is nil.
If Rasputin was intelligent, I don't know why you would want to reproduce
the illiterate language, though it wouldn't do to try and make him sound
like any sort of litterateur. It's an interesting question. The analogs that
come to mind are 19th century American hucksters and snake oil salesmen,
who tended to use flowery, pseudo-scientific lingo to impress the yokels.
In this case R was impressing presumably educated royalty. I would forego
the misspelling, since it conveys nothing of importance to an English reader.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Pollak
> Sent: 07/11/08 09:45 am
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Writing semiliterate English (advice)
>
>
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Anyway, the document is written in semiliterate Russian. Especially,
> > words are written spelled as they sound. I really don't know how to
> > reproduce this in English
>
> I'd say post a paragraph of it translated into standard English and let
> people on the list try their hand at altering it. That's probably the
> quickest way to get across practical suggestions that will allow you to
> evolve a style.
>
> Since Rasputin was very intelligent, my own suspicion is that the writing
> should be very colloquial and the spelling should be bad -- not funny
> bad,
> like you did it, but like a 1st grader would spell words big words they'd
> never heard. I might even switch letters liked "b" and "d" and "p."
>
> Michael
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>