[Language Request]: Russian

[NeMo-lox]

English Name

Misha

Native Name

NeMo

Orthography

Russia language

Implementation Assistance

• I am proficient enough in this language to spot mistakes and unnatural words
• I can assist with testing and reviewing the language implementation

Additional Information

Russia

[bragefuglseth]

Hi, thanks for opening this. To add Russian as a text language to Keypunch, I'll need the request to be more elaborate. The "name" fields should contain the name of the language, and the "Orthography" section should contain information on how the language is typed (what kind of letters there are, what kind of punctuation there is, etc.

If you're able to provide this information, just edit the request directly and notify me afterwards 🙂

[UrtsiSantsi]

English Name

Russian

Native Name

Русский

Orthography

Russian is a Slavic language. It uses a Cyrillic alphabet. Sentences and proper nouns begin with a capitalized letter. The punctuation marks used are , ; : to break up sentences, and . ! ? to end them. Punctuation marks come directly after their corresponding words, and are followed by a space before the next word. Expressions can be wrapped in « ».

Implementation Assistance

• I am proficient enough in this language to spot mistakes and unnatural words
• I can assist with testing and reviewing the language implementation

[bragefuglseth]

Thanks for the help, @UrtsiSantsi! Implemented in #40

[UrtsiSantsi]

One thing to note here - currently the implementation is using " " instead of the correct « », but looking at reddit and a few random forums people mostly go with " ". On the positive side Russian is widely used language, so if this is not desirable, people will complain 😄

[darkblaze69]

As a native Russian speaking, I think I haven't seen anybody using « » while typing especially fast typing. It's just the work for fancy editors to prettify these things. On the keyboards it's just not available for fast typing.

[UrtsiSantsi]

It is not fancy, it is the rule:

Inlined direct speech and other quotation is marked at the first level by guillemets «», and by lowered and raised reversed double quotes („“) at the second:
Гончаров начинает «Фрегат „Паллада“» словами: «Меня удивляет».

I must admit I don't remember ever using « » myself on a computer, but I'm not a native speaker and I haven't written all that much in Russian. I'm curious - is it autocorrected form " " to « » in word processors?

[bragefuglseth]

AFAIK there are no languages where using typewriter quotation marks (") is typographically correct, it would at least be ” and “ instead. However, I’ve found that the typographical traditions of a language often don’t align with how people casually type it out, similar to how spoken and formal written language are different in their own ways. That’s at least how it seems to be here in Norway, where « and » are used in professional typography, but people use the " key in practice. Most word processors and such can transparently change typewriter quotation marks to the typographically correct ones based on the language used, so generally I’d like Keypunch to reflect which keys people actually use when living their lives, chatting with friends, working on assignments, etc.

[UrtsiSantsi]

AFAIK there are no languages where using typewriter quotation marks (") is typographically correct, it would at least be ” and “ instead.

It is a correct alternative to ” ” in Hebrew 😄

However, I’ve found that the typographical traditions of a language often don’t align with how people casually type it out, similar to how spoken and formal written language are different in their own ways. That’s at least how it seems to be here in Norway, where « and » are used in professional typography, but people use the " key in practice.

I think it all comes down to 3 problems:

1. Early Internet content was mostly in English and that influenced people
2. Bad keyboard layouts, ported from some English one or entirely missing and using the closes symbol from the English keyboard layout
3. Internet allowed people that are not literate enough, myself included 😊, to post

Most word processors and such can transparently change typewriter quotation marks to the typographically correct ones based on the language used, so generally I’d like Keypunch to reflect which keys people actually use when living their lives, chatting with friends, working on assignments, etc.

People don't always use word processors - most chat applications, forums, GitHub 😄 - don't have such capabilities. And as a typing trainer I think it should promote healthy habits.

Related to this - I think you should create a language description file, something like ru_RU.desc next to the ru_RU.txt word list. Otherwise text_generation.rs is bound to get ugly 😄.