Sini came over yesterday, and we made a lot of hot chocolate and talked about things: politics, bad service by banks and phone service providers, Russian, terrorism and Mkhedruli (the Georgian alphabet). Sini's Russian pronunciation is fairly good, but she makes some of the normal mistakes of Finns and other Europeans speaking
Russian: [l]s are a bit off, the palatalized [l'] is good but the non-palatalized [l] is a bit palatalized too, and other palatalizations are a bit too strong. Russian palatalization should not produce a [j]-sound between a consonant and a vowel. And most unstressed vowels should get reduced. Really reduced. [u] remains the same, pre-stress [o] is reduced to [a], other back vowels, including [o] on the other position are reduced to a schwa and front vowels to an [i].

We found it hard to find out whether Georgian minority languages (Mingreli, Lazuri, Svanuri) are also written in Mkhedruli alphabet. Ethnologue lists them as "no written language" but I have always been unsure of how the "no written language" thing works in a more or less modern society. In any case I am not going there to find out, that's for sure.

Sini did not like the story of what Fujimori did to Tupac Amaru. Not that I expected her to, of course. I sort of understand (on the intellectual level, anyway) her distaste for killing surrendering people, much as it was useful under the circumstances, but I was surprised at her saying that this only perpetuates the cycle of violence, in the face of rather overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Tupac Amaru has learned from killing of 14 of its leaders in 1997 and has not committed any significant acts of terrorism ever since.)

Anyway, I am not saying all this in order to continue the argument with Sini (we'll do it in person over more hot chocolate) but because I have a feeling that this belief is rather common.