Beyond Beginning Language

[mendeleyev]

I'm playing detective today and need some help. Perhaps our Russian ladies or guy Russian speakers can lend guidance to my erring ways.

I'm trying to figure out one letter on the right hand page in the top column, first word, fourth letter. It makes sense as a "yo" but I don't think it has the shape of any Ё that I've seen whether ancient or modern.



(Click photo to enlarge)

The word makes sense as отмётка врача, but I could be mistaken.

I ran across this document while searching for "hard signs" (Ъ) and the document has hard signs on the opposite page but also has Cyrillic letters no longer in use by the Russian language, like І і, although of course that letter is still used in Ukrainian and Belorussian.

Is this just me having a really bad read on Ukrainian or Belorussian?

[whynotme]

It's old Russian. The word means - îòìåòêà âðà÷à (doctor's remark)

Are u interested in that document? 

[Misha]

Pre-Reform Russian Orthography: http://www.indiana.edu/~libslav/slavcatman/RussianSpellingCheatsheet.html

[mendeleyev]

Awesome and thanks to you both!

I've book marked that guide Misha, thank you.

Are u interested in that document? 

   
Whynotme, thanks. Yes, and I had guessed that was the meaning by figuring that отмётка врача was close. What drew me to the document was the frequent use of "hard signs" in that period. Perhaps I overlooked it but didn't find that particular letter in any of the church choirbooks which we sometimes sing from Old Church Slavonic.

It makes sense that a couple of the most common locations to spot hard signs and other old letters are cemeteries and old churches. For example, Иван Иванович Шишкин is one of my wife's favourite old Russian artists and between his title and name there apparently were four hard signs in use, one at the end of his title and the three parts of his name: художникъ Иванъ Ивановичъ Шишкинъ.




Perhaps I'm the only person in the world interested in such stuff. 


The word in this photo taken by Nataly Naderval of a stone from the Aleksandr Nevsky Lavra also has me stumped.

[Lily]

Looks like a small part of a larger script. The letters that I can see on the photo don't make sense to me.

[OlgaH]

Mendeleyv, the page you posted is a part of a prostitute replacement card, a yellow ticket given to the prostitute as a permission to live  in  the city of Nihzny-Novgorod  till 1905. The card was issued in 1904.

also here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_ticket

I can not read what her diagnosis was in July 19th, but in August 12, 16, 19 and 29 looks like a doctor noted she was healthy.

The prostitute replacement card also contains the prostitutes supervision rules and the prostitutes rights. The prostitutes had to be registered with a local police department and they also had to have their medical exams periodically. A permission to run a brothel was issued by Medical - Police Committee and the brothel's owner had to pay 10 rub for each prostitute to the Committee. Brothel's prostitutes had the rights to keep a quarter of their income and leave the brothel any time they wished. After leaving the brothel a prostitute also had her right to keep the dresses, underwear and footwear given to her by the brothel's owner if the prostitute worked at the brothel no less than one year.

http://www.brainparking.com/view/topic.cfm?key_or=983584

Below is about Russian pre-reform orthography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography

[ghost of moon goddess]

The word in this photo taken by Nataly Naderval of a stone from the Aleksandr Nevsky Lavra also has me stumped.

Agree with Lily, it's an engraved stone fragment.
I guess the words engraved on the stone were: во имя отъца и сына и святаго духа
(in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit)

[mendeleyev]

Thank you, Olga. Too bad I can't have the booklet! A real piece of history.

[mendeleyev]

отъца и сына

Ghost, especially in a cemetery, I should have put that together. I was thinking that the first letter was a г but being a fragment of a т makes perfect sense. As the right upper section of the stone is rounded I didn't think it to be a broken fragment but now I can see that it is.

Thank you!

[mendeleyev]

As a footnote, we had lunch Sunday afternoon with my Orthodox godfather and godmother. They are older but he is a very educated gentleman. He said that as a child the Russian Cyrillic alphabet consisted of 32 letters, not 33. The alphabet then had both the hard and soft signs so I'm curious as to what letters were different then. He mentioned a letter that was in use then but no longer today and I wasn't familiar with it.

