Talk:Cyrillic alphabet

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Contents

[edit] Older discussion

It was my impression that a few of the characters of Cyrillic were taken from the Hebrew alphabet, particularly sh and shch (which resemble the Hebrew shin) and possibly ts (which resembles tzadeh rather more loosely). Is there any substance to this? --Fubar Obfusco

I've heard the claim before, and it sounds plausible enough, but I haven't come across it in a reputable source yet. I'll check... --Brion

If this checks out, it'll originally apply to the Glagolitic alphabet, so check there. -- Toby Bartels 03:34 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I am almost sure of having heard that sh comes from Hebrew shin, passing through the Glagolitic.Ciacchi 00:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have, say, a gif/png image of the Cyrillic alphabet for the benefit of people whose browsers don't show up the letters properly? Magnus 12:16 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

I'll work on this. In the meantime, nobody else should hesitate to work on this, because when I do it, it'll be in one fell swoop. -- Toby 08:06 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

What does "Glagolitic" mean? -- Zoe

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Glagolitic
(Or GLAGOLITSA; Slavonic glagol, a word; glagolati, to speak).
An ancient alphabet of the Slavic languages, also called in Russian bukvitsa. The ancient Slavonic when reduced to writing seems to have been originally written with a kind of runic letters, which, when formed into a regular alphabet, were called the Glagolitic, that is the signs which spoke. St. Cyril, who, together with his brother St. Methodius, translated the Greek liturgy into Slavonic when he converted the Bulgarians and Moravians, invented the form of letters derived from the Greek alphabet with which the church Slavonic is usually written. This is known as the Cyrillic alphabet or Kirillitsa. -- Derek Ross
Can someone incorporate that into the article? -- Zoe
Why don't I incorporate it into Glagolitic alphabet? -- Toby 08:06 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Can someone more knowledgeable add a reference to the Mongolian alphabet, which is also Cyrillic?

Also, a description of Soviet orthography reforms would be interesting (I believe two letters were eliminated). Yaronf 22:30 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

There's a bit about this in the table at Russian alphabet —Michael Z. 17:11, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the Mongolian alphabet is not based on Cyrillic, but is rather descended from one of the cursive Aramaic scripts. If you know Arabic, you can recognize quite a few Mongolian characters if you turn the page on its side. ACW 17:48, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Whoops, my apologies, Yaronf. I should have read the Mongolian article before I spoke. Yes, one of the alphabets used to write Mongolian is Cyrillic. I think the system most commonly called "the Mongolian alphabet" is the vertical Sogdian-derived script, though. Nevertheless, as Yaronf says, Mongolian should be listed among the languages that use Cyrillic. ACW 17:57, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The following material is from the now deleted Learning the Cyrillic alphabet. Please salvage anything that needs to be

Here is a way to learn the Russian Cyrillic alphabet classifying the letters into groups:

5 letters look and sound like English:

A K M O T

There are 9 letters that look like English, but are NOT pronounced like English:

B=V. E=YE. N(backwards)=I. H=N. P=R. C=S. Y=U. X=H. R(backwards)=YA.

These letters look different from any letter in English:

  • Cyrillic B looks somewhat like a 6
  • Cyrillic G looks like flipped L
  • Cyrillic D looks like a box
  • Cyrillic ZH looks like a K to the right of its mirror image
  • Cyrillic Z looks like a 3
  • Cyrillic L looks like a box without the bottom
  • Cyrillic P looks like a hat
  • Cyrillic F looks like a circle divided by a vertical line
  • Cyrillic TS looks like square U
  • Cyrillic CH looks like upside down lowercase h
  • Cyrililc SH looks like square W
  • Cyrillic SHCH looks like square W with tail
  • Cyrillic E looks like backwards C with horizontal line
  • Cyrillic YU looks like 10

There are 4 letters that seem unusual, which are:

  • Short I = forms diphthongs, which are like ai in aisle, ei in vein, and oi in oil.
  • Hard sign = Very rare
  • Hard I = a sound with no equivalent in English
  • Soft sign = Keeps preceding consonant soft

End dumped material

[edit] Letter names

Table of Cyrillic letters—Are these transliterated Russian names of the letters? They don't seem to be transliterated using either IPA or Wikipedia's adhoc system (or am I misinterpreting them? I don't speak Russian). Is the name "Ghe" pronounced [ç], [ɣɛ], [xɛ], or [ɦɛ]?

As used in ... Russian—This is slightly different from the table at Russian alphabet (Names: Ha ≠ /xa/, Shta ≠ /S'a/, Yeri ≠ /1:/;E ≠ /E oborotnoje/. SAMPA: /jE/ ≠ /je/, and both IPA and SAMPA palatalization symbols are mixed in: /j/ and /'/).

I realize there are differences in dialects and accents, but the same information should be presented consistently, with exceptions noted. And I guess this can't be fully resolved until each language alphabet has its own page developed, as noted above.

Maybe the section describing other alphabets relative to Russian should be a separate article. As a (non-Russian-) Ukrainian-speaker, I find it confusing at best. Ye is pronounced /E/ and is called "E"—I would say [jɛ] is represented by the letter Є, called "Ye". Maybe it would make more sense if Cyrillic was referred to as a writing system or script, whose symbols are used to represent sounds in the various languages' alphabets

I don't want to sound like a complainer. I'd gladly do as much of this as I can, but I don't know Russian so I don't want to mess it up. I'm working on a stub for Ukrainian alphabet, and I'd be glad to rewrite some of this with specific direction.

—Michael Z. 16:00, 2004 Sep 11 (UTC)

(1) Russian Ghe is pronounced [ɡɛ] in standard pronunciation and [ɣɛ] in Southern dialects. (2) I, too, think that there should be separate pages for Russian, Ukrainian etc alphabets (it is already done so in Russian wikipedia). — Monedula 18:20, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Monedula. Is "Ghe" just a different transliteration, or is "Ge" pronounced differently (are they ге, гэ, гъе)? In the meantime, I've posted Ukrainian alphabet. —Michael Z. 15:41, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)
Could you link to the letters in that article? Nikola 03:48, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I will eventually, Nikola. I'm doing some research and preparing relevant material for this article too. Work in progress at User:Mzajac/cyrillic.
Is "Ghe" just a different transliteration, or is "Ge" pronounced differently? — In the Russian context, it is just a different transliteration. — Monedula 17:23, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Should I merge both Ge and Ghe under "Ge", since they have the same name and pronunciation in the respective languages? It might be clearest to also redirect Ukrainian "He" to this page, and explain the history and current usage in the respective languages in one place.

Letter names for Serbian letters - nonsense - I just noticed that there is a table with all (?) cyrilic letters, also containing their names. There are letters like 'Dje' there - used only in Serbian. If they are used only in Serbian, and if Serbians do not have a name for them, where from this name came from? I am native Serbian speaker, with very good knoledge of grammar and I have never heard of name 'Dje' for letter 'Dj'. Serbians simply do not have names for cyrilic letters, so there cannot be 'Dje' by any chance. Saigon from europe 21:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transliteration of Russian

Transliteration can be done in many different ways; the most commonly used method of transliteration from Russian to English is presented here

The method presented in the Russian table seems to be a mix of three or four standards, and is different from Wikipedia's Transliteration of Russian into English. For reference, here is a table of romanization standards for Russian: Russian.pdf

Is there any justification for the statement that it is most common? Can anyone think of a reason not to remove this column from the table? —Michael Z. 12:07, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Since there haven't been any objections here, I'll do so. —Michael Z. 03:52, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
Done. Replaced this with more general notes and links on romanization. —Michael Z. 04:43, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

[edit] Capital and small letters

Here's a minor point, but I'm just curious. It seems to me that the corresponding opposites describing letter case are:

majuscule   minuscule
uppercase   lowercase
capital     small

Does traditional Cyrillic typography use Gutenberg's system of upper and lower type cases for the big and small letters? Do majuscule and miniscule properly apply to the Cyrillic alphabet, or are these terms specifically rooted in Latin typography, like "uncial" and "Carolingian"? Anyone know? —Michael Z. 16:08, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)

