Thread: Help me translate this Lenin-era communist alphabet book

Red Snapper -

Is this your own poster?
If so, take good care of it!
The small print at the bottom (not of the book, but of the poster itself) tells you that it's a reproduction of the "Red Army (workers') alphabet", printed in 1993 - and only 1000 prints. So hang on to it, it's a pretty rare thing, and will become even rarer as time goes by.


I think it's gorgeous (regardless of you agree with the political content or not) - it's pretty funny, and the little pics are fab.

Here's one for you:

E:
Есть доступ всем теперь к науке!
Бери букварь скорее в руки!

There's access for all now, to wisdom/science!
Take an ABC quickly into your hands!

(or, in more normal english:
"Learning is now available for everybody - quick, grab a book and get started!" - and I think this is exactly what this book was supposed to be used for )


BY

Originally Posted by pisces

Originally Posted by Barmaley

Weird. You learn something new everyday. Why did they do that, though, in the first place -- what's wrong with ъ -- and why wouldn't they toss ь at the same time? Incidentally, I know people in english transliteration DO use the apostrophe sometimes as a ъ/ь; I just never would have thought that they'd consider adopting that.

I have searched the Internet and found that that was a side effect of 1918 spelling reform, as part of which the use of "ъ" at the end of the word was abolished. Communist viewed the reform as a way to further separate from the monarchic past of Russia. But some publishers refused to follow the reform (which was indeed quite abrupt) and continued to use "ъ" at the end of the word. Of course communists were very annoyed by that. So they just forcibly removed all type blocks for "ъ" from publishers. After that they could no longer use "ъ" even where it was not prohibited by the reform.
By the way, the similar thing happened to one of Microsoft Office fonts which used to contain swastika symbols. Microsoft was forced to remove the symbols and they made a patch which does that. Everything is suitable for political fight, even fonts!

Didn't they also just try to replace the hard sign with a soft sign? Like Вьежают.

I read somewhere that in the 50s or some time some academics tried to get rid of obsolete soft signs and soft consonants after Ж Ш еtc.

e.g. changing знаешь ---> знаеш

Originally Posted by BabaYaga

Is this your own poster?
If so, take good care of it!
The small print at the bottom (not of the book, but of the poster itself) tells you that it's a reproduction of the "Red Army (workers') alphabet", printed in 1993 - and only 1000 prints. So hang on to it, it's a pretty rare thing, and will become even rarer as time goes by.

I think it's gorgeous (regardless of you agree with the political content or not) - it's pretty funny, and the little pics are fab.

Yes, it is mine. I had no idea it was a limited print. I'll definitely take good care of it even though it suffered some damage under its previous owner.

Thanks for the translation!