>>The Russians never bother with the umlaut, which is a huge bummer for anyone learning the language. Practically any word where e is accented is under suspicion - should I read it as ye or as yo. But I respected the implied umlaut (or is it dieresis?) in (the approximation of) the phonetic transcript.
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>Umlaut lost information on printed signs. Hand written, umlaut is not with dots above, it's more like " on top of the letter. Dots means dieresis. What the russians call it - do not ask me.

Never knew what they call it. I don't know whether they call it anything (but perhaps "две точки" - two dots) as they don't use it. I've seen it occasionally when the absence may cause confusion or on less known words, and in texts printed for those who learn the language.

>But russians are lousy with there language anyway. It's andless overload on words and phrases now. One might learn an educated form of russion - but this is not of much help in daily life.

Haven't spoken it for a number of years. Since 1979, last time I visited, I spoke it perhaps a dozen times. Listened to it a lot, and at times, when the western propaganda was close to unbearable, I'd read their news just to counterbalance it with the opposite propaganda. Had no problems reading that. Even the fark.ru, with its collection of local jokes and hence a lot of slang, wasn't hard to read. But then I guess I was able to guess a lot of words I didn't know by simple analogy with my own language.

As for sloppiness with one's language, everyone can just check their own for words lost and replaced with english (I've heard "wir brauchen mehr Jobs" and, in dubbed Stargate, "herr Major, da ist ein Missile durch dem Stargate gekommen" - with Major pronounced english)(pardon my germisch, I never get the genders and articles right). And at the source, check The grand art of spell.