The original Cyrillic script closely followed the Greek uncial writing of 9th-11th centuries. However, Peter the Great has reformed the Russian writing and typography at the beginning of the 18th century, making them very similar to the Western ones. So in today's Cyrillic and Latin scripts the notions of majuscule/minuscule, uppercase/lowercase and capital/small are identical. — Monedula 17:05, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I worked as a professional typographer during the ’70s and ’80s, and we used the following corresponding opposites to describe letter case:
uppercase   lowercase
capital     lowercase
majuscule   minuscule
big         small
In practice, however, it is virtually always “uppercase” or “capital” versus “lowercase.” We did not use the words “big” or “small” to refer to letter case at all, but only to type size. --Stephen 08:38, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. Does anyone know of any accessible references about the history of Cyrillic typography (preferably in English)? All I've ever seen is the little bit in Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. —Michael Z. 18:15, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

[edit] Direction

[some text moved down from above]

Do you think that it would be good if contents of the "As used in various languages" section would be split and moved into articles about Russian alphabet, Bulgarian alphabet, Macedonian alphabet etc. as is the case with Latin alphabet (see Alphabets derived from the Latin)? Then this article could concentrate more on the history of Cyrillic alphabet and similar things. Nikola 07:41, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

  • This is a very good idea, however I'd rather be talking not about splitting, rather about copying/moving to the (missing) articles on individual alphabets.
    The individual articles may go in greater details, while this article must keep a reasonable amount of comparative information, which I find useful very often. Mikkalai 18:19, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've counted 19 other non-slavic Cyrillic alphabets that we could build tables for, with information that's already on Wikipedia. Before we add too many, perhaps we should determine a few more details of our direction. I can think of a few scenarios. Feel free to add more ideas or details to the list.

Let's avoid duplication as much as possible. The several Russian alphabet tables on Wikipedia already disagree in a few details; I'd hate to see us trying to maintain 20 or more out-of-sync versions.

—Michael Z. 20:28, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject

Should we start a Wikiproject to organize all of the Cyrillic alphabet articles?

[edit] Scenarios

  • Comparative info remains
    • Cyrillic alphabet stays essentially the same. We keep adding small alphabet tables and comparative info for each one.
    • Each national language or alphabet page has a vertical table of letters, names, and pronunciation.
  • Minimal tables only
    • Cyrillic alphabet retains only small alphabet tables for each language.
    • Comparative info is moved to a new article, Cyrillic alphabets compared.
    • Each national language or alphabet page has a vertical table of letters, names, and pronunciation.

[edit] Comparative information

Currently, the alphabets are all compared to the Russian. This seems to be sensible for most of the non-Slavic alphabets which are adapted from the Russian. But it can get confusing when dealing with some of the others.

E.g., I know Ukrainian but not Russian, so reading about the Macedonian alphabet becomes very convoluted: Macedonian is "like Serbian, except...", which is "like Russian, except...", then I have to construct my own mental image of "Russian is like Ukrainian, except...".

Can we establish more language-neutral base-line description of most or all of the letters? Perhaps all it would take is expanding the Russian alphabet table to include the other letters, noting national exceptions therein. For Russian, we can point to Russian alphabet, as we would with any other.

Or would the Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic alphabet be a better base-line, for historic reasons? Differences and exceptions could be noted with references to historic evolution of the alphabets. Cladistics instead of comparative anatomy?

The comparative info as currently written need not be lost; it could be moved to a new article Cyrillic alphabets compared to Russian.

[edit] Letter articles

I've built a navigation box that's more compact than the current Template:Cyrillic alphabet. Tool-tip titles act as labels. Letters are sorted according to Unicode collation chart order (including the pending proposal to put Dze before Ze).

I think this currently has all of the letters used for Slavic languages (anything missing?). Should we extend it to include all of the others? Then it becomes another kettle of fish.

Is this navbox sufficient? How can it be improved?

Update: I've created a template for this, and a set of images of the letters, showing baseline, x-height, and ascent. —Michael Z. 21:14, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)

Cyrillic letter A
Image:Cyrillic letter A.png
Cyrillic alphabet
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ
Ѓ Е Ё Є Ж Ѕ З
И І Ї Й Ј К Л
Љ М Н Њ О П Р
С Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф
Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ
Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Archaic letters
Ѹ Ѡ Ѿ Ѻ Ѣ ІА Ѥ
Ѧ Ѫ Ѩ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ
Ѵ Ѷ

The template would be inserted with code like:

 {{Template:Cyrillic alphabet navbox|
 Heading=Cyrillic letter A|
 Image=Image:Cyrillic letter A.png
 }}
I like the way it looks, but am worried that someone who knows only about letter names won't be able to navigate such a table. Nikola 00:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Just saw your older comments, N. I'm hoping that the pop-up tool tips are good enough, and each article is a click away. I'm most worried that the Unicode letters won't show up in some browsers. Your comment reminded me to see what it looks like in Lynx. Amazing, and almost useful:
                    Cyrillic letter A                                          
  Image:Cyrillic letter A.png                                                  
                    Cyrillic alphabet                                          
     A       B       V       G      G3       D      D%                         
    G%       E      IO      IE      ZH      DS       Z                         
     I      II      YI       J      J%       K       L                         
    LJ       M       N      NJ       O       P       R                         
     S       T      Ts      KJ       U      V%       F                         
     H       C      CH      DZ      SH      SCH      "                         
     Y       '      `E      YU      YA                                         
                     Archaic letters                                           
    C3    Ѹ Ѡ Ѿ Ѻ   Y3      IIA                        
  Ѥ Ѧ   O3    Ѩ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ                      
    F3      V3    Ѷ

Sample letters: large Unicode letters (e.g. A), or an image (e.g. Yery)? An image could also show the baseline and x-height, to distinguish ascenders & descenders.

Large letters untill we have images. Baseline and height are important, but I somehow don't like the way it looks (reminds me on school perhaps ;). Nikola 00:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It is schoolish looking, isn't it? I find it helpful when seeing unfamiliar letter forms in isolation. Without a diagram, I'd have no idea that Koppa (Cyrillic) has a descender. —Michael Z. 23:35, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

What is included in the sample letters?

  • serif letters
  • sans-serif letters
    • in my opinion, this doesn't really demonstrate much about the letter; at best it provides a case study of the differences between serif and sans font styles. —Michael Z.
  • handwritten
    • can someone provide scans or a good font? A scanned penmanship lesson would be excellent.
  • Old Church Slavonic manuscript style
    • maybe adding an alphabet table and scanned sample manuscript to Old Church Slavonic is more appropriate
  • Glagolitic equivalent
IMO, that would be too crammed. I thought about this and think that it could be solved by having a typography section, in which each of these variants could be included, as well as other info about typographical variants. Nikola 00:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What other standard content should be present in each letter article?

  • Introduction
    • Name(s)
    • Present in which alphabets
    • Pronunciation
    • Latin equivalent/transliteration
Should this be tables, or text, or tables where needed and text where possible? Nikola 00:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Related/similar letters
  • Historical development
  • Usage in computing
    • Code points
      • Code pages
      • Unicode
    • HTML entities


[edit] Alphabet articles

Do we need a Cyrillic alphabets navbox, or is it sufficient to point to Cyrillic alphabet?

Standardized formats? Please see the table of letters and Unicode table in Ukrainian alphabet.

Content

  • Introduction
    • Native name
    • Used in which languages, regions, periods
  • Table of letters, names, pronunciation
  • Punctuation, diacritics, quotation marks
  • History
  • Usage in computing

[edit] Kalmyk Mongolian

Stephen, the Kalmyk alphabet seemed different enough to warrant its own table, so I added it according to your description.

Are your pronunciation keys using IPA? Does "dž" indicate a short "z", or a Dzh sound /ʤ/? Should "ye" and "yu" be /je/ and /ju/?

Unicode collation charts place Һ after Х, but from your notes I assumed it follows Г in the Kalmyk alphabet. Please correct, or let me know what to change.

Are the letters "not employed" at all, or only for loan words? If the latter, here's a table you can cut 'n' paste:

The Kalmyk Mongolian alphabet
А а Ә ә Б б В в Г г Һ һ Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж Җ җ
З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н Ң ң О о Ө ө П п
Р р С с Т т У у Ү ү Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ
Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

—Michael Z. 03:12, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Yes, I think it's a good idea, Michael.
My pronunciation keys were informal and not IPA. Khalkha Ж = /ʤ/, Е = /jɛ/, and Ю = /ju/ or /jy/.
The letter Һһ does follow Х in Buryat, where it is pronounced /h/; but in Kalmyk, it follows Г and is pronounced /γ/.
All the Cyrillic-based scripts use all the Russian letters for writing Russian words, but they vary in which nonnative letters they incorporate into their formal alphabets. Even though neither Khalkha nor Buryat uses the letter Кк in native words, Khalkha includes Кк in its alphabet, whereas Buryat does not.
I will make these changes in the Cyrillic page. --Stephen 12:56, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Stephen; that looks great. I appreciate how much work it can be to document this stuff. Michael Z.

