Cyrillic Orthographies

Гнатенко Людмила. Палеографічно-орфографічна атрибуція української кириличної рукописної книги : уставні та півуставні кодекси кінця ХІІІ – початку ХVІІ ст. : монографія = Hnatenko Liudmyla. Palaeographic-Orthographic Attribution of the Ukrainian Cyrillic Handwritten Book : Uncial and Half-Uncial Codices of the Late 13th – Early 17th cc. : Monograph / відп. ред. Л. А. Дубровіна ; НАН України, Національна бібліотека України імені В. I. Вернадського, Інститут рукопису. Kиїв, 2016. 476 c. ; іл. Парал. тит. англ.=укр. ISВN 978-966-02-7489-1 (друк.); ISВN 978-966-02-7489-7490-7 (електрон.).
Мицик Ю.      Гнатенко Л. Палеографічно-орфографічна атрибуція української кириличної рукописної книги : уставні та півуставні кодекси кінця ХІІІ – початку ХVІІ ст. : [рецензія] // Український історичний журнал. Київ, 2018. № 6. С. 210–212. URL:http://resource.history.org.ua/issue/journal/2018/6

Die Bibliographie von den Philologen Sava Mrkalj (1783-1833) bietet einen umfassenden Überblick sowohl über die eigenene Werke Mrkaljs als auch über die ihm gewidmete Fachliteratur einschließlich des Archivmaterials.

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes befassen sich mit dem sogenannten Slawenoserbischen, der Schriftsprache der Serben im späten 18. und in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts, sowie mit dem Werk, Leben und Zeitalter des Sprachreformers Sava Mrkalj, dessen programmatischer Text Salo debeloga jera libo azbukoprotres vor 200 Jahren veröffentlicht wurde. In diesem Kontext werden verschiedene Aspekte der Epoche, ihres Kulturparadigmas und der damaligen Schriftsprache behandelt. Einen weiteren thematischen Strang stellen die Arbeiten dar, die sich mit der Poetik, Rhetorik und den literarischen Richtungen des serbischen Schrifttums beschäftigen. Ein dritter Schwerpunkt gilt der beginnenden philologischen Arbeit, deren Anliegen die Schaffung einer Schrift- und Literatursprache für das serbische Sozium war, das sich in dem Übergang von der alten Kulturtradition und dem Lebensparadigma der Orthodoxen Slavia hin in die europäische Neuzeit befand.

The volume collects 12 original papers on the topic. It is  available online (Open Access) and in print. The pdf available here is compact in size (15 MB), whereas the linked file is large (85 MB, photos not compressed). The contents of both versions are identical.

From 1795 to 1914 the Russian Empire controlled Lithuania. It instilled a ban on Latin letters for Lithuanian texts that lasted for almost forty years (1865–1904). During that time almost sixty Lithuanian books in Cyrillic (i.e., Russian) letters were printed mostly by the initiative of the imperial administrators in Lithuania. Underground Lithuanian books and newspapers were printed in Latin script abroad and dispersed by knygnešiai (book carriers) and read illegally in Lithuania. At the same time, schools that had been teaching Lithuanian were also closed and so-called public “Russian schools” were introduced as a countermeasure to the spreading network of underground private “home” schools, which taught Lithuanian in Latin script.

The book The Experts of Lithuanian in Service of the Russian Empire: Dmitrii Kashirin, Zakharii Lyatskii, and Andrius Poidėnas (Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2011) recounts linguistic biographies of the three experts who served the administration of the Vilnius Education District to prepare, edit, evaluate, review, and correct certain Lithuanian texts in Cyrillic. Most of the Lithuanian Cyrillic texts approved by the imperial administrators in the Vilnius Education District were distributed to the schools and the populace in the form of primers and public readings. In the rare cases of private initiatives to print Lithuanian books in Cyrillic alphabet (e.g., that of Juozapas Miliauskas), the experts were used by the administrators to criticize and to reject the unwelcome proposals.

By and large this book deals with the life and work of Kashirin, Lyatskii, and Poidėnas: the three experts producing and evaluating Lithuanian Cyrillic during the 1867–1901 period of the ban on Latin script. It does not cover, however, the initial period of Lithuanian Cyrillization from 1864 to 1867, which is associated with the names of other experts: Stanisław Mikucki, Laurynas Ivinskis, Jonas Krečinskis, and Tomas Žilinskis.

