re: Letter Y in Polish

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Hi all! There are many Ys in Polish - syn=son, rynek=market,
trzy=three, cztery=four, etc...

The examples given above are words which are common to Polish and Russian,
so it is easy to see why "Y" is written rather than "I". In Russian as
written in Cyrillic characters, these words would be written with the
character called "Yiriy", which is closest to English short "I". The "Y"
here is a vowel, not a consonant, and is differentiated from the longer
vowel "I" (like the vowel in "bee").

I do not know who would translate "starozakonny" (which would be written in
Russian with two final vowels: "Yiriy" followed by "I". (I am not happy with
this transliteration of the word "Yiriy", but anything else I can think of
is even more ambiguous). The adjective "starozakonny" means literally "Old
Law", i.e. the Jewish Bible, not the Christian.

This message is to correct some errors in Stan Goodman's message above. I wish I could send it just to him, but he doesn't want to receive private messages from JGenners.

The name of the Cyrillic letter in question, which looks exactly like this: bI, is, if transliterated, yerbI, note that I am using the Cyrillic in the second syllable, which is stressed and pronounced like the 'i' in 'hill', but with lips spread more and tongue pulled back more. Nowadays most Russians do not use this name, but simply say the sound 'bI' to name the letter.

'Starozakonny' is simply 'Old Testament' in English. In Russian the ending does not consist of two vowels, but of the vowel bI (see above) + plus the consonant 'y' as in boy, bay, buy, etc. In fact, in 19th Cent. Russian, the period we are usually involved with here, the ending would have been
pronounced 'uhy', sounding like the vowel in words like 'bite'--IF you are from Chicago or a Canadian.

Sorry about this diversion, but I promise not to give linguistic information on Hebrew, about which I claim no expertise.
Jules Levin
---
Sender: "Jules Levin" <ameliede@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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