Today we take the alphabet for granted, forgetting what an extraordinary invention it is. The value of the alphabet lies in its graceful simplicity, in its ability to express a wide range of voice sounds with twenty or thirty individual letters.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Inventions
Today we take the alphabet for granted, forgetting what an extraordinary invention it is. The value of the alphabet lies in its graceful simplicity, in its ability to express a wide range of voice sounds with twenty or thirty individual letters. Compare it to the 49,000 characters, each representing a different word, that make up the cultural baggage of any educated Chinese. As A. S. Moorhouse, a specialist in ancient philology, wittily remarked, “We say: it’s simple, like A and B. No one will say: it’s simple, like a Chinese letter or Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
From our position, it may seem strange that the ancients spent so much time creating an alphabet, tormenting themselves for thousands of years with incredibly cumbersome writing systems such as hieroglyphs. But the alphabet seems simple and understandable only because it is familiar to us. It's one of those rare inventions that proved successful because of its simplicity... but the invention itself wasn't easy.
In fact, the origin of the alphabet is shrouded in mystery, and only the later stages of its history are relatively clear. The Cyrillic alphabet, currently used in Russia and some countries of Eastern Europe, was invented in the 9th century AD by the enlightener saints Cyril and Methodius. It is based on the Greek alphabet with a few extra letters added. The modern Western alphabet (used by the English, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians and some other peoples) is identical to the Latin alphabet used under the Roman Empire; the only difference is the letters J, U and W, added in the Middle Ages (the Romans used I and V to represent these sounds). We know this for certain, as well as the common origin of the Greek and Latin alphabets.
During the VIII-VII centuries BC, various alphabets appeared in the Mediterranean world: Greek in the Aegean, Etruscan (the progenitor of the Latin script) in Central Italy and Iberian in Spain and Portugal. No doubt they are all borrowed from the alphabet of the Phoenicians, enterprising maritime traders who lived on the coast of present-day Lebanon and Syria. It is here that we can delve into the history of the alphabet for several more centuries.
The Phoenicians were a Semitic people closely related to the Jews and Arabs. The Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets are similar to each other, but it is still unknown when exactly these three groups began to separate. Archaeological evidence from Palestine and Syria shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the progenitor of these writing systems, known as the West Semitic alphabet, has been in use since at least the 14th century BC. This alphabet was most likely invented by one of the Semitic peoples of the Levant - but where, when and how?
Simplified characters?
In 1906, William Flinders Petrie, the great pioneer in the field of Near Eastern archeology, discovered examples of a previously unknown type in the Sinai Desert, between Egypt and Palestine. Dated to around 1500 B.C., the signs of these cryptic inscriptions were pictographic rather than alphabetical and approached hieroglyphs. For a while, it seemed that the secret of the origin of the alphabet had already been solved. The Proto-Sinaitic texts, as they came to be known, were proudly declared to be the "missing link" between Egyptian hieroglyphs and the alphabet. Some scholars even believe that the recordings were made by the Israelites during their wanderings on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land.
So the theory was developed according to which the alphabet appeared when the peoples of the Semitic group simplified the hieroglyphic symbols borrowed from the Egyptians. It agrees with the tradition, preserved in the writings of ancient writers, that writing was invented in Egypt and transferred from there to Greece by the Phoenicians. But as attractive as these assumptions may seem, recent finds have shown that the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are not the earliest examples of alphabetic writing. New evidence discovered in Palestine dates back to the 18th century BC. Instead of a "missing link", the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet actually turned out to be an Egyptianized version of an already existing alphabet. It was probably developed by the Semites employed in the Egyptian copper mines in the Sinai, who modified their alphabet under the influence of the Egyptian script.
On closer scrutiny, the Egyptian theory of the origin of the alphabet collapsed completely. The Egyptians had alphabetic characters in their system of hieroglyphic writing, but none of them even remotely resembled the early Semitic letters. For example, the closest equivalent to the Hebrew letter aleph was the image of a kite, the letter bet - feet, and so on. This crosses out the hypothetical possibility of the transformation of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Semitic letters.
Random invention?
The theory of the origin of the alphabet from the Proto-Sinaitic texts turned out to be erroneous, and the Egyptian version had to be abandoned. It remains to be assumed that around the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, the ancestors of the Phoenicians invented the alphabet from scratch. But how did they manage to make such a brilliant discovery?