.................
http://www.uic.edu/classes/lith/lith520/SUB_kn/SUB_2011_SUMMARY_of_BOOK_Experts_of_Lithuanian_in_Service_of_Russian_Empire.pdf

The New Polish Cyrillic in Independent Belarus (pp 79-112). 2019. Colloquia Humanistica. Vol 8. https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/article/view/ch.2019.006/4989

After the fall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the religious life of the Roman Catholic community revived in independent Belarus. The country’s Catholics are concentrated in western Belarus, which prior to World War II was part of Poland. In 1991 in Hrodna (Horadnia, Grodno) Region, the Diocese of Hrodna was established. Slightly over half of the region’s population are Catholics and many identify as ethnic Poles. Following the ban on the official use of Polish in postwar Soviet Belarus, the aforementioned region’s population gained an education in Belarusian and Russian, as channeled through the Cyrillic alphabet. Hence, following the 1991 independence of Belarus, the population’s knowledge of the Latin alphabet was none, or minimal. For the sake of providing the faithful with Polish-language religious material that would be of some practical use, the diocesan authorities decided to publish some Polish-language prayer books, but printed in the Russian-style Cyrillic. This currently widespread use of Cyrillic-based Polish-language publications in Belarus remains unknown outside the country, either in Poland or elsewhere in Europe.

Ч=ваш Республикин в\ренъ тата ёамр=ксен политикин министерстви Ч=ваш патшал=х гуманитари =сл=л=х\сен институч\ Ч=ваш Республикин в\ренъ институч\ Ч+ВАШ ОРФОГРАФИЙ/Н ИРТНИ, ХАЛЬХИ, ПУЛАССИ Регионсен =сл=л=хпа \ёл\х конференций\н материал\сем Шупашкар 2015 УДК 811.512.111 ББК 81.2 Чув-8 Ч-12 Ч=ваш патшал=х гуманитари =сл=л=х\сен институч\н +сл=л=х канаш\ йыш=ннипе пичетленет Редколлеги: Ю.Н. Исаев (председател\), Ю.М. Виноградов, А.П. Долгова (явапл= редактор\). Ч=ваш орфографий\н иртни, хальхи, пуласси: регионсен =сл=л=хпа \ёл\х конференций\н материал\сем. Шупашкар, 2015 ё., март=н 12-м\ш\. -Шупашкар: Ч=ваш патшал=х гуманитари =сл=л=х\сен институч\, 2015. -204 с.

The paper discusses the Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin orthographies of the Slavic books published by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through a comparison of eight versions of the Slavic text of the Apostles’ Creed, the specific features of the respective orthographies are analysed in a chronological perspective. In addition, cross-scriptal comparisons of three editions of Robert Bellarmine’s Nauk karstjanski kratak (published in the Glagolitic alphabet in 1628, in the Cyrillic alphabet in 1629, and in the Latin alphabet in 1633) and of the parallel Glagolitic and Cyrillic texts of Matej Karaman’s biscriptal Bukvar (1753) are made. As the analysis shows, all texts exhibit a clear development from orthographies reflecting Central South Slavonic linguistic features to orthographies that show influence of East Slavic orthographic models. These tendencies are most pronounced in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic texts, whereas the orthography of the Latin-script texts seems to be more stable.

The article includes as an appendix a preliminary check-list of Slavonic books published by the Propaganda Fide during the period 1627–1791.

От 1990 г. насам във всички сфери на обществения живот в България цари хаос, който изпълва с безкрайна радост сърцата на българомразците. За този ужасен катаклизъм, обаче, вината си е изцяло в самите нас-наистина в различна степен, но всички сме съпричастни. И ако е съдено да превъзмогнем катастрофата, това ще стане възможно само чрез колективни усилия... Тук ще засегна един сегмент от цялото-фрагмент от историята ни, който е важен исторически жалон с международно значение. По ирония на нещата, тук няма пряка намеса на крадливи манипулатори, нито завистливи съседи с грозни претенции. Тук раздорът си е чисто вътрешен, наш, българолюбиво българоубийствен...

