🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <linnan.724261356@snakemail.hut.fi> linnan@lk-hp-19.hut.fi (Matti J Linnanvuori) writes:
>Before 1918, the Russian alphabet included a letter resembling the Latin i.

And the words _mir_ `peace' and _mir_ `world' were spelt differently:
`peace' was myslete-izhe-rcy-er and `world' was myslete-iota-rcy-er.
Not to be confused with _miro_ `myrrh', myslete-izhica-rcy-on.

>It was replaced with the more common, current variant of i.
>Because there were plans to move to Latin alphabet, I would have thought
>the Latin looking letter would have been preserved. Why not?

Most likely because the other one (the izhe) was much more frequently
encountered, so abandoning it in favour of the iota would have been
more substantial surgery.  (The izhe was used before consonants or
pause, the iota mostly before vowels.)

The iota had its supporters in Bulgaria, too, but the izhe won out.

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Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
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