A Letter in Russian Alphabet

choi

James Marson, Yo: In Russia, Two Dots Can Mean a Lot; They change the way a letter is pronounced,rRaising controversy; Fans, monuments. Wall Street Journal, Dec 17, 2012 (front page).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 44972339592016.html

Note:
(a) Russian alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet
(The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters)
(b) yo (Cyrillic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(Cyrillic)
(section 2 Usage: "Yo was first used in Russian, where its status is now ambiguous. Yo occurs as a discrete letter in the Cyrillic alphabets of Belarusian, Rusyn, Mongolian and many Caucasian and Turkic languages")

There is no need to read the rest of the Wiki page, which does not mention its origin. But the WSJ report does state "it [the letter ё] was invented at the end of the 18th century to reflect colloquial pronunciation."
(c) The report says, "Russians know Stalin's successor as Nikita KhrushchYOv, while the rest of the world thinks he is KhrushchYEv."

(i) That is not what I recall. And I am right after all, about the English spelling of the last name.

Nikita Khrushchev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Krushchev
(English full name: Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev)
(ii) On the other hand, his Russian spelling (Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв) does have the letter ё, not e, in the last name.
(ii) Nikita (given name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_(given name)
(derived from the Greek Niketas meaning "victorious"/ "Beginning in the 20th century, it was adopted for female children in some countries such as France but remains strictly masculine in Russia and other countries of eastern Europe")

For example:
Nikita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita
(a 1990 Franco-Italian thriller film)
  
(d) The report fleetingly mentions a German letter--"the sharp 's,' which looks somewhat like a capital B."

German alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_alphabet
(The modern German alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet)

Quote: "German uses letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the umlaut and one ligature (ß (called eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)), but they do not constitute distinct letters in the alphabet.

(e) The report next argues, "But here [in Russia], the letter ë incites passions and debate that transcend orthography, touching on history, defense of the motherland and amusement at the letter's hint of vulgarity."

orthography (n): "the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage"

(f) The report ventures, "It [letter] also has a mischievous side, bringing to mind a Russian swear word meaning 'copulate,' some forms of which start with ë."
(i) fuck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck
(sectio 2.4 Older etymology  2.4.1 Via Germanic: last paragraph only: "The original Indo-European root for to copulate is likely to be * h3yebh– or *h3eybh–, which is attested in Sanskrit यभति (yabhati), Russian ебать (yebat'), Polish jebać, and Serbian јебати (jebati), among others)

In the web, the "ебать" is sometimes (but less often) written as "ёбать."
(g) The report also specifies: "the dots, known to linguists as a diacritic."

* diacritic (n)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diacritic

Check out the "diacritic table" in the dictionary's web page.
(h) Yekaterinburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg
(Russian: Екатеринбург; also romanized Ekaterinburg; is the fourth-largest city in Russia; named after Tsar Peter the Great's wife Catherine I (Yekaterina) [who reigned as Empress of Russia and whose predecessor was Peter the Great or Peter I and successor was Peter II, grandson of Peter I but not Yekaterina's son])