Re: Old Russian Orthography

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis)]

Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji <yamato@YT.CACHE.WASEDA.AC.JP> writes:

> Hello friends, a Happy New Year to you all.

Thank you!  And a Happy New Year to you too.

<very interesting stuff - near year's present? - skipped>

> Incidentally, I wonder how one can transliterate oldish Russian alphabets?
> I am sure fita should be "th", but as to dotted i and jat', I haven't got
> the faintest idea.

I remember seeing an old Library of Congress transliteration table where jat'
was transliterated as e with some accent, and dotted i was an i with some
accent. I took a quick look on my shelf and can't find it now. (LOC is not
a good scheme, since one can't always recover the original from it. :-)

The U.S.G. Printing Office manual seems to suggest that one translates into
the new orthography before transliterating (fita to f, dotted i and izhitsa
to i, yat' to e or yo). This may lead to an occasional problem: suppose you
have an index alphabetized according to the old rules:

ib..
ik... (regular i)
ia...
ie... (dotted i before another vowel)

If you fold dotted i into i, you'll be looking for 'ia' before 'ib'.
Ditto for yat', which came much later than e in the collating sequence.