
Originally Posted by
iCake
Мась is apparently an endearment, something you tell to someone you have an affection for. An English equivalent? Hard to say, don't think there is any rather than dear, darling and so on. Мась can also be a way to shorten a name like Maxim, Masha in an endearing kind of way.
As for "<" in sentences... Well, I can see what's going on. You see on the Russian keyboard layout you type both a comma and dot with the same key depending on whether or not you're holding down the shift key. In turn, the same thing happens with "<" and "," on the English layout. The thing is to type in a "Russian" comma you have to hold down the shift button, however, you don't use shift for an "English" comma. So the muscle memory kicks in here, she wants to type a comma with an English layout, but still holds down shift as she would with a Russian layout, so just treat all those "<" as commas.