sign if the review peers ask for 'cosmetic' things like headers or paragraphs. This might means that they havent found anything wrong with the content.

Jeremy

Nice little article. I learnt things i didn't already know.

Maybe add the fact that speaking it isn't as hard as it seems once you've seen it written, with the exception of the unstressed o and the ...ego (evo) - genetive endings, the rest is all phoenetic (unlike english).

Also if you wanted to frighten people, in the section where you talk of nouns declining, you could also add the fact that proper nouns decline too.

Whisky

PS I think you'll be surprised at just how many people do speak Russian here.

Hi!

I like this entry - it points out the most important things about Russian. I agree with Liz that sections could help the reader recognize the different aspects -alphabet, grammar etc.

Just a small correction: 'to be' has a present tense ( yest' ), it is just seldom used, mostly for emphasis or in scientific/technical definitions. In normal uses it sounds strange/official/artificial, so it is simply omitted and it's virtual presence is, as you mention, clear from the structure of the sentence.

I totally agree with what's been said before. A great Entry that needs little more than some changes to the presentation to make it ideal for the Edited Guide.

How about adding a link to a site that displays what Cyrillic script actually looks like? I've just done a search and very quickly found a site with a table of the characters used in Russian. I'd post a link to it here if it wasn't for the same annoying rules that would prevent anyone from writing anything in Russian on h2g2!

As links are not allowed, you might try to 'decipher' the following hint:

Google(cyrillic alphabet)

The first link that is displayed there would be a good addition to the Entry.

Jeremy

Nice entry I agree! And a beautiful language, you are right, if a bit hellish to learn! It's sure to kill me anyhow.

I don't know why I am going to say this, as my Russian is terrible, but I always find it intreiging that in spite of the perfective/ imperfective thing, Russian really only has three tenses. Or at least, so I think. I also love the way that, as they have all these matching endings to tell you what part of speech it is, the word order is much less... rigid? than in English. I'd give an example, but it would be wrong.

What a good idea to skip the counting rules (for single items up to four items, five to umpty, for umpty to whatnot, and for things which aren't there and suchlike). Would be worth an entry of its own

Still wondering if Tarzan was of Russian origin...
Me - Tarzan. You - Jane!

Oh, and while the russian speaking/reading people are together... can anybody help with the entry on Bashkortostan in the Workshop: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F57153?thread=134132 ? Some official web pages could give more information or at least help to get rid of the question marks :-)

The American Council of Teachers of Russian has a really cool site called Russnet. It has a cyrillic alphabet tutorial and some other interactive stuff.


Mikey

What a splendid piece. I agree with the comments above that it could use a little more whitespace.

Latin does indeed have six tenses (I seem to recall they were known as 'voices' when I was at school), Greek has only five, missing Ablative.

Cheers,

Cestus

Wow! I wasn't expecting this level of interest . Thanks for all the postings so far and (I hope) to come. Apologies for the Latin error - I have no Latin and was relying on hearsay. I'll fix that now and do a major overhaul (whitespace etc) tomorrow. More soon!

Nora

I learned in school that Latin has *5* cases - the vocative not being a case in its own right. So all the Latin books I looked at had only 5 cases - Nominativus, Genitivus, Dativus, Accusativus and Ablativus (this is at the formal level; semantically, most cases can be divided into more "subcases". Thus, for example, posession can be expressed through the Dativus or the Genitivus).

Anyway, I do like the entry.

Yelbakk

Okay I don't want to be too critical here Nora, but i think your article may benefit from a few further elaborations. For example: I would be very interested in finding out more about where Russian is spoken now and what position it has in Eastern-European states nowadays. Also, you might add some more information about how Russian developed as a language and how it became the dominant language in such a large part of Asia and Europe. Furthermore you could add some litterature references to honour those who turned Russian into such a cultural language.

Besides those remarks I think think our article is a splendid initiative and I agree with the comments that have been made here by other reseachers.

You wanted to know:
Greek doesn't have a special script writing, or not in the way russian does. Greek has capital letters, which were designed for carving in stone, and lower case letters which were designed for handwriting. The lower case letters, when written by hand, can look rather cursive. I don't know much about Russian but i get the impression that script letters are often formed quite differently, and this is not the case in Greek. You'll have to see for yourself the relationship between Russian script and Greek lower case. And that's all I know about that. Perhaps Gnomon has more information, but he's on an extended coffee break.

Good article!

Well, I've addressed (I think) most of the issues raised yesterday. Let me know what you think, especially about the whitespace. Too much? Or not enough? I agree that some more breaks have improved it, but I'm not sure whether I've gone too far. I also made the links and fixed the errors.

In answer to the more recent postings: Shrimp, thanks for the criticism - that's part of why I'm here ! I don't know much more about the development of Russian and its current fluent population - I'll do some reading. As to the writers, I think they deserve an entry or entries of their own. I can refer to some of them, but I can't do them justice in this entry, and there aren't any existing entries (that I've found) for me to link to. The best answer is separate entries, perhaps a University project. Any takers? I can contribute, but I don't feel like tackling Russian lit on my own.

Il viaggiatore, thanks for the long-awaited info on Greek! I can delete that footnote (probably), and clear my conscience. Certain Russian script letters can be written in different ways; my favourite example is "t", which I think has two in upper and three in lower case, but "b" has a couple to choose from, too. Most, but not all, letters bear some resemblance to their print counterparts. In print, everything is upper case - letters that would be lower case are just printed smaller.

hmm, I'm very fond of University projects but I don't see the need for one here. You would end up in a full-fleshed language course and perhaps never get ready.

However, a few of the more weird things would be . Like the rule that Russian grammar differentiates between living persons and things (nominative=accusative for people). But a corpse is treated like a living person!

My favourite letter in handwriting is the one for 'd'which bears no relation to the printed one at all. Don't you all think that Russian handwriting looks just like a bunch of very elegant joined up'm's? How they figure it our is beyond me.

That example you gave of difficult pronounciation ('vcyeobshchee' - 'universal'): MARVELOUS. Brought back painful (but dear) memories...

As to the whitespace (bluespace if you're using GOO) question - Could you please insert a after the first paragraph (just above the next ?

Anyway, a nice one (as has repeatedly been said)

Yelbakk