[edit] Evolution and adaptation

Unlike the Latin alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets, invented in 19th century, such as Mari and Chuvash, umlauts and braves also was used.

Is this a good summary? There seem to be so many exceptions.

The Latin alphabet also added many ligatures (e.g., Æ, Œ, SS → ß), and adopted letters from at least Greek (Y, Z), Irish (Ȝ), and Runic (Þ and Ƿ). Slavic and non-Slavic Cyrillic alphabets use accents or additions to glyphs (Ukrainian Ґ, Latin Ð). In both, many diacritics are evolved from additional letters or ligatures (Æ → Ä, AO → Å, Œ → Ö → Ø, UU → W, Ukrainian apostrof comes from a little Yerok, I think). —Michael Z.

[edit] Ѐ and Ѝ

Which languages use Cyrillic E-grave and I-grave? These are listed in the navbox with Slavic characters, but I can't find any references to their use. —Michael Z. 14:42, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Bulgarian uses i-grave for a dative form of "she" (Ѝ ѝ), to distinguish it from "and" (И и). But that's the only case I've seen of a modern use of Cyrillic accent grave. — Stephen 12:25, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The Unicode standard says it is Macedonian. — Monedula 18:24, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No, Macedonian uses Г grave and К grave. Nikola 00:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Macedonian uses Г and К acute. But back on topic, the only instances of Ѐ and Ѝ that I've seen is in Church Slavonic. Typhlosion 02:45, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It looks like Ѐ is really used in Macedonian as a part of the word нЀ (accusative form of "we") to distinguish it from не (not).

"ѝ" is used for a dative form of "she" also in macedonian. I can't find it in character map. probably, it's omited. sad...

[edit] Iotation

OK, I bit and made article on iotation. Edits are welcome :) Nikola 09:52, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Full Alphabetical Order

If one was to put all the cyrillic letters in alphabetical order, what order would they go in? For example, Ђ and Ѓ both come between Д and Е, but in different languages. So which would come first?
Typhlosion 02:42, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since each of those letters occupies the same position within its alphabet, neither comes before the other. Another problem is that the same letter in one alphabet is in a different position in another alphabet...for instance, Russian and Ukrainian Ь: the last 4 letters in the Russian alphabet are Ь,Э,Ю,Я, while in Ukrainian they are Щ,Ю,Я,Ь. Another consideration is that there are some 50 languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, and among all those languages there are more letters between Д and Е than just the two you've named.
But if you really had to write all the different Cyrillic letters down together, then I suppose that Ѓ should precede Ђ (since Г comes before Д). I think I might write them in this order:
А,Ә,Б,В,Г,Ґ,Ғ,Гу,Гъ,Гъу,Гь,ГІ,Ҕ,Ҕь,Д,Дә,Дж,Дз,Ѓ,Ђ,Џь,Е...
— Stephen 13:29, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The Unicode Consortium has created a unified alphabetical order, described in the Unicode collation charts (click "Cyrillic"). I think this is considered a good compromise when to use when sorting mixed language text, but not necessarily correct for any one language (e.g., the Russian/Ukrainian example above).
Template:Cyrillic alphabet navbox arranges the letters used in Slavic languages in Unicode order, but keeps the archaic letters in a separate list. Any suggestions on how to add the non-slavic languages to the navbox? —Michael Z. 18:16, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)
I think you could just tack the non-Slavic characters on at the end of what you already have in the Navbox. Something like this:
... Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Ӑ Ӓ Ӕ Ғ Гу Гъ Гъу Гь ГӀ Ҕ Ҕь Дә Дж Дз Џь Ӗ Ә Ӛ Ҽ Ҿ Җ Ӂ Ӝ Жь Жә Ҙ Ӟ Ӡ Ӡә Ѝ Ӣ Ӥ Қ Ҝ Ҟ Ҡ Ӄ Кь Қь Ҟь Ку КӀ КӀу Къ Къу Кхъ Кхъу Лъ ЛӀ Ң Ҥ Ӈ Ӧ Ө Ӫ Ҩ Ҧ ПӀ Ҫ Ҭ Тә Ҭә ТӀ Ү Ұ Ӯ Ӱ Ӳ ФӀ Ҳ Хь Ҳә Ху Хъ Хъу ХӀ Ҵ Цә ЦӀ Ҷ Ҹ Ӌ Ӵ ЧӀ Шь Шә ЩӀ Ӹ Һ Ӏ Ӏу ’
— Stephen 15:00, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Should they be in a separate section the way archaic letters are? But I don't want to create the appearance of segregating anyone.
Is your list here comprehensive, Stephen? Are these all considered separate letters, or are some repeated letters with an added diacritic? Do we know their names (I guess Unicode names are a start)?
Maybe it doesn't make sense to create about 90 new letter substubs which will remain tiny (half the existing letter articles are still stubs). We could expand the list of alphabets, start moving them out into the language articles or create more alphabet stubs. (Almost?) all of the letters are compounds, ligatures, and modifications of Slavic or Latin letters, and should be mentioned in those letters' articles anyway.
—Michael Z. 17:40, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)"'
It's a fairly comprehensive list, but I think there are probably a few other letters that exist besides these. For instance, it's possible that there are some languages that consider umlaut digraphs such as аь, оь, уь (for ä, ö, ÿ) to be separate letters of the alphabet. I listed all the letters that I could think of, though...they all are formal letters in some alphabet or other. For example, ’ (апостроф) is the last letter of the Azeri Cyrillic alphabet.
And yes, each of them has a name. A lot of them are Kabardian...for example, Гъу is a Kabardian letter named "ʁʷə" (ghwuh). Кхъу is a Kabardian letter named "qʷə" (qwuh). ЩӀ is another Kabardian letter, named "ɕʔə" (sj’uh). Ӏу is the tail-end of the Kabardian alphabet, and that letter is called "ʔʷə" (’wuh). The preceding letter, by the way, common in the Caucasian languages, is Ӏ (not the same as Ukrainian І), and Ӏ is named "ʔə" (’uh).
Yes, I think more alphabets is the answer.
— --Stephen 13:10, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Acute accent / stress mark

The article has a tiny note about how to use the acute accent with Cyrllic in Unicode, but it does not explain that the reason for this is to indicate the stressed syllable.

Also, many fonts which include Cyrillic do not work well with the combining acute. Does anybody know Unicode's reasons for not including precomposed forms? I'd also like to know some fonts besides Arial Unicode MS and Code2000 which do support the combining acute with Cyrillic. Even better would be fonts which support archaic letters and also the acute. I'm also thinking of creating a template similar to {{IPA}} and {{Unicode}}. This is particularly needed for our sister project, Wiktionary but would also be useful here.

Please contribute any thoughts. — Hippietrail 14:58, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Lucida Grande, which comes with Mac OS X, displays all the old Cyrillic characters and supports combining acutes. Unfortunately, it only has Roman and bold fonts—no italic.
You mostly don't have to worry about a template for the Mac, because Safari/Mac OS is pretty smart about automatically choosing the a valid font for each character on the page (as is Mozilla on all platforms). For this reason, Template:Unicode hides its font specification from all browsers except MSIE/Windows. —Michael Z. 2005-05-14 21:44 Z
This is all a bit too confusing for me, all I'd like to know, as the user above, is how to write accented cyrillic letters - to show where the stress goes. Jared Preston 00:48 27/06/05.
If you need to put accents in Cyrillic text, you may copy and paste this combining acute (-́-): а́э́ы́о́у́я́е́и́ю́. How the accent displays depends on the font. Many who read this will see the accent way up in the air. You can correct this in Wikipedia by using the "CYchar" template {{CYchar|а́э́ы́о́у́я́е́и́ю́}}, thus: а́э́ы́о́у́я́е́и́ю́. (The CYchar template simply forces the use of an appropriate font.) —Stephen 4 July 2005 08:56 (UTC)

[edit] Azbuka?

I always thought it is a strictly Russian term. Do Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Serbs call it azbuka? If not, may be it shouldn't be in the header....Gaidash 4 July 2005 08:10 (UTC)

No, other languages that use Cyrillic have the word азбука, too. In Serbian, for example, азбука refers specifically to цириллица as opposed to латиница. I’ve also seen it used in Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. —Stephen 4 July 2005 09:19 (UTC)


[edit] Missing Characters??

