Russian language/Russian alphabet notes
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:IPA notice The Russian alphabet is as follows:
[edit]
Notes on the alphabet
- Until approximately 1900, mnemonic names inherited from Church Slavonic were used for the letters. They are given here in the pre-1918 orthography of the post-1708 civil alphabet.
- The hard sign ъ indicates that the preceding consonant is not palatized. Its original pronunciation, lost by 1450 at the latest, was that of a very short schwa-like sound, usually latinized ŭ.
- The soft sign ь indicates that the preceding consonant is palatized. Its original pronunciation, lost by 1450 at the latest, was that of a very short iotated schwa-like sound, usually latinized ĭ.
- The vowels е, ё, и, ю, я palatalize a preceding consonant, and all but и are iotated (with a preceding [j]) when initial. Initial и was iotated into the nineteenth century. See the next section for detains on the sounds of the language.
- The ы is an old Common Slavonic tense intermediate vowel, thought to have been preserved better in modern Russian than in other Slavic languages. It was originally nasalized in certain positions: OR камы Template:IPA > R камень Template:IPA "rock". Its written form developed as follows: ъ + і > ъı > ы.
- The э was introduced in 1708 to distuinguish the non-iotated/non-palatalizing Template:IPA from the iotated/palatalizing е. The ё, introduced by Lomonosov in the eighteenth century, marks a Template:IPA sound that has historically developed from Template:IPA under stress, a process that continues to be productive today. The letter ё is optional: it is formally correct consistently to write e for both Template:IPA and Template:IPA. None of the several attempts in the twentieth century to mandate the use of ё have stuck, and today it is conceded that computer input has further weakened it.
- Ѳ, from the Greek theta, was identical to ф in pronunciation, as in Byzantine Greek, but was used etymologically.
- Ѵ (originally Greek upsilon) was identical to и in pronunciation, as in Byzantine Greek, but was used etymologically, though by 1918 had become very rare.
- Ѯ and Ѱ are Greek letters xi and psi, used etymologically though inconsistency in secular writing until the eighteenth century, and more consistently to the present day in Church Slavonic.
- Ѡ is the Greek letter omega, identical in pronunciation to о, used in secular writing until the eighteenth century, but to the present day in Church Slavonic, mostly to distinguish inflexional forms otherwise written identically.
- Ѕ corresponded to a primitive Template:IPA pronunciation, already absent in East Slavic at the start of the historical period, but kept by tradition in certain words until the eighteenth century in secular writing, and in Church Slavonic to the present day.
- The yuses had become, according to linguistic reconstruction, irrelevant for East Slavic phonology already at the beginning of the historical period, but were introduces along with the rest of the Cyrillic alphabet. Ѭ and Ѩ had largely vanished by the twelfth century. Ѫ continued to be used, etymologically, until the sixteenth century. Thereafter it was restricted to being a dominical letter in the Paschal tables. The seventeenth-century usage of Ѫ and Ѧ (see next note) survives in contemporary Church Slavonic.
- Ѧ was adapted to represent the iotated Template:IPA in the middle or end of a word; the modern letter я is an adaptation of its cursive form of the seventeenth century, enshrined by the typographical reform of 1708.
- Until 1708, the iotated Template:IPA was written ıa at the beginning of a word. This distinction between Ѧ and ıa survives in Church Slavonic.
- Although it is usually stated that the letters labelled "fallen into disuse by the XVIII century" above were eliminated in the typographical reform of 1708, reality is somewhat more complex. The letters were indeed originally omitted from the sample alphabet, printed in a western-style serif font, presented in Peter's edict, along with the modern letter и, but were reinstated under pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church in a later variant of the modern typeface. Nonetheless, they fell completely out of use in secular writing by 1750.
- The numerical values correspond to the Greek numerals, with Ѕ being used for digamma, Ч for koppa, and Ц for sampi. The system was abandoned for secular purposes in 1708, after a transitional period of a century or so; it continues to be used in Church Slavonic.
[edit]