Xref: utzoo sci.lang:4578 comp.cog-eng:1135 sci.psychology:1939
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bbn!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!rwojcik
From: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Regional accents (was: Spelling and Perceptual Mode)
Keywords: GB Shaw, orthography
Message-ID: <11811@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 89 15:56:58 GMT
References: <2763@puff.cs.wisc.edu> <60340@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <11726@bcsaic.UUCP> <18088@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Reply-To: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Distribution: na
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 23

In article <18088@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> jmast@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (John M Allen) writes:
>   If the Soviets had merged /i/ and /y/ into one letter, then they
>would have had to create about twenty new letters for the palatalized
>consonants.  The major consequence of this is that they would have had
>to have invested a lot of money into changing the type sets for
>printing presses.  It is much easier to remove characters (just don't
>use them) than to create new ones.

That is quite true, and undoubtedly the reason that 'i' and 'y' were not
merged into a single letter.  The fact is that vowel letters in modern Russian
have come to signal phonemic palatalization on preceding consonants.  So,
although the [i]~[y] alternation is completely predictable in speech, it would
not be in writing unless palatalization were indicated on consonant letters.
An interesting fact for the Ripley's Believe It or Not of linguistics.  :-)
Note that true spelling reform of Russian would have created those new
consonants, but the result would have left modern Russians with a severely
impaired ability to read texts printed before the 1920's.  This is just
another of the many reasons why radical spelling reform is not the good idea
that most people think it is.

-- 
Rick Wojcik   csnet:  rwojcik@atc.boeing.com	   
              uucp:   uw-beaver!bcsaic!rwojcik