On this page are the Characters Ң/ң, Ү/ү, Ө/ө (used in Kyrgyz) mentioned?

  • You will find those three letters (and their pronunciations) on the main Cyrillic alphabet page in the Kazakh alphabet table. Ң = ŋ; Ө = ö; Ү = ü. Here are the thirty letters of the Kyrgyz Cyrillic alphabet:
The Kyrgyz alphabet
А а Б б Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к
Л л М м Н н Ң ң О о Ө ө П п Р р С с Т т У у
Ү ү Х х Ч ч Ш ш Ы ы Э э Ю ю Я я
—Stephen 09:02, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I'll add this to the article. —Michael Z. 2005-08-12 14:16 Z

[edit] Letter-forms and typography

Can anyone illustrate or describe some of the lesser-known "italic", cursive, or hand-written forms?

The cursive yat’ is very different from the upright, so it would be good to illustrate it here (I don't even have a font with a cursive yat’).

I can't find any reference about the Bulgarian and Serbian/Macedonian forms (I understand that the cursive lowercase б, г, д, п, and т differ). Are the Serbian and Macedonian the same? Some of these are illustrated in the "Adobe Cyrillic Italic Glyph Complement" table in the Adobe Standard Cyrillic Font Specification [PDF], but I don't know which is which.

It would also be nice to have a scan of some good handwriting, showing capital letters and the use of over- and under-bars to differentiate и, т, ш.

What else do we need in this section? —Michael Z. 2005-08-23 17:24 Z

see http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm . Moreover, Bulgarian lowercase (straight, not cursive!) в, г and к are different from Russian ones - at least these are my impressions from ocassional flip of Bulgarian TV on my satellite receiver :-) rado 07:33, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I've added the link to the article. —Michael Z. 2005-08-24 10:37 Z
Bulgarian oftenly uses cursive-like forms for straight letters, but I don't exactly know how oftenly, in which occasions, which letters etc. Nikola 10:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ukrainian pronunciation of Щ

I thought it was more like шч in Ukrainian. Shouldn't there be a note about that? -Iopq 07:57, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I've added it. I've always been confused because I don't know Russian, and the sources I've seen present about three different pronunciations for the Russian Щ. —Michael Z. 2005-10-7 15:28 Z

[edit] Letter articles (2)

I'd like to update all letter articles to same level of quality, and I started doing it, but run into problems. Which sections there should be, and in which order? Would it be helpful to break the articles into sections with ==s (they'd oftenly be only one sentence long, one paragraph at best)? Maybe comments could be put to split them?

These are possible sections I identified:

  • Introduction (containing pronunciation if trivial)
  • Origin, old name and numeric value
  • History, if any
  • Pronunciation if not trivial (maybe this should be right after introduction?)
  • Presence and position in various alphabets (if not already mentioned in Pronunciation)
  • Latin equivalent/transliteration
  • Typography (typographical variants if exist (Л vs /\), difference between normal and cursive, handwritten form etc.)
  • Other interesting information, if exists (use in pedagogy, cultural use, etc.)
  • Code positions table
  • Related/similar letters

09:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


Sounds like a good order. I would mostly avoid using section headings because these will be short articles; if a topic is covered in one or two paragraphs, that's okay. The standard See also and External links could be set off with headings every time.
I would keep the code position information very basic; there's absolutely no need for decimal, hex, octal, and binary representations of a number in different code page. Wikipedia is not a programmer's reference nor a numeric base-conversion calculator. I think the Unicode value, and a list of other code pages that a character is present in (or is conspicuously missing from) is sufficient, linking to the articles on the individual code pages.
I made the tables. Maybe octal and binary aren't necessary but the articles are small already and the tables wouldn't be of nice size without them (too wide to have some text go around them, too narrow to look nice). By the way, who says that Wikipedia is not a programmer's reference? I'm a programmer and I use Wikipedia as a reference ;) Nikola 03:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd be glad to help out this weekend. Let me know what I can do. —Michael Z. 2005-11-10 16:54 Z
Simply go around the articles and fill in the missing bits :) For example, I am just reading Ghe and the article lacks: letter origin (when and where was it first used; why and when did g in Ukrainian and Belarus drift into h?); what is its position in Ukrainian and Belarusian alphabets; and how is it transliterated to Latin alphabet. Nikola 03:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Belarusian

  • The letter combinations "ДЖ дж" and "ДЗ дз" appear after "Д д" in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. Although they are two-letter combinations, they each represent one sound: "Дз" corresponds to Macedonian "S", and "Дж" corresponds to Serbian and Macedonian "Џ".

How are these correctly capitalized, ДЖ and ДЗ, or Дж and Дз? And is there a reason to use Macedonian Cyrillic as a reference instead of IPA?

These are digraphs. I think that they can be correctly capitalised in both ways: Дж at the beginning of a sentence or word which is otherwise in small case, ДЖ if part of a word which is completely in upper case (this is sometimes called title case). I believe that Cyrillic letters should be used alongside IPA. I know how to read S while I doubt I could recognise IPA letter. Nikola 12:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. The pronunciation reference was silly: you had to search the page for Macedonian where you found the IPA for one letter; then search further for Serbian where you found the IPA for the other—maybe good for you, but we have to accommodate non-Macedonian readers. I replaced it with the IPA, consistent with the rest of the page. —Michael Z. 2005-12-2 15:25 Z
Well, not if you know Serbian or Macedonian :) Or OCS; S was used in OCS, so anyone familiar with old Cyrillic will recognise it. By the way, the order is Г, Д, Дж, Дз, Е, right? Nikola 08:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Г represents a voiced fricative consonant.

Which voiced fricative consonant? I'm guessing the voiced glottal fricative [ɦ], right? —Michael Z. 2005-12-2 06:35 Z

[edit] Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

  1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
  2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:37 Z

Italics in Cyrillics:
A guideline on whether or not to italicize Cyrillics (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italics in Cyrillic and Greek characters. - - Evv 16:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template for non-Slavic characters

I'm making some pages for Cyrillic letters of the Kazakh and Uzbek languages, among others, which use some letters not found in the default Cyrillic template. For the pages I'm making, should I make a new template or edit this one?

An example of what I'm doing -- Қ. Note that the letter does not appear in the template. Waynem 22:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd say go ahead. Look at the template for the Latin alphabet AEuSoes1 23:51, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
If you can post a list of the letters and article links here, I'll add them to the template. That template growing rather big; we should consider a more compact format, or perhaps moving it down in the article. —Michael Z. 2006-01-9 05:47 Z

[edit] Revising Cyrillic templates

Since Waynem is starting to create articles on the Asian Cyrillic letters (good job!), they'll get added to template:Cyrillic alphabet and template:Cyrillic alphabet navbox. The latter shouldn't be a problem, but the former is already getting big, and maybe we should revise the design. Please add your suggestions to the respective templates' talk pages. —Michael Z. 2006-01-9 21:27 Z

I like that the navbox separates the letters into groups. That's a good thing. Although instead of non-slavic, we could do non-Russian letters. AEuSoes1 00:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, we should distinguish between letters that are used in other Slavic languages like Macedonian, Serbian, Ukrainian, etc and letters that are used outside all Slavic languages. As for the largre Cyrillic template, I've tweaked it to make it a bit smaller, and I've put the edited version in my sandbox. I think we could definitely fit in the extra letters if we use this, the only problem is some of the names taking up more than one line. We could probably use more symbols, like ** equals descender, *** equals iotified, etc. Waynem 01:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
The smaller text looks good, but that version is wider than my browser window (by three table columns) when it's expanded all the way.
I wouldn't want to clutter it with too many footnote references—I'd rather use them for the most basic classification, and mention the special features in the text. The standard order for footnote reference symbols is *, †, ‡, **, ††, ‡‡, ***, †††, ‡‡‡. If more than six or nine are necessary, then switch to numbers¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰.
If one Cyrillic alphabet is to be considered 'basic', shouldn't it be the Bulgarian? Along with Macedonian, Serbian, Ukrainian, etc, Russian also has newer letters that were added specifically to accommodate the language. Bulgarian is closely allied with the original Cyrillic alphabet, and has no language-specific letters. —Michael Z. 2006-01-10 07:01 Z

Ah. It was working fine when I was using Mozilla, but there seems to be a problem in Internet Explorer. Waynem 19:56, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

What's the problem in Explorer? MSIE/Win has bugs with Unicode font selection; if certain letters aren't showing up, they may need to be placed in template:IPA, or have class="IPA" applied. —Michael Z. 2006-01-11 00:31 Z

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The fonts are showing up fine in both browsers. The table problem is occurring for me in Explorer, but it shows up fine in Firefox. Waynem 00:57, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

In what way is the table different in Explorer? —Michael Z. 2006-01-11 17:10 Z

It is wider than the browser window, as you mentioned. Waynem 01:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. Is that because Explorer is displaying the page with larger fonts, which expand the table to a bigger width, or is there extra white space in the Explorer rendering? Are there any other differences between the Firefox and Explorer versions? Sorry to ask, but I'm on a Mac, so I can't easily view pages in Explorer for Windows. —Michael Z. 2006-01-12 16:50 Z

Actually, now I'm not too sure. I looked at my sandbox again on both browsers, and now it seems to be fine, at least on the browsers I'm using. The fonts seem to be the same (at least in the tables, they are), and I'm not sure about white space. Waynem 00:41, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

After the last addition of one of the non-Slavic letters, the table code was a bit messed up, and I fixed it. Maybe it was the version before the fix that looked wrong. —Michael Z. 2006-01-13 07:02 Z

[edit] is it romanization instead of Romanization?

