NEW RUSSIAN ALPHABET

Hokitika Guardian, 13 March 1925, Page 1

NEW RUSSIAN ALPHABET

PRAISED BY ETHNOLOGIST

Spelling reform, for which President Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and many prominent American scholars struggled vainly a dozen years ago, has been accomplished for tho Russian language by the Soviet Administration.

The reforms in the Russian language, shortening the written language by one-twelfth and making its spelling twice as logical, announced by the Russian Ministry of Education, arc declared by Dr .John P. Harrington, ethnologist, of the Smithsonian Institute, to he of material advantage in the study id this difficult Slavic language. Dr Harrington also pointed out that it is fortunate for Russia that this reform lias been declared at just this time. “Spelling reform tailed in America, largely because practically all .-Americans'could read and write and were reluctant to change wliat they had learned,” he said. “.But in Russia. it, i.s different. Illiteracy is still common in Russia, and the great mass of the people have nothing to unlearn. When education becomes universal among them, as it is finally hound to do, if will he based on the new spelling. “The changes should ofieet a saving of about I years out of the education of every Russian child.” lie says, “and tliev' will reduce the cost of printing in Russia by something like 15.000,000tm1. a year. Five of the letters of the alphabet- have been thrown out bodily, reducing it from thirty-seven to thirtytwo.

“The spelling of Russian has remained unaltered since it was standmdisod by Peter the Great and the grammarian Lomonosov, in the eighteenth eontuiy. No change was allowed, though in many ways the orthography was most whimsical.

“For instance, the Russians were using two kinds of ‘e.’ One word might require the variety of ‘e’ known as ‘ye’ and another would call for the e known ns ‘yah’ There are also two kinds of ‘i,’ one written like our own ‘1 ’ and the other like our ‘u.’ The ‘dot (o’ kind was written before a vowel and the ‘double’ before a consonant. And no word was allowed to terminate in an inipalatnlized consonant, a ‘hard sign,’ as useless as the mute ‘shewn’ of Hebrew, having to ho written at the end. All this nonsense has been eliminated. and Russian is now the most scientifically spelled language of Europe. . . “The question was raised in the Ministry of Education of introducing the Roman alphabet, which is the one we use in writing English, instead of the modified Greek character in which Russian has always been written, stehologists claim that the Roman small letters, with their projections above and below the line, present a contour more readily grasped by the eye that the solid blocks of Russian lower case characters, which are practically all the same height and correspond to our small capitals. Thus ‘malchik’ which is the Russian word for ‘hoy,’ in Russian tvpe is a rectangle, while ‘hoy’ m Roman tvpe has projecting signals. But the advocates of retaining and “seientificizing” the Russian alphabet preyaiiRnssian is now written without the dotting of an ‘i’ or the crossing of a ‘t’ which cause the lifting of the hand from the paper in writing English.