[ubermonkey]

In re: different countries: students who study Russian (or, I assume, other languages that use a similar alphabet) typically learn to write Russian in cursive. The letter forms overlap with English/American cursive, but not perfectly, and of course there are OTHER letters, too, that we lack.

(Russian cursive is also notoriously hard to read for non-native speakers owing to a few idiosyncrasies: some letters are entirely different written vs. in print, and the letter forms can lead to ambiguity -- certain letter combinations are effectively identical.)

A near-universal phenomenon among people I've spoken with who took Russian in college is the unconscious blending of the two letter sets. Students, myself included, would routinely find themselves using Russian letters in English script while writing without realizing it, and sometimes even reading it later without realizing the presence of Russian letters.

I knew it was happening to me, but it wasn't until I loaned my political science notes -- ostensibly in English! -- to a non-Russian-student pal that the prevalence of the swaps were really clear. "Uh, I absolutely cannot read this."

Ooops.

Anyway, it's tangential to this topic, but I thought it was interesting enough to share.

This is the first link I found with illustrations of the Russian cursive alphabet:

https://golearnrussian.com/russian-cursive/

[bombcar]

It’s very likely that English cursive is insufficient to really write the English words - since English pretends to only have 26 letters but so many do double or more duty - sometimes distinguished by diphthongs or other mechanisms but often just assumed you’ll know which pronunciation is right.

I wonder if the Russian cursive slips in because it has sounds that are closer.

[ubermonkey]

"It’s very likely that English cursive is insufficient to really write the English words"

That is a very, very weird assertion.

In any case, the letters that would get swapped in were 1-for-1 replacements for the English ones, though, so I don't think that's the factor.

[e_quaint]

What fascinated me when learning both Russian and English cursive is that Russian cursive makes writing in Russian much much faster, whereas English cursive (the one taught in school) just slows you down and is absolutely counterintuitive.. Also, I am yet to meet a person who is not confused by the cursive English G..