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 09:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Un-capitalized "romanization", according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 14:23 Z

[edit] Russian alphabet bias

Under each of the Slavic-language entries for the version of the Cyrillic alphabet used there is a comparison to Russian, e.g. which Russian letters do no appear in those respective alphabets. The comments are out of place and therefore will be removed because the article is not about how the other Slavic languages are different from Russian. CJ Withers 00:10, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article should not be so Russocentric, but the letters unique to each language should still be explained. Please edit thoughtfully, and don't eliminate useful information. As mentioned in #Direction above, this information could be removed to Cyrillic alphabets compared to Russian for those readers who do find it useful.
It may be better to start with the core of the most common Cyrillic letters and their sounds, and contrast each national alphabet to it by pointing out its adaptations and unique letters. The Bulgarian alphabet could be introduced first, because it has the fewest language-specific adaptations and no unique letters. The current order for the remainder seems appropriate. —Michael Z. 2006-05-19 00:50 Z
Although I have removed the Russian bias, which did not seem intentional, there remains the organization of the article, i.e. how Russian is the default for phonetic base values. The best way to improve the article, as well as reduce its size while keeping the same content, would be to make a table. I'm not skilled at making Wikipedia tables, so it'd have to be someone else. CJ Withers 01:04, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Montenegrin alphabet

Everyone please start discussing this issue here on the talk page, and not in the page history. If the revert war continues, I will temporarily protect this page. —Michael Z. 2006-06-15 02:13 Z


Right.
Montenegrin may or may not be a unique dialect, but it seems that it is only because of a political situation in the region that people have decided to include it as a distinct language. We would need at least some sort of scholarly source to include it in the article as another distinct language. AEuSoes1 05:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


I disagree. It is always better to have more information than less. And certainly if an entire language is omitted from the list, then we're dealing with a grave mistake. Montenegrin language was first described by Vuk Karadzic in "Montenegro und die Montenegriner" (Vienna, 1837), as the foremost authority in linguistics of south-slav languages. Today, it is used by a fair proportion of Montenegrins - see Montenegrin language for more info. It is one of the language options for the compulsory subject of "mother tongue" in montenegrin schools (other options include Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Albanian). It is considered to be a different language by the University of Montenegro (again, check the article on Montenegrin language) - the main state university and largest in the country, Montenegrin Academy of Arts and Sciences, Matica Crnogorska and Montenegrin PEN center. Government site is in montenegrin (see the link), although in latin script.

Montenegrin is still not considered to be an official language by the constitution of the republic, but the amendement in that direction is expected to take place soon. We may not consider a language to be non-existent simply because hasn't received full political recognition (yet).

As for the uniqueness of the dialect, it is as distinct from, say, Serbian, as much as [[Bosnian}} is. With the addition that Montnegrin can be written in both latin and cyrillic alphabet.

It was not considered a separate language for a long time, only because of political reasons and attempts of assimilation. Since many montenegins who visit this site are native speakers of the language (myself included), it seems POV (although this might be a euphemism) not to include it in the list.

I suggest it should be included in the list and the page protected from the rv war afterwards. --HercegOX 14:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

  • What seems to be a problem with including the section for the alphabet of the Montenegrin language (or supposed language, whatever)? If the alphabet actually exists, and is (was) used for something, why not have its layout here on WP, nicely described, with references? ---Yury Tarasievich 12:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yuri, I agree completely. I see no good reason either. Are we to ignore the language even when it achieves an official status in an independent european state? For what purpose? I will not edit for now, but would like to hear a single good reason for not having it here.

Btw, as I am a new user, what do we do about the length of this article? Is that a problem?

--HercegOX 14:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Montenegrin should be mentioned. If its status is unofficial, or transitional, or controversial, then we should document that fact, rather than taking a stand on one side of the issue or the other. —Michael Z. 2006-06-15 15:10 Z

[edit] Article length

HercegOX brings up a good point, that this article is much longer than recommended. I think the long section of alphabets may have to be removed to a separate article, or to each alphabet article, but how do we summarize that information here? Perhaps each national alphabet can just be a single line (see below), and the details omitted. The special features and unique letters of each could be summarized in a few lines of prose.

Better still, perhaps this can be replaced with a section of prose which simply mentions each alphabet and how some of its special features are adapted to the language it represents. This article needn't describe every detail, since each alphabet can have its own long article. This would also have the advantage that similar languages could be grouped and some of their alphabets' features discussed together and contrasted. —Michael Z. 2006-06-15 14:58 Z

Example of a condensed national alphabet summary (reduced from 1,437 characters including the table, to 670 characters—53% reduction):

[edit] Ukrainian

Main article: Ukrainian alphabet

Аа Бб Вв Гг Ґґ Дд Ее Єє Жж Зз Ии Іі Її Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Щщ Юю Яя Ьь

The Ukrainian alphabet has some adaptations specific to the Ukrainian language:

  • Separate letters He (г) and Ge (ґ). Ge was not officially used in the Soviet Union after 1933, so it is missing from older Cyrillic fonts.
  • Separate letters E (е) and Ye (є)
  • Separate letters Y (и), I (і), and Yi (ї)
  • An apostrophe (’) is used to mark de-palatalization of the preceding consonant.

[edit] The Bulgarian names of Cyrillic letters

The letters of the Bulgarian alphabet are not called

A, Be, Ve, Ge, De, E, Zhe, Ze, I, Short I, Ka, El, Em, En, O, Pe, Er, Es, Te, U, Ef, Kha, Tse, Cha, Sha, Shta, [no name for (Ъ)], Soft Sign, Yu, Ya

as presently suggested in the article, but

A, Bə, Və, Gə, Də, E, Zhə, Zə, I, I Kratko [Short I], Kə, Lə, Mə, Nə, O, Pə, Rə, Sə, Tə, U, Fə, Khə, Tsə, Chə, Shə, Shtə, Er Golyam [Large Er], Er Malək [Small Er], Yu, Ya,

where ə is the stressed "schwa".

That the Latin alphabet has no specific letter for the "schwa" is a problem of that alphabet; the Bulgarian alphabet does have such a letter (Ъ), and the names of the letters in the Bulgarian alphabet are written in that alphabet as follows:

А, Бъ, Въ, Гъ, Дъ, Е, Жъ, Зъ, И, И кратко, Къ, Лъ, Мъ, Нъ, О, Пъ, Ръ, Съ, Тъ, У, Фъ, Хъ, Цъ, Чъ, Шъ, Щъ, Ер голям, Ер малък, Ю, Я. (Щ = ШТ, Ю = ЙУ, Я = ЙА.)

The Bulgarians use Be, Ve, Ge, De, Zhe, Ka, El, Em, En, Pe, Er, Es, Te, Ef, Tse as names for the Latin letters B, V, G, D, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, F, C, while Kha, Cha, Shta (or Shcha) are unheard of. Apcbg 10:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point: the letters sometimes have different names in different languages, and the article should reflect that. But listing them all would swell this article further, so the detailed list belongs at the individual alphabet or language articles, as well as in the individual letter articles. —Michael Z. 2006-06-26 23:12 Z
Should the descriptions read something like the following?
The Bulgarian alphabet features:
  • (Е) represents /ɛ/ and is called е [e].
  • (Щ) represents /ʃt/ and is called щъ [ʃtə].
  • (Ъ) represents the schwa /ə/, and is called ер голям [ˈer goˈlʲam] ('big er').
—Michael Z. 2006-06-27 00:14 Z
I agree. In this general article, it is inappropriate to list the entire alphabet, but would suffice to append the above description with a short note to the effect that the Bulgarian names for the consonants are [bə], [kə], [lə] etc. with stressed "schwa" instead of [be], [ka], [el] etc. Apcbg 07:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] natural?