The present article features a hitherto unpublished and unknown memorandum by G.V. Baev, now kept in his personal archive (Berlin, National Library). In this short text (eight pages), written in Russian in 1925 and addressed to the executive committee of the North Ossetian autonomous region, G.V. Baev expresses his negative opinion about the introduction of a Latin-based alphabet in Ossetia and exposes the cultural and practical reasons of his preference of the Cyrillic script, firstly used, in the civil typeface, in the Ossetic grammar composed by the academician A.M. Sjögren in 1844. The edition of the memorandum is based on two almost identical machine-type drafts and has two major aims: to make this text available to a broader academic audience and, as a consequence, to stimulate the search of the original text in the archives of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.
Настоящая статья содержит ранее не публиковавшийся и неизвестный меморандум Г.В. Баева, который теперь хранится в его личном архиве (Берлин, Национальная библиотека). В этом коротком тексте (всего восемь страниц), написанном на русском языке в 1925 году и адресованном Исполнительному комитету Северо-Осетинской Автономной Области, автор выражает свое негативное мнение о введении латинского алфавита в Осетии, излагая культурные и практические причины предпочтения им кириллицы, которая впервые использовалась, в гражданском варианте, в осетинской грамматике, составленной академиком А.М. Шегреном в 1844 году. Издание меморандума основывается на двух практически идентичных машинописных черновиках и преследует две главные цели: сделать этот текст доступным для более широкой академической публики и, следовательно, стимулировать поиск оригинального текста в архивах Республики Северная Осетия-Алания.

Статья посвящена описанию орфографических принципов, лежащих в основе системы написаний старшего списка славяно-русского перевода Евхология Великой церкви, выполненного по заказу митрополита Киприана русскими книжниками. В орфографии рукописи представлено значительное количество черт, обусловленных влиянием болгарской письменной традиции. Отбор этих черт произведен по единому принципу и формирует специфическую для периода рубежа XIV – XV вв. орфографическую систему в тексте, не имевшем среднеболгарского протографа. Возможно, разработка подобной орфографической системы принадлежит непосредственно Киприану и была задумана специально для новых производившихся на Руси переводов.

The billing rules of the transcription of names from Slavic languages with Cyrillic alphabet into Hungarian have to be renewed now because of the political changes in East Europe. The Ukranian and Belarusian geographical names of the former Soviet Union were transcripted from Russian and these of Macedonian in former Yugoslavia from Serbo-Croatian. The geographical nomenclature of this languages must be now induced into Hungarian maps, newspapers and popular book production.

A detailed description of the orthographic features of the scribes of the Uspenskiy sbornik allows us to reveal textual joints that testify to the heterogeneity of the works included in this collection. These joints are better traced in the handwriting of the second scribe: his text splits into 5 parts, the boundaries of which coincide with the works’ boundaries. The first manuscript copier more or less standardized the spelling systems of several sources, but in the text copied by him it is possible to see the differences in the ratio of variants of some orthograms that coincide the boundaries of the works.
There are also a number of particular features in the spelling of the Uspenskiy sbornik which complete the development of the original Old Russian spelling norm. This suggests that the antigraphs of all discovered textual segments were, most likely, manuscripts of an Old Russian origin, and consequently the corpus of texts presented in the manuscript was formed in Ruthenia.

В ранней древнерусской письменности существовало две разновидности орфографических систем со смешением букв е и ѣ: основная, допускавшая смешение в определенном наборе позиций, и более редкая – с частым смешением двух букв, не становившаяся до сих пор предметом специального исследования. На примере рукописи Соф. 188 в данной статье рассматриваются особенности орфографической системы
второго вида. Анализ сплошной выборки материала по смешению е и ѣ в рукописи позволяет показать, что основная часть замен буквы носит системный характер. Несмотря на то что в целом мена допускается в рукописи в большом количестве морфем, по частотности заметно выделяются те позиции, которые непосредственно соотносятся с обычной в ранней древнерусской письменности системой, смешивающей е и ѣ в ограниченном наборе категорий. Писец Соф. 188, отталкиваясь
от известного набора типовых позиций, применял ту же операцию по замене буквы в расширенном круге морфем и основ. Например, замену рѣ, лѣ > ре, ле в сочетаниях типа *tert он распространяет на любой слог рѣ, лѣ независимо
от этимологии; необходимость замены в основе тѣлес- он распространяет на все основы с формантом -ес- и т. п.
Возникновение такой нестандартной орфографической системы сопоставимо с рядом явлений в древнерусской орфографии XI – первой пол. XII в., связанных с устранением из письменности южнославянских орфограмм.

