The future of the unique Russian letter “ё” (sounds as “yo”) is up in the air after the ministry of education and science decided to draft up a bill to regulate its usage.
Minister Dmitry Livanov said he received complaints from people who argue that lower-ranking officials do not pay enough attention to the letter, which causes a lot of problems when applying for welfare benefits or certificates from the register office.
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“To my mind, the rules have been set a long time ago. This letter is part of the alphabet. You can look it up in any dictionary. It’s just that people don’t find it comfortable to use it due to its position on the keyboard’s layout. Not all cell phone models have it on their keyboards,” says Tatyana Bazzhina, from the Linguistics Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities.
In a management system ridden with red tape, misprints could spell trouble whose size you could have never predicted. In 2008, the migration agency in the city of Perm issued a passport to Tatyana Tetyorkina where the letter “ё” was substituted with “e”. If she failed to spot the mistake and ring the alarm bell on time, she could have run into numerous cases of mistaken identity or be reduced to a immigrant status, since her Russian citizenship for a new name would not be registered anywhere.
http://russia-ic.com/business_law/in_de ... F1j9q5fS8A
(I bet that Semen Varlamov is 100% behind the move!
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