"used to write six natural Slavic languages" - what's meant here by natural? --euyyn 18:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Good question. What defines languages seems to include linguistics, culture, and politics, so I think that adjective reflects a narrow view or a certain prejudice (or perhaps it just means as opposed to artificial languages). I'll remove it, because it's either vague or confusing. —Michael Z. 2006-06-26 23:09 Z
Ah, but then you could say it's used to write Slovio so it's actually more than six. -Iopq 21:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bulgarian or Macedonian

Every once in a while an anonymous IP comes along and changes "Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian" to "Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Macedonian". Looking at the article on "Clement of Ohrid" it appears that an arguement could be made either way depending on what the region was called at the time of this person. If someone would care to discuss perhaps a compromise can be found. Perhaps something like "from the ancient state of Macedonia in an area covered by modern Bulgaria" or, if Bulgaria was a known entity at the time of this person then something like "from the Bulgarian region of ancient Macedonia". Please, let's have some interaction before continuing a slow revert war. --StuffOfInterest 17:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

His hagiography (and his article Saint Clement of Ohrid) defines him as Bulgarian. It's only the nationalism emanating from FYROM which makes him "Macedonian". --Tēlex 18:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I've scanned through a number of the relevant articles. Clement was born, worked and died under the Bulgarian nation. Macedonia had been a Byzantine province, but taken by the Bulgars just a few years before Clement's birth. He was born in Bulgarian Macedonia, worked in Bulgaria and Great Moravia, but did his most important work in Ohrid, in the very far west of Bulgarian Macedonia, which today is in the modern state of Macedonia. He was a disciple of two Greeks, Cyril and Methodius, but their religious and scholarly work involved developing and disseminating a native Slavic liturgy and alphabet, which helped the native Slavs and assimilating Bulgars maintain their identity, and avoid assimilation with the Byzantine Greeks.

Don't infer too much from this quick reading, and apparently not much is known of Clement's early life. But it sounds like it would be perfectly acceptable to say he was "Bulgarian" in the sense of his political association, or "from Bulgarian Macedonia" to be more specific geographically. To just say "Macedonian" is vague in the historical context, since Macedonia had previously been a Roman province, then part of the Byzantine empire, also inhabited by Slavs, and conquered by Bulgarians, who were themselves assimilating with the Slavs.

I'm sure modern Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Greeks can all be proud of Clement and his work. Feel free to correct any mistakes I've made or expand on the explanation. For now, I'll prefer to call him "Bulgarian" rather than "Macedonian" if those are the only choices. —Michael Z. 2006-07-19 01:09 Z

I've edited the relevant section of the article, adding the phrase "from Bulgarian Macedonia". Please leave the link as is:
  • "Macedonia" includes links to Balkan, Bulgarian, and Greek Macedonia
  • "Macedonian" is too vague, it's unclear whether it speaks of geography, ethnicity, or political subdivisions, and we probably can't peg Clement's identity with such detail anyway
  • "Bulgarian Macedonia" links to the modern Bulgarian province, but Ohrid is farther west, at the other side of the modern state of Macedonia
—Michael Z. 2006-07-19 01:23 Z
Thanks for the great research on that! Maybe this will keep the anon-IP settled down. --StuffOfInterest 12:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I guess it didn't. I see our IP vandal came back and removed "Bulgarian" yet again. Would be nice if he would create and ID and discuss the issue rather than just edit warring. --StuffOfInterest 01:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Now an anonymous editor changed all occurrences of Bulgaria to Macedonia, completely disregarding the facts (Preslav was not in Macedonia). It's becoming easier to revert such thoughtless edits which are presumably driven by misguided national pride, without bothering to check the facts. —Michael Z. 2006-07-28 22:14 Z

[edit] Order of alphabets

Recent edit summaries:

I don`t see how can someone find Bulgarian cyrillic more important than Russian one or Rusyn than Serbian user:Avala
Alphabetical, that's a good order, no? user:Aeusoes1

The languages were arranged logically, following the table with the most common letters. The first (Bulgarian), is the one which has the fewest exceptions or differences from the table. The following languages were arranged so that similar languages were next to each other.

Please don't just rearrange sections without reading and rewriting them, where it's appropriate: "Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways", oh yeah, you have to look around and find the Serbian one elsewhere on the page.

I'm restoring the previous order, which was stable for a while. If we can agree on someone's assessment of importance or alphabetical order as a better idea on this talk page, then we can rearrange them. —Michael Z. 2006-07-25 22:49 Z

[edit] Merging individual letters

The individual letters all have their own article, but no more information is available on those stubs than the main article itself. Should they not be merged and left as redirects here? Ifnord 21:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

No. It's a similar layout with latin characters. I think it's better to actually expand the letters' pages. AEuSoes1 22:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
But, is it expandable? What more can possibly said about Ҩ? Ifnord 23:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Origins, usage... I don't really know much about Abkhaz and I learned most of what I know about Cyrillic through Wikipedia. If you're talking about that one particular letter it's one thing, but I don't think all the Cyrillic letters should collapse into one page. AEuSoes1 00:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Info about each alphabet already makes this article is too long, so writing about each letter here would definitely be too much. If there's just nothing to say about it, then merge it into Abkhaz alphabet or Abkhaz language#Writing system.

But what is the letter's origin—is it a modified О? Who developed the Abkhaz alphabet and when? Does the hand-written form look the same as in print? What letters represented the same sound in the historical Abkhaz alphabets? —Michael Z. 2006-07-28 00:51 Z

don't merge, but expand. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 16:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Montenegrin language ?

Actually, what is the criterion to declare a separate language, can anybody explain? My question refers to the "production" of new languages in former Yugoslavia, based on political borders and interests. As for St. Clement of Ohrid (Sv. Kliment Ohridski) and the issue of his ethnicity, it can be simply determined as "Slav" and the Bulgarian-FYROM dispute can be left alone. I don't think any compromise on history can ever be reached between Bulgaria and FYROM from their current positions, nor between Greece and FYROM. The claims of this newly founded state are far-reaching, unscientific and concern the historical heritage of all of its neighbouring nations.
85.11.148.52 12:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Language is a dialect with an army and navy. Duja 12:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's a single agreed-upon criterion. I think it's appropriate for Wikipedia to report that someone significant considers a language to exist, for example its speakers. The linguistic, cultural, and political details belong in the language article, not here. —Michael Z. 2006-08-29 14:55 Z

[edit] Completely broken layout

After the recent changes, the layout of the top of the article is quite broken in my browser (Safari). The infobox and history of the alphabet navbox seem to align at the top right of the article as intended, however they both overlap in a very messy way with the big box with the letters: they both appear above that boxes borders and tone, but below the letters and names. It's an unreadable mess. I suppose it would work fine if my monitor were about 1200px wide or larger, but that's not the case.

The new font sample in the infobox seems pointless: it is too small to discern the individual letters, and seems to be an old Romanian script which is not even mentioned in this article. —Michael Z. 2006-08-29 20:16 Z

100% ACK. The layout is broken in Firefox/Konqueror/Opera as well if the browser window is not large enough. Plus the sample should show current usage.--Hhielscher 20:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Looks awful to me, too. I'm probably not the only passerby to be totally turned off. Anyone going to fix it? --Masamage 22:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map

Error in the map, Serbia ad Montenegro need to be split, Montenegro in light green Serbia in dark (dont believe me read the constitution)

[edit] Is it pronounced "Sirillik" or "Kirillik"?

--Greasysteve13 03:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

/sɪˈrɪlɪk/. It's a soft c AEuSoes1 06:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks--Greasysteve13 10:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-parallel forms for individual language alphabet features

Can there be a bit more consistency between each of the notes following the language alphabets?

The Bulgarian notes have a "medium" form and a short introduction

  • (Е) represents /ɛ/ and is called "е" [e].

The Russian notes have no introduction and are just juxtaposed items

  • Yo (Ё ё) /jo/

The Serbian section uses a longer form

  • Between Д and E is the letter Dje (Ђ, ђ), which represents /ʥ/, and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards.

