I forgot to mention that the old orthography is not completely dead. Folks in
the Russian diaspora (especially in ROCOR) have traditionally tried to maintain
the use of the old orthography, whether successfully or not is debatable. As a
personal observation, it's extremely difficult to maintain a strict adherence to
the old orthography in a world that is in constant contact with modern Russia,
and until the past few years we have not even had computer fonts containing all
the necessary characters for typesetting the old orthography. The results of 90
years of using the reformed spelling means that it's almost impossible to hold
onto the old system in today's world, despite our best efforts. In essence, it's
a lost cause, and whatever valiant efforts are made are still "too little, too
late".

It is interesting that a few brave souls are trying to keep the old orthography
alive, even in Russia, as we can see from this web site:
http://nasledie.russportal.ru/
If you really want to know much more about the old vs. new orthographies, see
the articles at this page:
http://www.russportal.ru/index.php?id=oldorth

Nikita

--- In ustav@yahoogroups.com, "Nikita Simmons" <starina77@...> wrote:
>
> From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography
>
> "The most recent large reform of the Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey
Shakhmatov and carried out shortly after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian
orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal
inflections, replacing the letters &#1123; (Yat) with е, і (depending on the
context of Moscovian pronunciation) and &#1141; with и, &#1139; with ф, and
dropping the archaic mute yer ъ (hard sign) in the terminal position following a
consonant (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old
Slavonic open-syllable system). For instance Рыбинскъ for Рыбинск ("Rybinsk")."
>
> ... a rather simplistic explanation, but accurate. I recommend reading the
whole Wikipedia article to understand the reform in a clearer context. The loss
of the direct historical connection was a linguistic tragedy, but it did make
the goals of public literacy quite a bit more attainable. The spelling rules are
admittedly easier, but it's a rather utilitarian and inelegant system compared
to what we had previously.
>
> Nikita
>
> --- In ustav@yahoogroups.com, Philip Silouan Thompson <himself@> wrote:
> >
> > Nikita Simmons wrote:
> > > ...most texts available on the web are in modern orthography.
> >
> > Besides the obvious cosmetic presentation of the typeface, what is the
> > difference between the old orthography and the modern? I read Serbian
> > badly, Russian and Slavonic *very* minimally, and had assumed the modern
> > Cyrillic orthography was simply an updating of the look of the letters.
> > Is there a more significant difference?
> >
> > Silouan
> >
>