In a message dated 2001-02-27 10:24:43 Pacific Standard Time,
jcowan@reutershealth.com writes:
> > This has always puzzled me, because Cyrillic includes lots of other
> > characters that transliterate to two or more Latin letters. CH, SH,
SHCH,
> > and ZH leap to mind; there may be more. What was the thought process
> > behind providing these compatibility characters only for the
Serbo-Croatian
> > additions to Cyrillic, but not for the other Cyrillic characters?
>
> Because those Cyrillic letters (except SHCH, which is not used)
> transliterate to single Latin letters in Serbo-Croat.
Yes, I thought about that five minutes later. C-caron, S-caron, Z-caron. Of
course.
> (AFAIK, Croat is
> hardly ever written in Cyrillic letters today; I don't know if Serbian
> is often written in Latin letters or not).
Aren't Serbian and Croatian the standard example of two "languages" that are
really the same language but are treated separately (a) for political reasons
and (b) because Cyrillic is used to write the former and Latin to write the
latter? Are there any linguistic or vocabulary differences between them?
I mean, for all I know, they might really be two languages. After all
(Adam), we Anglos used to think Czech and Slovak were the same language.
\u263a
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
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