And many of the later ones have an almost tabular form using equal signs

  • В в = /w/

I think any of them would be acceptable (although the form used for the Russian notes seemed a bit cryptic on initial reading) and would be better if they all followed one to a greater extent. --68.126.179.61 04:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Which do you think is best? Be bold and update the article, if you have the time. —Michael Z. 2006-09-23 05:41 Z

[edit] Template/Map of the characters

I read that the Template:Cyrillic alphabet is thought to be a too big table, but I think it's more useful to display all Cyrillic letters without searching them by languages. By placing it at the bottom of the page, it got totally useless! I think it has not to be deleted, but it needs a better position or it can be deleted! Bukkia 22:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it has outgrown its usefulness. Perhaps a version of the Template:Cyrillic alphabet navbox can be added to the alphabet infobox. —Michael Z. 2006-09-28 18:37 Z

[edit] Bosnian

I've seen several inclusions of Bosnian only to be followed (in the edit summary) by claims that Bosnian does not use the Cyrillic alphabet anymore. However, according to Bosnian language, "The Bosnian alphabet uses both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, although Latin is used more often than Cyrillic." What is the justification for not listing Bosnian? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The Bosnian language is a officiall lanugage spoken in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian language use the latin alphabet.

What is it that you dont understand in that sentence? Thunderman 21:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Bosnia and Herzegovina as a nation is complicated to understand, I suggest reading the main article. However, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian are spoken in BiH. Bosnian and Croatian do not use Cyrillic, while Serbian uses both. So, the Cyrillic one sees in Bosnia is actually Serbian Cyrillic. In retrospect, no Bosnian, that has no ethnic ties to Serbia, will ever say he or she writes in Cyrillic or that Bosnian uses Cyrillic. The script Bosančica existed along time ago and is now extinct. Most Bosnians and Croatians view using Cyrillic as a provocation. I was in Croatia this summer and there was some construction on the road heading to Sisak (Croatia) and reportedly someone put one of those yellow "caution" lines (tags) in Cyrillic this was viewed as a crime/provocation by the Croatians. Due to the war, many want to be less associated with the Serbian culture so Cyrillic would be a start. (Nowhere in here did I mention these are my views, however, they are the views of the common people). One has to remember that Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian are almost identical languages, the barrier is even less than the one between American English and British English. Thanks, Vseferović 22:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
All right. That clears that up. Thanks Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I can see how Ƶ§œš¹ did not understand the recent edits he encountered in this article as the edit summaries seem to contradict the Bosnian language article, perhaps someone can review it. // Laughing Man 23:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Basically, linguists of the Bosnian language (whose relationship to Serbian and Croatian is like the relationship between American and British English) claim that Cyrillic is a script of the language. However, no-one actually uses it, and it's viewed as an insulting provocation to actually use it. This may be because Bosnian only has the option of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Karadžić, the reformer of the Serbian literary language. --estavisti 13:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Folks, the evidence seems to be that Cyrillic is not used for the Bosnian language today, so it should not be in the list of living Slavic languages. If you have more to add on the subject, please conduct discussion here, and not through edit summaries in a revert war. If that continues, the article will have to be protected. —Michael Z. 2006-10-23 01:57 Z

[edit] German cyrillic alphabet??

I added the 'disputed' template to this section. Please see comments and discuss here: [1] --Sasper 05:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page protected due to edit war

Due to the ongoing edit war I have protected the page. Please resolve the dispute here so that the page can be unprotected. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 02:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's see if there's a consensus. From the evidence presented above, it seems to me that Cyrillic is not a living alphabet, commonly used for the Bosnian language today, and as such, needn't be listed in the relevant section of the introduction. —Michael Z. 2006-10-23 02:17 Z
I'm lifting the protection, I think the consensus is more or less reached. Anyway, I blocked User:Thunderman as a sockpuppet of notorious trollish edit warrior; stupid me for not noticing it immediately. Duja 09:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agree

  1. —Michael Z. 2006-10-23 02:17 Z
  2. // Laughing Man 02:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  3. // Thunderman 14:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  4. Agree for the purpose of this article. Fine sociolinguistic nuances should be reported in Bosnian language and elsewhere though. Duja
  5. per Duja --estavisti 00:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  6. --Vseferović 00:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC) I agree as I stated above and below

[edit] Disagree

  1. [rts_freak] | 5p34k 2 /\/\3 09:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

While cyrillic is not the alphabet commonly used for Bosnian today, it can't be denied that cyrillic still is used by Bosnian and was historically used for Bosnian (or derivatives of cyrillic). While it may be acceptable not to mention Bosnian in the introduction, it is important to mention the historical importance of cyrillic to the Bosnian language, but maybe later on in the article. Also, since cyrillic (or it's derivatives) were the first alphabet used for Bosnian (and the only used for a long time), on the article Latin Alphabet, Bosnian should not be mentioned in the section "spread of the latin alphabet" along with languages such as Czech, Croatian etc, as Bosnian did not use latin until much later than these languages, and teh spread of Latin alphabet to Bosnian language did not happen at the same time as these other languages, and certainly not in teh same manner as the others. But anyway, I'll agree to not having Bosnian in the intro if it is mentioned in a later section dedicated to explaining the strange situation of cyrillic & Bosnian.

P.S. I am deeply sorry for all the inconvenience and/or frustration I have caused to other users for engaing in an edit war. Also I apologise for any incivility on my part, either in edit summaries or on talk pages. - [rts_freak] | 5p34k 2 /\/\3 09:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

rts_freak:

What in the God allmightys name has the history to do with the presence situation?

Turkish language was cyrillic before, many language had other scripts before. But, you keep mention that Bosnian language use cyrillic because they used it before. Doesnt it look crazy to think like that?

Thunderman 14:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello. We're reporting the official position of Bosniak linguists, which may be politically motivated, but it's their official position. The point is, the Cyrillic was in use in territory of Bosnia in medieval times, it was used during the times of SFRY. If Bosniaks formally refused Cyrillic, that would mean that they refused the cyrillic literature and books printed during the time of SFRY as their own, in effect "ceding" it to Serbs, which they don't want to do. We know that it's not actively used today, and that's written several times, thank you for reminding us. Would you please stop this senseless flogging of a dead horse? Duja 15:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Duja:

What in the gods name has SFRJ to do with reality?

Bosnian language DIDNT EXIST during SFRJ!

Now, it does!

Face reality Duja, Bosnian language doesnt use cyrillic, if you are in the Federacija BiH then you can see on the thing that shows the distance to places in the driveway and you will se that it is in Latin. And in everything, it is written in Latin.

Cant you understand that history has nothing to do with reality and Serbo Croatian doesnt exist anymore.

Pozdrav // Thunderman 15:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You really don't get it. Go to any Bosniak politician, linguist or nationalist with the sentence "Bosnian language DIDNT EXIST during SFRJ" and you'll get your ass kicked for national treason. I do know Bosnians are stubborn, but you're pushing it above the limits. How many times do I have to say that I know and accept that Cyrillic is not actively used? Did you read my comments and edits at all? Did you read any official language book issued in the last 10 years? It is Bosniak officials and linguists who claim the heritage of Muslim writers during SFRY and earlier times, not me. If you reject that heritage, that's fine with me also. But, for god's sake, stop edit warring for no reason. Duja 15:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You really not understand.

Listen carefully now:

Cyrillic doesnt use in the Bosnian language. It doesnt use in the rijecnik, nobody who is talking Bosnian language is using Cyrillic. What is it you dont understand?

Please, listen:

Nobody use Cyrillic who speaks Bosnian language. Conclusion: Bosnian language use Latin alphabeth.

Understand? Thunderman 16:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


Please slow down, everyone. Let's forgive any edit-warring, and figure out how to proceed. It seems that both sides generally agree on the facts, and the substance of the disagreement is how or where to present them.

This article concentrates on current uses, and has only a very general history. Early Cyrillic alphabet is more technical, and has very little history. It seems to me that the history of the Cyrillic alphabet in the Balkans belongs there, or in Serbo-Croatian, or perhaps in another article. It also deserves to be mentioned and linked to here and in several other articles.

