Comments by "gary K" (@garyK.45ACP) on "The T-34 - WW2 Soviet Tank" video.

  1.  @sanguinius1284  No. It's an alphabet developed by Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius who devised a letter for each sound in Slavic languages. Bulgarian was the first language to use it. It is used by many Slavic languages, not just Russian. It uses letters from the Greek and Roman alphabets, and some of it's own. Unlike English which combines letters to make sounds, Cyrillic, in theory, has a separate letter for each sound. For example "Ч" for the "ch" sound "Ш" for the "sh" sound. There are 44 letters in the alphabet. Russian uses 34 of them. (including "hard" and "soft" signs) Ukrainian uses 35, but drops 1 that Russian uses and adds 2 that Russian doesn't use. Therefor, there are actually several Cyrillic alphabets for different languages...so The Russian alphabet IS Cyrillic, but not all Cyrillic is Russian. The giveaway is the letters used. And, of course, the words. In practice this has been corrupted a bit since Russians adopted words from other languages and didn't necessarily have the correct letter for a sound not found in Slavic languages. For instance, the is no "J" (as in Jack) sound in Russian, so they usually substitute a "Y" such as the name "Yulia" instead of "Julia" or an "Ee-oh" such as "Ee oh sef" instead of "Joseph". Some Slavic languages have "converted" or transliterated to the Roman alphabet.
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  2. T-34/85. Didn't come into play until early 1944. It was not present at the biggest tank battle of the eastern front, Kursk, in July/August, 1943. You should make a trip to the former Soviet Union. I lived and worked there for 7 years. I can highly recommend any of the museums or memorials. Hard to say which is best. My favorites are the History Museum in Kharkiv, Babi Yar Ravine in Kiev (Kyiv) and the "Memorial of Glory" in Kharkiv. Kharkiv was fought over three times and finally liberated as a by-product of the battle of Kursk on August 23, 1943. More than 274,000 people, just in that city, were killed. More than ALL Americans killed in the European theater...in ONE city! The Memorial is a beautiful park, which is also a mass grave. Very sobering. Lots of T34/76s and T34/85s parked all over. I tell my Ukrainian wife that I don't think they scrapped ANY of their tanks, they just parked them all around the cities as monuments. The T34/85 was in use until the 1960s in many countries. FYI...Cyrillic is easy to learn. I think it took me about 2 hours of my first day of Russian class to nail it down. Get a chart or some flash cards. You'll know it in no time.
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