Digenis.org

Болшой Город нам ра��кажет, где покупать еду в Мо�кве..

A bomb exploded at Moscow State University on Saturday and a second was found before it was detontated. Several hundred people had to evacuate the Soviet-era “wedding- cake” style university building on Moscow’s Sparrow Hills, a police spokesman said.

The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, has revived talks of reforming the Kazakh alphabet to use a Latin script rather than Cyrillic. After the collapse of the USSR several other former Soviet republics did the same (Turkmenistan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan in the mid 90’s; Azerbaijan in 2001) in order to cut some of their ties to Russia.

According to an October 19th US State Department press briefing, the US Board on Geographic Names has decided to change the official US English spelling of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev (pronounced Ke-yev) to Kyiv (pronounced Keev). The new version reflects the Ukrainian transliteration of the name, while the old spelling came from the Russian transliteration.

The population of Ukraine is split in two, with half of its citizens being Russian-speakers and half being Ukrainian-speakers. Of course, it would seem that the State Department has now taken sides…

Many people see this as a US tactic to woo Ukraine further to the West, the direction that President Viktor Yuschenko has been taking the country since he came to power after the 2004 Orange Revolution. Call it what you like, but supporters say that the US is just coming in line with the spelling standards of international organizations like the UN and NATO.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey says, “…I don’t think this decision has anything reflective in it.” But if we’re putting all politics aside, what about the scores of other cities with English spellings far off from their native pronunciations? Why is Myanmar still referred to as Burma in the US? Will Moscow ever become Moskva? Will Munich become Munchen?

Though Kyiv will now be used on all maps produced in the United States, it would seem that not everyone is ready to board the ship just yet. According to this article in the International Herald, the Associated Press will continue to spell the Ukrainian capital as Kiev.

I suppose only time will tell if this change will stick.

Interesting tidbit: Apparently, the game Mafia was invented at Moscow State University’s psych department in 1986.

Kратчайший путь между �танци�ми Мо�ков�кого метрополитена. Также под�читывает врем�, затрачиваемое на поездку между �танци�ми, но �омневаю�ь, что резултаты очень точние.

Мо�ква пешком

Moscow metro map with GSM operator coverage