Unfortunately his family fled to China and then Europe during the Stalin purges so most items and books from his childhood were lost. I would have loved to compare some of those schools texts from the 1930s-1940s but it was not possible. I imagine a trip to the MGU library at some point will be necessary along with the helpful links from Olga and Misha.

[OlgaH]

As a footnote, we had lunch Sunday afternoon with my Orthodox godfather and godmother. They are older but he is a very educated gentleman. He said that as a child the Russian Cyrillic alphabet consisted of 32 letters, not 33. The alphabet then had both the hard and soft signs so I'm curious as to what letters were different then. He mentioned a letter that was in use then but no longer today and I wasn't familiar with it.

Before the revolution and the post-revolution reform of the Russian orthographic  the Russian alphabet had 35 letters



Nowadays



Pre-Reform Russian Orthography Cheat Sheet

http://www.indiana.edu/~libslav/slavcatman/RussianSpellingCheatsheet.html

[mendeleyev]

Before the revolution and the post-revolution reform of the Russian orthographic  the Russian alphabet had 35 letters

Given that my godfather is in an advanced age I'm not going to offend him by challenging his memory.     I trust your knowledge without question.

If we look at those 35 starting from left and going right, I'm familiar with the current ones of course and also these old letters:

#9  is still used in Ukrainian and Belorussian.


Unless mistaken, these seem to be consistent with Church Slavonic:

#30, #34, #35 and your chart of the old pre-Reform is very helpful. Thank you.


Specifically regarding Church Slavonic, Olga are you familiar with the letters yat (Ѣ ѣ), and yus (Ѫ ѫ)? 

Ѣ at one point was in use pre-Reform and could you give a couple of examples of current words that would have used that letter?

Ѫ is older I believe and do you know of any current words that might have used that letter?

[OlgaH]

Specifically regarding Church Slavonic, Olga are you familiar with the letters yat (Ѣ ѣ), and yus (Ѫ ѫ)? 

Ѣ at one point was in use pre-Reform and could you give a couple of examples of current words that would have used that letter?

Ѫ is older I believe and do you know of any current words that might have used that letter?

about yat (Ѣ ѣ)

For example: бѣлка - белка, вѣкъ - век; желѣзо - железо.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yat

Church-Slavonic http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ocslavonic.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet

About Yus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yus

letter Ѫ:  рѫка — рука, дѫбъ — дуб,  несѫ - несу.

[mendeleyev]

бѣлка - белка, вѣкъ - век; желѣзо - железо

рѫка — рука, дѫбъ — дуб

Wow, I'd never have guessed. It seems so simple after being shown: ѣ replaced with e and ѫ replaced with y.

Thank you, Olga.

[OlgaH]

Wow, I'd never have guessed. Thank you, Olga.

you are very welcome

Church-Slavic texts (you can click on "red" PDF)

http://lib.pravmir.ru/library/cat/2100




 

[BobFeltham]

interesting. I've not seen that before. It looks like it may be old Russian or looks like Bulgarian language

[SANDRO43]

An even earlier script was the Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest known Slavic alphabet from the 9th century.

The creation of the characters is popularly attributed to Saints Cyril and Methodius, who may have created them in order to facilitate the introduction of Christianity. It is believed that the original letters have been fitted to the original Bulgarian Slavic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet

The Baška tablet, dating from the year 1100

[mendeleyev]

Only a handful I recognize and not always the same sound represented as today.

[SANDRO43]

Only a handful I recognize and not always the same sound represented as today.

Yes, it's an original and rather pictorial alphabet. I wonder if its m was inspired by a man wearing mitts and short boots, and its t by a woman wearing nothing at all, seen from above ?

p: a basketball net from the side.

The last two: a canoe with paddle, a barrel with spigot.

[mendeleyev]

 

t by a woman wearing nothing at all, seen from above

Now that you mention it...