While the majority of orthographic features in the Miroslav Gospel clearly represent the Zeta-Hum recension of Church Slavonic, the Miroslav Gospel exhibits a very odd usage of u-graphemes that cannot be just simply generalized, as has been the tradition in the past.
Therefore, in this study I reexamine past commentaries on the main scribe’s usage of u-graphemes, paying particular attention to Josip Vrana’s conclusions, given he was the last scholar to comment in depth on the Miroslav Gospel’s orthography and many scholars in the field of Serbian paleography consider his conclusions to be valid. Moreover, I conduct a more rigorous, empirically based analysis of the manuscript’s orthography and
composition, the results of which allow me to make new conclusions about the scriptorium to which the Miroslav Gospel belongs.

Key words: The Möbius loop, Hinterwelt, Genius loci Scholae Provincialis Portensis, Nietzsche, Glagolitic, Cyrillic, the Petrinian reform, Lenin´s cultural revolution, the collapse of metaphysics in Slavonic writing

Both August Möbius (1790–1868) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) attended Pforta Abbey´s Landesschule. Whereas Möbius as a mathematician discovered a non-orientable two-dimensional surface, the so-called Möbius strip or loop, i.e. a surface with only one side and one boundary, Nietzsche tried to overcome the so-called Hinterwelt, the metaphysical realm beyond the physical one or the other side of being. Just as the Eleatic sphere symbolised the idea of the unity and the unchangeability of all being, just as the invisible hand reflected Scottish deism, just as dodecaphony underscored musically the Vienna Circle´s logical positvism, so the Nietzschean overcoming of the beyond along with the eternal recurrence of the same can be depicted by the Möbius loop.

In this context we might also regard the Moebius loop as a figure eventuating from the collapse of ontological systems. If the functioning of ontological and vital systems is characterised by a tension between two poles (the earthly and the other world, the life of this world and of the world to come, the above and the below, the masculine and the feminine principle, the temporal and the spiritual power, physics and metaphysics), it follows that, as a consequence of the annihilation of this vital tension and of the abolition of the difference between two opposing principles –  as a result of a short-circuit as it were –,  life is vanishing and death is occurring. Just such a process may be observed in the development of Slavonic writing.

This article attempts to illustrate the cultural and historical significance of the graphematic changes of the more than thousand-year-old Slavonic writing. Emphasis lies on its development from the Petrinian reform up to the Leninist cultural revolution. With its revolutionary aspects, the transformation of the Slavonic script conveys a profound philosophical connotation. It reflects a process of secularisation depriving the script of its metaphysical symbolism.

Slavonic writing historically departs from the glagolitsa developed by St. Cyril of Thessaloniki (ca. 826/27-869) in the 9th c. Into this alphabet designed for missionary purposes among the Slavs he introduced letters fraught with Christian religious symbolism: the Slavonic az (i. e. Cyril´s substitute for alpha) was depicted by the sign of a cross, the letters i (the first letter in the name “Isous” for Jesus) and slovo (i.e. word – “In the beginning was the Word”, invented as a substitute for sigma) were depicted by a combination of a circle, the symbol of eternity, and a triangle, the symbol of the Trinity.

In a further step, the cyrilitsa ascribed to St. Clement of Ohrid (ca. 840 – 916) contained the extended diacritic titlo ( ҃ ) symbol to mark the nomina sacra, e.g. the titlo crowning the word angel (’άгг҃лъ) served to distinguish the angel of the heavenly realm from the fallen angel (’άгглъ). The Cyrillic alphabet, a.k.a. azbuka, was made up of letters conveying the connection of literacy and the Gospel.

As part of Peter the Great´s efforts to modernise Russia by Europeanising his realm in all aspects of life the Cyrillic script was to resemble Latin alphabets current in Western Europe in the early 18th c. The new script introduced by decree in 1708 became known as the civil or Amsterdam script (grazhdansky shrift or amsterdamskaya azbuka). Aiming at Latin simplicity, the Petrinian reform stripped the cyrilitsa of its medieval calligraphic ornaments and its religious connotations. The Slavonic ideographic names were replaced by phonetic initials, i.e. the azbuka was transformed into the abevega. The titla were eliminated.

Right after the Bolshevik Revolution, Dec. 23, 1917 (Jan. 5, 1918) Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People´s Commissar of Enlightenment, proclaimed the “Decree on the Introduction of a New Orthography”. The reform intended to promote rapid alphabetisation on the one hand and to break with pre-revolutionary culture, in particular with religious traditions, on the other. The elemination of the “superfluous” letters prefigurated the liquidation of the “parasitic” classes. The Bolshevik reform deprived the Tsarist alphabet of the remaining Greek letters (such as theta (ѳ)). By removing the Slavonic letters yat (ѣ), the final yer (ъ) and the decimal i (і desyaterichnoe) as well as distinctive female personal pronouns and adjective endings the reform deprived the Russian language of precision in expression. Simplification brought about a reduction of semantic clarity.

