Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё

Jukka K. Korpela, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:35:16 +0200:
> 2012-12-21 21:05, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>
>> My Moscow Russian-Norwegian from 1987 and my Pocket Oxford Russian
>> Dictionary from 2003 agree that both list words on Ё and Е under the
>> same category – namely, under the letter Е.
>
> This appears to be the case in any serious dictionary.

In «Tolkovïj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazïka» from 2005
(«Dictionary over contempary Russian language»), has located words on Ё
in its a separate category, consisting of exactly one word: Ёмкость.
That, and the dictionary Leo pointed to, tell me that there is a
difference between categorization and collation.

> The use of the Cyrillic letter yo (ё, called IO in the Unicode name)
> has varied through ages, but it has never been a dominant spelling to
> use it. According to “The World’s Writing Systems”, edited by Peter
> T. Daniels and William Bright (Oxford University Press, 1995), “The
> letter ё is used virtually only in dictionaries or language
> textbooks.” It may have become more popular in the Internet, but
> still less common than using the letter ye (IE, е) in its stead.

The internet has also really boomed since 1995. ;-)

>> Fact is, again, that ёлка - "in the wild" - can be written ёлка and
>> елка.
>
> And in most contexts, it is written “елка”.

Google Trends has «ёлка» as *pretty* close — I think, but «елка»
remains in the leead. <http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%d1%91%d0%bb%d0%ba%d0%b0,%d0%b5%d0%bb%d0%ba%d0�>

> It is of course possible that some people would prefer treating “ё”
> as a primarily different letter. But it’s rather illogical to require
> that it be treated that way at the start of a word only. I don’t
> think collation rules need to accommodate such preferences.

Right: To require it would be not be in tune with praxis.

-- 
leif halvard silli