[mendeleyev]

Interesting article:


Can you wrangle with Runglish?by Mark H. Teeter at 11/09/2013 16:31There are two ways  to characterize the combination of Russian and English popularly called Runglish  (Рунглиш):

1. Look up the term  in academic sources or on popular websites and pick an epithet you like; you may  choose from "dialect," "pseudo-dialect," "pidgin," "patois," "localized slang,"  "Pushkin punk'd," "unfortunate Cold War by-product" and even "linguistic plasma." This last one is a bad thing, one assumes, since it was applied by  writer Tatyana Tolstaya with evident disdain: "Neither a normal Russian nor  a normal American will recognize this linguistic plasma as intelligible human  speech." Ouch! Or:

2. Take the default  position: Don't bother defining Runglish, simply let its rising bilingual tides  of English-flavored Russian and Russian-flavored English wash over your  eardrums - as thousands of speakers in a dozen societies already do. However you  want to characterize them, "mashini no stavit," "ochen affordable" and "childrenyata na upstairzu" represent natural linguistic developments; and since  normal people (like you and me!) can decode them, it's clear that no high-dome  writer, harrumph, can tell us what's intelligible human speech and what isn't.  Runglish is out there, lady. Deal with it.

Origins and  development. Languages have borrowed from one another since the Tower of Babel  fell, but Russian speakers mass-adopting English terms and usages (the majority  Runglish approach) is largely a two-stage 20th-century phenomenon: Late-Empire  and post-1917 emigrants amused the visiting Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1920s New  York with "тикет" for билет and "стриткарa" for трамвай; then in the postwar period and the 1970s-80s, second and third waves of incoming American Russophones gradually expanded Runglish and fine-tuned it ("Он ушел в retired  благодаря Social Security").

The term itself, in  any case, is commonly traced to 2000, when the not-quite-bilingual  Russian-American crew of the International Space Station coined it to describe  their on-board speech: Lacking a word or phrase, they used what they knew and  filled in around it ("Давай маленький Phillips screwdriver, Костя").

Particularities of  Runglish. Pronunciation: In Anglicized Runglish, bilabial fricatives and voiced  velar plosives ... Ha-ha, just kidding. Hey, you know the earmarks: "Hit" and  "heat" get confused, as do "hard" and "heart," "then" and "zen" - the  usual-suspect problems for Russians articulating English. So keep an ear peeled  for the Caped Crusader: Only context can tell whether someone's phonetic "Khee  iss bet men" means "He is a bad man" or "He's  Batman"!

Lexically, the old  false-friend traps await the unwary: university course ≠ курc; dishonest ≠  нечестно (unfair); sanatorium ≠ санаторий (spa); and so on. Grammatically,  article usage problems persist (a/an, the or 0), along with various  singular/plural disagreements; hence "Zeh money are root of all zeh evil" is  a Runglish-admissible aphorism.
 
Your  First Fun-with-Runglish Quiz. Translate this short paragraph into English - or  Russian - no, both!

В Торонто  рентуешь кар, что-нибудь смол... выедешь на хайвэй, там тейкаешь шестой экзит,  проедешь ровно две майлз, на шулдере увидишь голубой «Шевролет». На крыше  антенна, на бэк гласс блайндс, плэйт замазан грязью. Фолуй этот «Шевролет»,  не едь клоуз, но из виду не выпускай. Зетс ит!

(Answers  to be published on themoscownews.com on Monday)

[LAman]

Yes, it's an original and rather pictorial alphabet. I wonder if its m was inspired by a man wearing mitts and short boots, and its t by a woman wearing nothing at all, seen from above ?

p: a basketball net from the side.

The last two: a canoe with paddle, a barrel with spigot.

Actually, some loose fitting clothing could be on but definitely either leaning over or laying on front side!!!! From above??? Can't picture that one...we have something called gravity here!!! 
 

[Anotherkiwi]

Interesting article:


Can you wrangle with Runglish?by Mark H. Teeter at 11/09/2013 16:31
There are two ways  to characterize the combination of Russian and English popularly called Runglish  (Рунглиш):

...The term itself, in  any case, is commonly traced to 2000, when the not-quite-bilingual  Russian-American crew of the International Space Station coined it to describe  their on-board speech: Lacking a word or phrase, they used what they knew and  filled in around it ("Давай маленький Phillips screwdriver, Костя").

They may have christened it Runglish, but I'm far more familiar with the term "Russlish" (note how it is split evenly between the two languages  ).  You were happy to share that term when we had the discussion last year (?) about the new information kiosks in the Moscow Metro.  I'm sure that I first heard "Russlish" long before 2000.

[SANDRO43]

A collection of Russglish expressions often found in MOB letters is included in our RWDpedia (http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/mwiki/index.php/Russglish_Glossary).