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.