Talk:Cyrillic alphabet

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Archives

/Archive 1

[edit] Tuvan?

I seen in the article on Tuvan language that it uses another modified Cyrillic alphabet. Any reason not to include it in the section on Turkic languages? Jer ome 00:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested edits January 2007

I'd like to suggest the following edits to improve the quality of this page. I will add to this list as I think of more issues.

• Move all of the alphabet charts to their respective languages, except for the Russian. This alone will make the length of the article more manageable.
• Use Russian as the basic alphabet for the discussion and illustrations. I realize this is a political hot potato, but here is my reasoning. Russian has the most speakers of any language that uses Cyrillic letters. The basis of the orthographies of all the non-Slavic languages is Russian, not Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Macedonian, or Serbian. And it is modern Russian, not the pre-1917 version. Of course, there remains political resentment over treatment of minorities by the communists prior to 1991, and some language communities have chosen to abandon Cyrillic alphabets in favor of Latin alphabets. The fact of the matter is, however, that the spread of the Cyrillic alphabet was a Russian legacy. This is a similar issue to the variants of the Latin alphabet as used to represent "dialects" throughout Europe. German-style spelling is used for Germanic dialects, Italian-style spelling is used for the languages of the Italian peninsula, and so on. However much Sicilians or Napulitans or Venezsianos may resent the influence of standard Italian, they use its spelling (modified, of course), not the spelling of English or Portuguese or French or Lithuanian.
• Add overall chart showing the add-on letters used in non-Russian orthographies, together with their IPA equivalents and links to the languages which use them.
• In Relationship to other writing systems, add short discussion on the relationship between Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets (such as Belarusian Arabic alphabet.
• Straighten out (tighten) the discussion about the Preslav and Ohrid schools.
• Add footnotes for factual assertions, particularly in the History section.
• Add a nice photo of high-quality modern calligraphy in Cyrillic letters (not Old Church Slavonic, as beautiful as that is)
• Add actual Russian terms where they are used, not just transliterations in italic letters. Example: pryamoy shrift (thought-provoking example: why the German word 'Schrift' here?)
• Remove the reference to "If your browser does not support ..." and replace with link to page of instructions on how to MAKE your browser support it.
• In the Computer encoding section, clarify the discussion of using accents with Unicode.
• Make Other character encoding systems its own section to aid people to find it from the automatically generated index at the top.
• In the Keyboard layouts section, change the reference from Volapuk to translit. See my comments on the volapuk page. (And vote there too, please)
• Add better selection of Categories

Shrift = script, just a generic European root or loanword, and hence hardly thought-provoking.

Would also suggest scrapping the ridiculous example about Standard vs. Serb/Mac. letters - those labelled here as Serb/Mac. are in fact less common but still frequently encountered variations in Russian, both in print fonts and in handwriting, and may (and generally do!) occur interchangbly, in their complete set, or for certain letters but not others in literate and accepted Russian handwriting (the example of Russian was used since a) it is my native language, about which I know this for certain, b) it is the most prevalent language to use Cyrillic). Considering that different slavic languages DO use different sets of Cyrillic letters (with Russian and Ukrainian dropping different letters, for example), this example is misleading and in fact a perfect example of how remote booklearning from distant lands can lead one to folly, not of the (quite unrelated) variation that does actually exist in different languages' Cyrillic alphabets. 128.195.186.57 (talk) 12:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Adieu

--Cbdorsett 07:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead. -iopq 00:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Good suggestions, but I think the adoption of the Russian alphabet as a basis requires a bit of discussion. The Bulgarian alphabet (IMO) is the closest to a "basic" version of the alphabet, while Russian contains a few oddball letters of its own, like ё, ы, э. The spread of Cyrillic throughout the Slavic-speaking countries is not a Russian phenomenon, although its export to other language families is. Also, its orthographic and typographic reform along the lines of the Latin alphabet seems to have been at least inspired in other places by Peter's initiative.

The Russian alphabet was very influential, but I'm not convinced that it is the basis for a broad understanding of all versions of the Cyrillic alphabet. I'd rather see some scheme rooted in the history of the alphabet's development. —Michael Z. 2007-06-04 05:20 Z

I agree that section 3 is too long. I think it could stand to be its own article like Alphabets derived from the Latin. Franzeska 15:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are completely right but I do not thing it is political ( unless Russian government donate this site). Just 'easy made' job. It is more easy to do then looking for authentic Cyrillic reproduction. I hope your understand my English.

