I was going to ask whether little Roman (Роман?) had misspelled "Путин", but then I did some reading and discovered that т and т are the same letter while т and м (or м) are not. The more you know, or whatever.
Anyway, even disregarding what these drawings say about the state of Russian-American affairs or Russian internal discourse, I have to say I was quite amused by the backwards American flags the kids drew, especially since they both flipped the flag the same exact way.
I had noticed the point about the flags, and also found it amusing, but only to a point. These drawings, in my opinion, say nothing about Russian-American relations, and everything about the quality and content of Russian education.
Russian cursive, from which Russian italics are derived (not so at all English italics), is sometimes very odd, as in the case of the т, which is rather uncomfortable to write because rather than "crossing" the lowercase form more or less anywhere you want, you have to place the bar precisely at the top, which slows writing down. The way the Russians chose to get out of that problem gave students of Russian cursive a far more annoying and confusing problem, particularly if they already write in cursive English. I see Wikipedia, to which you linked, notes this problem. If you want to see a cursive т which, while far less of a "false friend," makes even less sense to me, check out the one in Serbian/Macedonian (Wikipedia links to this page as well).
Perhaps the drawings don't say anything about current Russian-American relations, but if they are indicative of the quality and content of Russian education at the moment, they might well also be portents for what's to come to Russian-American relations in the future.
That said, if 6th graders are eager for V.V. Putin to protect them from ДЖОРДЖ the very bad cowboy, there must be someone telling them they need such protection, and that Putin will provide it. Even if that doesn't reflect on Russian-American relations per se, it surely reflects upon the Russian end of things.
And you weren't kidding, that Serbian cursive т is indeed weird.
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Anyway, even disregarding what these drawings say about the state of Russian-American affairs or Russian internal discourse, I have to say I was quite amused by the backwards American flags the kids drew, especially since they both flipped the flag the same exact way.
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Russian cursive, from which Russian italics are derived (not so at all English italics), is sometimes very odd, as in the case of the т, which is rather uncomfortable to write because rather than "crossing" the lowercase form more or less anywhere you want, you have to place the bar precisely at the top, which slows writing down. The way the Russians chose to get out of that problem gave students of Russian cursive a far more annoying and confusing problem, particularly if they already write in cursive English. I see Wikipedia, to which you linked, notes this problem. If you want to see a cursive т which, while far less of a "false friend," makes even less sense to me, check out the one in Serbian/Macedonian (Wikipedia links to this page as well).
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That said, if 6th graders are eager for V.V. Putin to protect them from ДЖОРДЖ the very bad cowboy, there must be someone telling them they need such protection, and that Putin will provide it. Even if that doesn't reflect on Russian-American relations per se, it surely reflects upon the Russian end of things.
And you weren't kidding, that Serbian cursive т is indeed weird.
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