E2 really is a community. Sometimes we get along, sometimes we don't, but everyone contributes, by writing, reading, chatting, etc, and everyone is here for some reason or other and that connects us all. Then there's those times when we learn things from each other or get inspired to go find out more about something....
I blame Stasik. Less than a month ago, Stasik introduced me to a russian band called Отава Ё, also known as Otava Yo if one spells the band name using english alphabet instead of cyrillic. My brain seized on that music like wildfire. I have listened to it A LOT since I first heard it. It's the kind of music that I would totally find myself randomly singing while making a cup of tea....if only I understood the language of the lyrics! As it is, I continously find myself frustrated with the urge to sing along with the now familiar melodies, and not being able to sing any lyrics, since I am unable to retain the sounds of the foreign language words I'm unfamiliar with.
I blame RedOmega. I went on a rant in the catbox about not being able to sing along, and how I looked up the translated lyrics of the songs and they are often very weird lyrics, and how I noticed that some cyrillic characters seemed to be a direct one-to-one translation with some english characters. Red offhandedly mentioned that the latin alphabet and the cyrillic alphabet have a common ancestry of the ancient greek alphabet. Fascinating!
I blame ascorbic. Today I was looking through the catbox archives every so often as a way to keep tabs on the catbox without actually logging in to E2 as much, since I had work to get done at work. I got curious about the small links at the bottom of the page and clicked through to their website and then to their twitter. Going through the twitter feed definitely distracted me from my work (whoops!) but also I cannot regret it because I found a fascinating graphic showing the evolution of the english alphabet, from 1750BCE right through to today. The graphic tracks each letter, and goes through 6 distinct steps, including Ancient Greek, Ancient Latin, and Roman. Looking at the graphic, I can see where some of the cyrillic versions of the letters came from.
And, of course, by "blame" I actually mean "thank whole-heartedly".