According to Professor Cyrus Gordon, a prominent specialist in Semitic languages, the Phoenicians were ahead of modern linguistic science by almost 4,000 years. Today we are familiar with the so-called phonemic principle, which states that any language in the world can be divided into a limited number of characteristic sounds, usually from 25 to 35 (in English, unlike many others, there are 44 phonemes). This means that with one character for each phoneme, 25-35 basic characters are enough to express most languages. This requirement is met by the original Phoenician alphabet, which consisted of 29 characters. We have to admit that the ancient Phoenicians had an excellent understanding of linguistics.
But if the alphabet is the invention of some ancient genius, why does it have such a strange order of letters? If you had to invent a phonetic writing system, then it would be more logical to group vowels and consonants with similar sounds into groups. The Arabic version of the alphabet is composed in this way - it groups semi-vowels (supporting vowels) w and y, three letters for different variants of the sound s, and so on. But this is a later reorganization of the old Semitic order. The original alphabet looks like a complete mess of vowels and consonants.
Gordon offered a curious alternative for the origin of the alphabet: it was an accidental invention based on a sign system that had nothing to do with the presentation of sounds originally. He points out that the numerical values of the letters of the Semitic alphabet are as important as their sound values. For example, the Hebrew letters aleph, bet, and gimel simultaneously represent the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on.
When the Arabs reworked the alphabet, they kept the old numerical values intact, even though their sequence was broken, so their alphabet in numerical form reads 1, 2, 400, and so on. Similarly, in Greek, three letters (digamma, kappa and sampi) are still retained as numbers, which have long since lost their phonetic meaning. These facts emphasize the importance of the alphabet both as a counting tool and as a linguistic system.
The numerical values of the letters are only the first step towards the basic postulate of Gordon's theory, which is that the characters of the alphabet were originally created to determine the days of the lunar month. Gordon claims that by choosing different names for each day of the month (the name of an animal, an object, and so on), the ancients came up with a system of 30 words, originally used for calendar designations and mathematical calculations. Using words of different sounds, they accidentally invented a phonetic system and only later discovered that other words can be formed from the first sounds of “calendar words”. Thus the alphabet was born.
The original Phoenician alphabet, known since the 14th century BC, had 29 or 30 letters corresponding to the number of days in a lunar month. But what about the sequence and names of the letters?
Alphabet and zodiac
In his theory, similar to Gordon's, orientalist Hugh Moran tries to prove that the names of the letters of the alphabet were taken from the ancient lunar zodiac. Its main evidence is the ancient Chinese zodiac, which divided the circle of the horizon into 28 constellations. The full moon, moving among the constellations, appears in the sky in different positions throughout the year and thus can serve as the basis for the creation of an agricultural calendar.
At first glance, it is very strange that ancient lunar symbols from China - a culture that did not create its own alphabet - can shed light on the origin of Phoenician writing. Nevertheless, Moran seems to be on the right track. The two initial signs of the Chinese calendar are symbolic images of a bull and a woman. The first is composed of six stars in the form of a bull's head and is similar to the ancient Semitic symbol aleph. The second consists of four stars and resembles the Semitic symbol bet, which means "house", or bat - "daughter".
Although such a clear sequence is not observed later, Moran found many other parallels with the Semitic alphabet. He concluded that this zodiac, widely used in Burma, India and other countries of the East, was originally invented by the Sumerians from southern Iraq. It seems quite probable that the Phoenicians were aware of the Mesopotamian lunar zodiac, from which they modeled their alphabet.
Approximately in 863, two brothers Methodius and Cyril the Philosopher (Konstantin) from Thessaloniki (Thessalonica), by order of Michael III, the Byzantine emperor, made ordering of writing for the Slavic language. The emergence of the Cyrillic alphabet, which comes from the Greek statutory (solemn) letter, is linked to the activities carried out by the Bulgarian school of scribes (after Methodius and Cyril).
After 860, when Christianity was adopted in Bulgaria by the holy Tsar Boris, Bulgaria becomes the center from which Slavic writing began to spread. The Preslav book school was created here - the first book school of the Slavs, where they copied the originals of the Cyril and Methodius liturgical books (church services, the Psalter, the Gospel, the Apostle), made new translations into Slavic from Greek, original works written in Old Slavonic appeared (for example, “On the writings of Chrnorizets the Brave”).
Later, the Old Church Slavonic language penetrated into Serbia, and by the end of the 10th century. in Kievan Rus became the church language. Being the language of the church in Russia, the Old Slavonic language was influenced by the Old Russian language. This, in fact, was the Old Slavonic language, but only in the Russian version, since it contained living elements of the speech of the Eastern Slavs.