The most striking example of this reduction is found in the merger of world and peace in mir. In traditional eschatology the identity of world and peace was to be expected only at the end of times. In an chiliastic effort  Bolshevism intended to realise the kingdom to come in the revolutionary present. Not by chance the Leninist language reform reflects this turn from traditional metaphysics to secular religion. The Möbius loop had locked.

reziume

sakvanZo sityvebi: mobiusis maryuJi, nicSe, leninis kulturuli revolucia,
metafizikis kolafsi slavur mwerlobaSi.

orive august mobiusi (1790-1868) da fridrix nicSe (1844-1900) daeswro
„Pforta Abbey’s Landesschule“-s. maSin roca mobiusma, rogorc maTematikosma
aRmoaCina araorientirebuli organzomilebiani zedapiri, e.w. mobiusis
zolebi, magaliTad, zedapiri mxolod erT mxariT da erTi sazRvriT,
nicSe cdilobda daZleva e.w. Hinterwelt – metafizikuri sfero yofnis
erTi an meore fizikuri mxariss miRma. iseve, rogorc eleatikur (Eleatic)
sfero yvela arsebis erTianobisa da ucvlelobis ideas simbolo iyo.
am konteqstSi, Cven SeiZleba aseve miviCnioT mobiusis maryuJi, rogorc
figura, romelic warmoiqmneba ontologiuri sistemebis kolafsis
Sedegad. Tu ontologiuri da sasicocxlo sistemebis funqcionirebas
axasiaTebs daZabuloba or poluss Soris (am samyaros cxovreba da im
samyarosi, zemoT da qvemoT, mamakacuri da qaluri principi, droebiTi
da sulieri Zala, fizika da metafizika), aqedan gamomdinare, am vitaluri
daZabulobis ganadgurebis Sedegad da or sapirispiro princips Soris
arsebuli gansxvavebis gauqmebis Semdeg, sicocxle qreba da sikvdili
ibadeba. zustad amgvari procesi SeiZleba iyos dafiqsirebuli slavur
mwerlobaSi.
statia cdilobs asaxos kulturuli da istoriuli mniSvnelobis
grafematuli cvlilebebi aTasze meti wlis slavuri mwerlobisa. aqcenti
keTdeba mis ganviTarebis petrinianuli reformidan leninur kulturul
revoluciamde. revoluciuri aspeqtebiT slavuri damwerlobis
transformacia gadmoscems Rrma filosofiur konotacias. igi asaxavs
sekularizaciis process, romelic xelnawers metafizikur simbolizms
arTmevs.

http://sjani.ge/sjani-17/%E1%83%A4%E1%83%98%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98%E1%83%9E%E1%83%9E%20%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1%83%9D%E1%83%9C%E1%83%98.pdf

The third and final volume on "Slavic Alphabet Tables" rounds out the first two volumes with a lot of additional material. Several Slavic sources are being published here for the first time, and Romanian primers printed with Old Church Slavonic letters present a special focus of this volume. – URL and URN inside the pdf. The file size is too large for Academia.edu (595 MB).

An abridged version of the Slavonic Scaliger Patericon is shown to be copied both from Cyrillic and Glagolitic antigraphs; the same circumstance is observed in the translations of the Scete Patericon and Athanasius of Alexandria's Homilies Against the Arians. Twofold transmission makes it possible to contrast the features of copying from Glagolitic with those of copying from Cyrillic.

In the article, for the first time, paleographic features and graphical-spelling systems of the “Tolstovskii sbornik” of the 13th century are studied. It is established that the manuscript contains several contrasting systems, including those unique for the Old Russian writing of that time. The first two systems correspond exactly to the work of the two scribes. They differ sharply as being innovative and conservative, despite the fact that they belong to the same text and have a common protograph. It is proved that the spelling practice of the scribe B is close to the autograph of Cyril of Turov. The contrast in the reflection of the jers by the scribe B in different texts testifies to the discrepancy in their authorship and the time of inclusion in the collection. The evidences of the appearance of “Tolstovskii sbornik” in connection with the activities of Metropolitan Cyril III are found.

The presentation documents the character set and the features supported by the free "RomanCyrillic Std" font which serves the scientific community of Slavists, linguists, medievalists, students and scholars alike. The current version supports Unicode 8 (2015) and features a preview to Unicode 9 (2016).