Talk:Serbian Cyrillic alphabet

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[edit] The origin of ć and đ

I doubt that ђ and ћ are a "traditional Serbian letters"; I'm fairly sure that they were invented by Vuk directly, or that he was inspired by Mrkalj's or Mušicki's work. Brborić says that

У с. ћир. само шест слова специфичан су српски додатак: ј (преузето из лат.), љ, њ (две једине лигатуре, настале стапањем л и н с танким јер [ь], одн. меким знаком у руској терминологији), затим слова ђ, ћ и џ, којима је коначан лик утврдио В. Караџић.

The articles of Tshe and Dje should be fixed as well, but I kind of recall that I've read the more closer description of origin... somewhere... Sorry, I don't recall. Duja► 16:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

...also, an useful link [1]. Duja► 16:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I also think Vuk introduced ћ (he certainly introduced ђ), I just can't find a reference for it (which is why I referenced the "traditional Serbian" line in the article... seemed dubious!). I'll do a few more clean-ups and adding of content over the next day or so. Cheers all =) AWN2 23:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] article title?

Should it simply be: Serbian alphabet, after seeing other similar articles (please see Category:High-importance Writing system articles for a few examples) it seems we should change the title? Any thoughts? // Laughing Man 03:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The catch is that the other Serbian alphabet is Latin, so the current title is more precise. Btw, I don't know how to organize the articles in a politically correct way: there are currently Croatian alphabet, Bosnian alphabet and silly South Slavic Latinic transliterations. Normally, there should be only two articles, but the issue of their naming will always cause petty nationalistic warring. Duja► 09:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] latin alphabet in serbia

@Laughing Man, i’m sorry if i made a mistake... i meant no harm.
it’s clearly that the "azbuka" is more common in serbia (it is - in the meantime - in official use), but i think that the usage of the latin script in serbia should be more accentuated, because it’s also very important for everyday life (look at the goods in the supermarket, or at the cars - registration plates, magazines etc.)… particularly in Vojvodina... furthermore it should be mentioned, that in northserbia are living different national minorities who are using (like a part of the serbs) more the latin script (vojvodina has six official languages). do i really need scores therefore? i thought this is general knowledge.

i won't edit the article again… firstly, i'd like to know other opinions… and secondly, my english is not so good (енглески није мој матерњи језик).-- 172.178.224.138 14:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Written Cyrillic

Is there an image anywhere of the letters as they're written, rather than just as they're typed? I know there's a Russian one somewhere (Apparently several, actually. Here's the one I was thinking of, a second, and a third.), and based on that I've figured out that written and typed look rather different, on top of the same problems with some letters in the Latin alphabet also being used in the Cyrillic (or vice versa), but it's not actually the same letter (P Latin vs P Cyrillic = R Latin, for one). It would be interesting to see what other differences there are between letters not used in Russian. -Bbik 06:26, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

http://www.cirilica.org/dokumenti/dizajn/Jednopotezna.html. It's actually a proposal of "one-strike" form, but it mostly matches what we were taught in school. Duja► 15:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, we have Image:Serbian_Cyrillic_cursive2.png on Commons; not too beautiful, but you get the idea. Duja► 15:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to get the feeling you're going through my entire contribs list, here. :p Though, there's now something I can work with, even if it'd be stupid to put it in the page, since it would kill all the letter links. Maybe it can be used somewhere else, or at least (hopefully) be useful for some other equally crazy person who comes looking for it, despite a complete lack of need for it. How'd "T" end up with three vertical lines in cursive? -Bbik 03:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latin <-> Cyrillic

I'll change the current sentence The two alphabets are entirely interchangeable, with each letter in one having a corresponding letter in the other. to The two alphabets are almost entirely interchangeable. When you have a text in Cyrillic, it can always be transliterated to Latin quite easily, since Cyrillic is phonetic (one letter is always pronounced the same way). Latin is however not phonetic (some letters are pronounced in different ways on different occasions odživeti and odžak for instance), and it is not always easy to tell how to transliterate from Latin to Cyrillic. Especially with automatic transliterators. -- Obradović Goran (ta^lk 12:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article/alphabet name

Does anyone actually call this alphabet "Karadžić's Cyrillic alphabet"? Do Croatians ever write their language in Cyrillic, and if so, is it Karadžić's Cyrillic? A Google search seems to say 'no'.

