Russian Orthography

The history of russianorthography

SLAVIC LANGUGUAGE

01:GLAGOLITIC

The name 'glagolitsa' is speculated to have developed in Croatia, around the 14th century, and was derived from the word 'glagoljati', literally "verb (glagol) using (jati)", meaning 'to say Mass' in Old Church Slavonic liturgy.

Glagolitic

Glagolitic is the oldest form of the Slavic alphabet. Created in the 9th century, by the missionaries St. Cyril and St. Methodius, it was used to translate liturgical texts and write the Church Slavonic language. They based it on a cursive form of the Greek alphabet, and based their translations on a Slavic dialect of the Thessalonika area . Glagolitic remained in use alongside Latin in the Kingdom of Croatia and alongside Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire, and later mainly for cryptographic purposes.

02:USTAV

ustav

Ustav is the writing development that replaced Glagolitic. Ustav was brighter and more roundish. Its letters were shallower: it had many superscript marks and a whole system of punctuation marks. Letters were more flexible and wider in comparison with Glagolitic. There was no distinction between capital and lowercase letters. Ustav was more elongated than Glagolitic, augmented by ligatures and letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. It would evolve to become Early Cyrillic.

03:EARLY CYRILLIC

early cyrillic

The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the late 9th century, in the Preslav Literary School in medieval Bulgaria, the most important literary hub in the First Bulgarian Empire. It is used to write the Church Slavonic language, and was historically used for its ancestor, Old Church Slavonic. It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillic script, which is used for some Slavic languages (such as Russian), and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.

04:GRAPHIC REFORM

graphic reform

On January 29, 1710, it was written by Peter the Great's hand: 'These letters to be used in historical and manufacturing books, and crossed out letters not to be used in the above books'. Graphic reform was essential. In 1710, an alphabet was reformed: the so-called civil font was involved instead of the Cyrillic one. Creating a secular alphabet meant a sharp seperation of secular literature from church theological literature. Some Greek letters were removed, and the Arabic numeral system was introduced.

05:PUSHKIN'S INFLUENCE

Pushkin strove to create a democratic national literary language based on the synthesis of the book language with live Russian speech and folklore poetry forms. He produced a synthesis of different sociolinguistic elements that historically formed the system of the Russian literary language: Church Slavicisms, Europeanisms (especially Gallicisms), and elements of live Russian speech. The language of Pushkin’s works became the basis of the literary language that we speak today.

pushkin's influence

06:SOVIET CHANGES

With the further development of Soviet society, the industrialization of the country, and the collectivization of agriculture, a large number of new words and expressions enriched the language vocabulary. Some of them were previously known in the literary language but were not widespread, and some were created in the Soviet era. Women’s equality and the opportunity to work in a production triggered the emergence of newly formed nouns denoting female persons. Among the new words that became widespread in the Soviet era, portmanteau and abbreviations played an important role. Significant changes also took place in the social functions of language. Literary language became the property of the broadest popular masses due to a number of reasons: the Cultural Revolution, the public education development, the distribution of books, newspapers, and magazines, radio, as well as the elimination of the former economic and cultural disunity of individual territories and regions. In connection with this, the process of loss of dialectal differences became more intense. Moreover, the Russian language turned into a tool of interethnic and international communication.

COOL STUFF

07:ꙮ

MULTIOCULAR O (ꙮ)

Multiocular O (ꙮ) is a unique glyph variant found in a single 15th-century manuscript, in the Old Church Slavonic phrase "серафими многоꙮчитїй" (abbreviated "мн҇оꙮчитїй"; serafimi mnogoočitii, 'many-eyed seraphim'). It was documented by Yefim Karsky in 1928 in a copy of the Book of Psalms from around 1429, now found in the collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.

08:COPTIC COMPARISON

COPTIC COMPARISON

09:MANUSCRIPTS

MANUSCRIPTS