I make my suggestion in discussion to 'Glagolitsa' article. By my opinion Cyrillic same as 'Glagolitsa'(forgive my Russian phonetic) come from Coptic (and surrounded) alphabet. Unless I can read Coptic texts with out learning alphabet ( need learn language, however), it is clear for me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.119.248 (talk) 08:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

" Bulgarian brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, monks from Thessaloniki, are usually credited with the alphabet's development." - usually ?!?!?! what's that "usually" - just on the weekends and some time on the wensdays ???? And the rest of the time 50 cents and Snoop dog are accredited maybe. Whoever wrote it have some nerves. You know the stupid commies tryed to say that the russians invented the Cyrilic alphabet during the 80s - that was also messed up. 74.62.160.146 (talk) 00:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

No, they invented Glagolitsa, which then either naturally evolved or was consciously modified to become modern Cyrillic around a thousand years ago. No 'commies' associated with that event, I assure you.

[edit] Suggested renaming

I think that the more correct name of the article could be "Cyrillic script" or "Cyrillic writing system" instead of "alphabet". Or "Cyrillic alphabets" (plural), because each modern Cyrillic-based national language uses its own alphabet with huge distinctions from each other (even the set of basic letters varies). The term "Cyrillic alphabet" refers (in full sence) just to the Old Slavonic Language (10-12 c.). -- Kcmamu 03:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

My impression is that the terms "script" and "writing system" for Cyrillic seem to be more restricted to the computing context, and not as often used in linguistics. However, I'm no expert. —Michael Z. 2007-06-04 05:31 Z

As I understand it, "alphabet" has two meanings. One is the particular alphabet used in one country or for one language (as Kcmamu is using the term above), but it can also mean a script/writing system in general. So we can say things like "English is written in the Latin alphabet", even though the exact set of letters we use and how we use them is different from the alphabet as used for the Latin language. --Ptcamn 05:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dating Latin C transition

In Classical Latin (from the days of Caesar and Christ), the letter C was hard, and "Caesar" was pronounced "Kaiser". By today, however, "C" is soft, and "Caesar" is pronounced "Seezer". When did this transition occur? By virtue of the letter-form "C" being used in the Cyrillic alphabet for the sound "S", it is clear that this transition occured before the 9th Century CE when Cyrill invented these letters. Further, perhaps the transition was only just completed, because there seems to be a tradition, quoted by user "Derek Ross" below, of calling the Cyrillic letters the Kirillitsa.66.235.30.222 23:23, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

No tradition, I assure you. I would know, since my own grandfather is named Kirill, in Russian, which uses Cyrillic, for that particular saint. On the contrary, this seems to indicate that the K>S transition for C occured much later, and that S=C was chosen for some other unknown reason, since St. Cyrill certainly thought of himself as a Kirill. Perhaps, much like R=P in Cyrillic, it was just borrowing on a familiar letter design that seemed basic, convenient, and unoccupied. 128.195.186.57 (talk) 12:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Adieu

[edit] Broken table fonts

On my system ("Firefox/2.0.0.3 (Ubuntu-feisty)") this table appears in a sans-serif font, where the italic forms are not cursive but simply slanted versions of the regular, even though I have several of the named fonts installed. --196.210.100.125 21:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Does the following work, with just a simple "font-family:serif" declaration? (Both versions work fine in my Mac Firefox 2.0.0.5) —Michael Z. 2007-08-06 23:23 Z

I changed "font-family" to Tahoma. — Chesnok (talk) 07:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bulgarian Macedonia

If I recall correctly, St Clement was active in the Bulgarian Empire, and come from the region of Macedonia. Some editors insist on labelling him as Macedonian, although I don't believe his ethnicity can be known.

The phrase "Bulgarian Macedonia" was a compromise, and not inaccurate. See the details in the archive: Talk:Cyrillic_alphabet/Archive_1#Bulgarian_or_Macedonian. —Michael Z. 2007-10-26 02:07 Z

[edit] A lot of non-Slavic characters

Hi, I'm doing a lot of work with minor Wikipedias, some of which are in languages that use the Cycrillic alphabet. Usually these contain a lot of unusual characters that my browser renders as question marks. I found lots of links providing free Cyrillic fonts, but these only provide the Slavic characters I already have. Shouldn't it be a good idea to add an external link to some free Cyrillic fonts that do contain the non-Slavic and archaic letters I and presumably many others are looking for? Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 11:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Sounds?

Can anyone include a table of the sounds of these letters? Most of the alphabet entries (Greek, Phonecian, Hebrew, Arabic) will tell you what the letters sound like. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.227.245.186 (talk) 19:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Only alphabets that are used by a small number of languages can afford to list letter sounds. The sound represented by a letter normally depends on the particular language, if not on the dialect. More specific information can be found in the specific language articles (see Languages using Cyrillic), and at Cyrillic alphabet variants. FilipeS (talk) 20:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I suggest to make this information available in the List of Cyrillic letters. Instead of the currently redudant letter, at the intersection of a row and a column there could be IPA pronunciation of the letter in the language linked to article about the sound. Nikola (talk) 10:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"Pronunciation in Russian" and "Major Variations" entries in a table? 78.145.80.150 (talk) 17:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)