This is an emotional and potentially divisive issue, so let's all try to be extra patient and constructive. —Michael Z. 2006-10-23 19:23 Z

Well, the whole politically motivated position of Bosniak linguists seems to be calculated to annoy. It goes a little something like this: we'll claim Serbian Cyrillic is also Bosnian in our "official" definition of Bosnian (which is basically exactly the same as the languages known as Serbian and Croatian, as close, if not closer, than British and American English), but we'll never actually use it, and if a Serb uses it we'll complain that it is a nationalistic provocation. Cyrillic is usually mentioned by many Bosniaks in derogatory contexts. The whole thing comes from Bosniak linguists being unable to not claim another's heritage (Vuk Karadžić's alphabet). The alphabet they claim was devised by a Serb for the Serbian language, and features certain unique characters (љ, њ, џ, ђ,ћ), so even if they do use it (which they don't), it's still Serbian Cyrillic. Bosnian Muslims used to write using the Arabic script, but it was never claimed that a Bosnian Arabic script existed as a result of that. My proposal is that we describe the reality. i.e. "Bosniak linguists claim that Cyrillic is used to write Bosnian, but it is almost never used, and many Bosniaks view its use by Bosnian Serbs as a nationalistic provocation." Or something like that...--estavisti 22:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

One has to see that the Bosnian language does not have a formal organization that states whether or not Cyrillic is used. However, one will never see a Bosnian book or newspaper regularly published in Cyrillic. The Cyrillic would be seen as Serbian since all three languages (Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian) are used in Bosnia due to the complicated outcomes of the war. Anyone interested about what occurred please read the article Bosnia and Herzegovina or the article Bosnian War. Nevertheless, using Cyrillic for Bosnian is usually seen as a provocation. It is hard for an outsider who has never been to Bosnian or lived in Bosnia to understand this, but it is the common view. Similarly Hindi uses its own alphabet while in Pakistan they uses the Arabic script for the same (really similar) language. This goes for Bosnian as well. So, far we have a consensus from foreign perspectives and local perspectives (BiH, HR, SR). I suggest that we end this right now. Thanks, Vseferović 00:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyrillic font styles

User:Estavisti recently removed the Russian names for upright, cursive and oblique fonts (pryamoy shrift, kursivniy, naklonniy, respectively), with the edit summary "cyrillic is neither exclsuively russian, nor russian by origin, and there's no space to include all the names".

Estavisti, I share your concern, but I'm opposed to simply removing the information without discussing a solution. This information is useful, and gives an indication of the meaning and etymology, probably in several of the Slavic languages. For example, as a Ukrainian-speaker, given this information, I can guess that the Ukrainian names are probably pryamyy, kursyvnyy, naklonnyy. Without this, I am guessing what "upright" is translated from (I can think of a number of synonyms, and I don't know if pryamyy would occur to me).

Of course, I am just guessing here—and if the names are different in Ukrainian, I'd like to know that too, but I don't have access to a reference. Is there really no space to include all of the names? Which do you know? Let's list them here, and see if we can work out a way to include them in the article. If we only know the Russian so far, then including them simply represents our incomplete list to date, and not a bias. Thanks. —Michael Z. 2006-10-30 06:07 Z

I'm sort of confused by the summary statement "both the Cyrillic spelling and phonetic pronunciation are irrelevent here". If they're irrelevant, isn't that also true of the words themselves? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 11:15, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
In the English-language Wikipedia we generally use English spelling for English words, and Romanized spelling for words from languages using Cyrillic or some other writing system. Cyrillic is only used once in the beginning of some articles to assist foreign-language searching for the main topic, and IPA is used when writing about the pronunciation of words. Neither is the case here. IPA is not used to convey a written word, but its phonetic pronunciation.
If you need examples, notice that in English-language Wikipedia we don't have articles entitled nʲɪˈkʲitə sʲɪ xruˈɕːof or 香港, but Nikita Khrushchev and Hong Kong (and those names are spelt likewise in the text of articles). —Michael Z. 2006-10-30 18:04 Z
I'm not talking about article titles. In most articles that is true about Cyrillic, but articles like Russian phonology and Russian language use Cyrillic throughout the article because it's relevant to the language. This article is about Cyrillic and so it's less inappropriate to include Cyrillic throughout the article.
But my original point here is that I fail to see why we have to even have those Russian words in that particular paragraph to begin with. If the words are different in the different languages that use Cyrillic (which I suspect) then listing them all or even just two or three would be awkward and overexhaustive. If they all use the same word (at least spelled in Cyrillic) then the use of Cyrillic would unite the different languages, which all have varying transliteration systems anyway. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not talking about only titles either, in case it wasn't obvious. We use romanization to write foreign-script words as part of an article body, not IPA or other scripts. I don't think the Russian phonology and language articles are the best examples to follow, either. Similar articles I've read elsewhere do a good job of using transliteration instead of Cyrillic.
I disagree that Cyrillic is more appropriate to be used in this way, in this article. It is appropriate when writing about orthography, but generally not for spelling or pronunciation. It may be appropriate to demonstrate or compare individual letters, and necessary, but still should be supported with romanized transliterations or names, for example Russian ge (г) and Ukrainian ge (ґ). But just because we describe the alphabet, doesn't mean that a reader knows how to read words spelt with it, in any particular foreign language.
Well, if we don't know what the names are in different languages, the point is moot for now. Cyrillic doesn't unite the languages in this case: Russian is certainly not the same as Ukrainian, because Ru. pryamoy = Uk. pryamyy, and Ru. naklonnyy is spelt with the Russian ы which is absent in modern Ukrainian (and I suspect the Ukrainian term might be skhylenyy). As I said, I am in favour of finding out what the proper names in different languages are, and we can see how to deal with it then, but in the meantime, let's just leave in the information we have, transliterated so it is accessible. —Michael Z. 2006-10-30 22:19 Z


[edit] comments from anon

wikipedia is a nonsense allowing any nationalis to edit anykind of shit which they have no clue about i recomend wikipedia to noone it is inaccurete and full of controversy fueling more hate instand od debate , if you want to know about Kirilica or Kliment Ohridski go to the saurce that is city of Ohrid todays republic of Macedonia and check his writing and the first university in europe he founded with Naum of Ohrid ,go visit www.historyofmacedonia.org,i`m surprised how much Bulgarians,Greeks ects know of Kirilica whenthey have never visited Ohrid or read what Naum and kliment wrote never been to the monestery of st Naum and republic of Macedonia and it is pure nonesense to call him Bulgarian when he was doing good for all "Slavs" regardless of their inhabited teritory,and he never mansioned as far as i know that he is Bulgarian what a desinformation ,—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.197.226.229 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Bulgarian Cursive

The article says:

In Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian, some cursive letters are different from those used in other languages.

I don't know about Macedonian and Serbian, but in looking in the alphabet section of my Bulgarian grammar book, I don't see any cursive letters that differ from those shown in the table that directly follows this sentence. Am I missing something here, or is this a mistake? --Dale Gerdemann 13:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

You are right. It's a Serbian alphabet's specifics (adopted also by the Macedonian alphabet), not relevant to the Bulgarian case. Apcbg 21:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about Bosnian?

The Bosnian language uses the Cyrillic script, aside from Latin... --PaxEquilibrium 21:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

See the above discussion. Apparantly it doesn't. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:05, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
That discussion's one-sided. The Cyrillic script is today official as another standard of the Bosnian language. Anyone who learns Bosnian in schools must also learn Cyrillic. And it's wrong that there are not books/publications in Cyrillic (by Bosniacs). Aside from mainly out of solidarity, presenting the whole of Bosnia's linguistics, it's a component part of Bosniacs' linguistic history - before 1878/1908 Bosnians always (for hundreds and hundreds of years) used the Cyrillic script, and only due to western influence and especially later Communism that Latin was established. --PaxEquilibrium 12:58, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
But they didn't speak Bosnian back then ;) --estavisti 14:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, and Serbs are the oldest people in Universe :) Kruško Mortale 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

We have allways speake Bosnian, it was just it that the evil communist force us to speak the so called serbo croatian language. And Bosnian language does NOT USE Cyrillic. Alkalada 08:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

According to Senahid Halilović (Pravopis bosanskog jezika, in the Introduction section) Cyrillic is one of two scripts in Bosnian, but is not often used. Kruško Mortale 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't deny this. As I explained multiple times, there is a dichotomy between the language politics and language usage: nowadays it's practically never used by Bosniak speakers, and could be even found offensive in certain contexts, as acknowledged even by VSeferovic at Talk:Bosnian language. For this reason, we agreed above to drop it out from this article, as the statement that "Bosnian language uses it" is fairly misleading, and rather political than practical statement. And now you're forking the "Serbian" section. We can re-initiate RfC if you want, but for now I'll follow the consensus above and remove it from the article. Duja► 08:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
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