On the -Train to Brighton Beach:
Russian-American Bilingualism and Bi-Alphabetism

Based on data from Russian-American newspapers, signage, and other printed matter, I examine how the two alphabets are used, relating my findings to linguistic and anthropological theories of spoken bilingualism (especially Woolard's (1999) notion of bivalency). Where authors attempt to integrate elements from both languages within one text, two main strategies can be observed: first, the transliteration of English words into Cyrillic or of Russian words into the Roman alphabet, and second, the alternation between the two alphabets within the same text. Examining the constraints that govern the distribution of alphabet choice, I show parallels between written and spoken phenomena, comparing transliteration to lexical borrowing and interference, as well as alphabet alternation to code-switching. Like all language contact phenomena, these alphabet choices bear upon issues of social identity and cross-cultural adaptation, reflecting the social meaning of the languages and literacies. However, the study of alphabet choice also reveals limitations on transliteration, where characters (such as those designating the lines of the New York subway) or words (such as proper names) become symbols whose meanings are to some extent independent of phonetic values and of the writing systems that they are considered part of.

In addition to transliteration and alternation, a third strategy is found where the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets are blended together, by means of their partially overlapping inventories of letters, a consequence of the common roots of the two writing systems. Some shared (or "bivalent", following Woolard) characters have (roughly) the same phonetic value (e.g. A, O, or T), while others do not (e.g. H pronounced as "n", P pronounced as "r", or B pronounced as "v"). Where the choice of characters is pragmatically constrained (e.g. in "1-800" telephone numbers), authors are found to make creative use of these shared characters, writing words that correspond neither to standard Russian orthography nor to standard transliteration. These words are ambiguously pronounceable (e.g. "in Cyrillic" or "in Roman"), yet unambiguously interpretable by the bilingual reader. These hybrid forms challenge the notion of alphabets as self-contained systems by making use of the ambiguities that arise at those points where their character inventories intersect.

This study thus explores the relationship between letters and alphabets, demonstrating the ways in which the meaning of letters may transcend that of their membership in a given alphabet.

Cyrillic spelling: 1-800-АДВОКАТ

Transliteration: 1-800-ADVOKAT

Woolard, Kathryn A. 1999. Simultaneity and Bivalency as Strategies in Bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1): 3-29.

(c) Philipp Angermeyer, 2003.

Comments are greatly appreciated.