The article should be renamed "Serbian Cyrillic alphabet", on the basis that:

• the alphabet is known as the "Cyrillic alphabet" in all three languages (Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) (see official Bosnian government documents at [2] and [3], and Serbian government documents at [4] [5] and especially [6], which refers to the alphabet as the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet);

In Serbian, Croatian and in Bosnian, the Cyrillic alphabet used to write Serbian (and Serbo-Croatian) is called the "Cyrillic "alphabet". The term "Serbian Cyrillic alphabet" therefore differentiates the alphabet from the Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, etc Cyrillic alphabets. Calling the alphabet -- or this article -- "Karadžić's Cyrillic alphabet" is therefore incorrect, and the article should be changed back to "Serbian Cyrillic alphabet". Cheers AWN2 (talk) 07:17, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree. I think the reason it was changed was to make it parallel to Gaj's Latin alphabet, but that alphabet is used for the languages of Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian. Karadžić's alphabet is only for Serbian. Even back in the day of Serbo-Croatian, this Cyrillic variant was used in Serbia (and probably Montenegro, maybe even some parts of Bosnia) and Latin elsewhere. BalkanFever 07:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"Back in the day of Serbo-Croatian"? Do you really believe all that load? Everyone knows that the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians speak the same language, with only a handful of vocabulary differences that everyone knows and can count in one hand; I won't get into endless nationality discussions; that's not what the article is all about. Anyway, The alphabet are almost entirely translatable. Outside of the Western Balkans, when someone talks about the Cyrillic alphabet, they usually refer to the East Slavic or Bulgarian version; Use Karadžić, you find a particularly distintive version of the script. If Ljudevit Gaj has the Latin version in his name, why can't Karadžić have it on his own?.Batmen (talk) 18:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The language that the Serbians speak in Serbia is officially called "Serbian" [7]. Therefore, this article should include the Serbian name for the alphabet (not Serbo-Croatian, Croatian, Bosnian, Swahili, etc). There is no official (i.e. governmental) reference to the language as Serbo-Croatian. Calling Serbian "Serbo-Croatian", "Croatian" or anything other than "Serbian" is an opinion.

Batmen's point about the alphabet also being used to write Serbo-Croatian is a good one though, and additions to the article to reflect this should be made.

Regarding whether Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin are the same language or separate languages, that controversy is not in the scope of this article, and has already been dealt with in the respective language articles and in the article on Differences between standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.

The naming dispute over Karadžić's Cyrillic alphabet versus Gaj's Latin alphabet is irrelevant here -- the correct name for this article is Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. I am not sure that Gaj's Latin alphabet is the correct name for that article either (my opinion only), but that's a debate that should occur in that article, on the facts relevant to that alphabet, not here! (As an aside, Gaj's Latin alphabet is also used in Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro to write Serbian, although Montenegro is considering altering its Latin alphabet. The article could therefore not be called the "Croatian Latin alphabet", in the same way as this article is called the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet!)

Further, the information about the Macedonian alphabet is for the Macedonian alphabet and language articles, not the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet article.

I will make a few changes to this article as discussed above. Please discuss and source any major changes before making them, and let's keep it nice!

Cheers, AWN2 (talk) 06:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Just to clear things up, my "back in the day..." comment was referring to when the term used was "Serbo-croatian". I don't really care if these modern standards are the same language or not. AWN, I don't think it's a good idea to present Serbo-croatian as a different language in itself. That, I believe, can only serve to confuse the reader. BalkanFever 11:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The letter 'L' in Serbian Cyrillic

The 'L' in Serbian Cyrillic can be written as 'Л' (Slavic Cyrillic) and 'Λ' (Greek). Shouldn't this be noted in the article? Serbian Font #1 Miroslavljeva older serbian texts has the Lambda. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.82.246.8 (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

That's normal for the Cyrillic alphabet isn't it? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)