Thus, the progenitor of the Russian alphabet is the Old Russian Cyrillic alphabet, borrowed from the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet and spread after the baptism of Kievan Rus (988). Then, most likely, there were 43 letters in the alphabet.
Later, 4 new letters were added, and at different times, 14 old letters were excluded as unnecessary, since the corresponding sounds disappeared. Iotated yuses (Ѭ, Ѩ) disappear first of all, then big yus (Ѫ) (which returned in the 15th century, but disappeared again at the beginning of the 17th century), and iotated E (Ѥ); other letters, sometimes slightly changing their form and meaning, have remained to this day in the alphabet of the Church Slavonic language, which has long and erroneously been identified with the Russian alphabet.
Spelling reforms of the 2nd half of the 17th century. (associated with the “correction of books” during the time of Patriarch Nikon) the following letter set was recorded: A, B, C, D, D, E (with an excellent orthographic variant of Є, which was sometimes considered a separate letter and put in the alphabet after Ѣ, i.e. . in the position of today's E), Zh, S, Z, I (for the sound [j] there was a variant Y that was different in spelling, which was not considered a separate letter), I, K, L, M, N, O (in 2 forms that differed orthographically: “wide” and “narrow”), P, R, S, T, U (in 2 forms that differed orthographically: Ѹ and), F, X, Ѡ (in 2 forms that differed spelling: “wide” and “narrow”, and also as part of the ligature, which was usually considered a separate letter - “from” (Ѿ)), C, CH, W, SH, b, Y, b, Ѣ, Yu, I ( in 2 forms: Ѧ and IA, which were sometimes considered different letters, and sometimes not), Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѳ, ѳ. A large yus (Ѫ) and a letter called “ik” (similar in form to the current letter “y”) were also sometimes introduced into the alphabet, although they had no sound meaning and were not used in any words.
In this form, the Russian alphabet existed until 1708-1711, i.e. before the reforms of Tsar Peter I (Church Slavonic remains the same now). At that time, superscripts were abolished (this “abolished” the letter Y) and many doublet letters used to write different numbers were removed (with the introduction of Arabic numerals, this became irrelevant). Then a number of abolished letters were returned and canceled again.
By 1917, there were officially 35 letters in the alphabet (in fact, 37): A, B, C, D, D, E, (Yo was not considered a separate letter), Zh, Z, I, (Y was not considered a separate letter), I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, F, X, C, H, W, W, b, S, b, Ѣ, E, Yu, I, Ѳ, ѳ. (Formally, the last letter in the Russian alphabet was listed, but in fact it was almost never used, occurring only in a few words).
The result of the last major writing reform of 1917-1918 was the emergence of the current Russian alphabet of 33 letters. It also became the written basis for most of the languages of the peoples of the USSR, which until the twentieth century. there was no written language or it was replaced by Cyrillic during the years of Soviet power.
Kovtyukhova Anastasia
The importance of writing in the history of the development of civilization is difficult to overestimate. Language, like a mirror, reflects the whole world, our whole life. When reading written or printed texts, we seem to sit in a time machine and can be transported both to recent times and to the distant past. Historically, writing is secondary. We master sounding speech at an early age, it is assimilated as if by itself, without effort. We study writing on purpose, spending many years on comprehension of literacy. Maybe that's why we respect the written language more than the oral one. Meanwhile, the letter has become a common thing in our lives, and rarely does anyone think about how it appeared, where it came from, and why these letters are in our native alphabet. And it is worth noting that the Russian letter is a very important part of the national heritage of Russia, it is it that fixes the Russian language. The relevance of the topic lies in drawing attention to the history of the emergence and formation of Russian writing, in fostering respect for the past, for the native language. How did the alphabet originate? How did it develop in Russia? What are the features of the modern use of the Russian alphabet? We tried to answer these questions in this study. Target work - to study the history of the emergence and formation of the Russian alphabet, to identify the prospect of its development.
Download:
Preview:
Introduction………………………………………………………………….2
Main part
- The emergence of the Slavic alphabet…………………………………………. 3
- Cyrillic and Glagolitic………………………………………………………… 5
- Reforms of the Russian alphabet…………………………………………………… 9
- Features of the use of the Russian alphabet today and its prospects
development………………………………………………………………………………………………………………10
Conclusion……………………………………………………………...12
Bibliography…………………………………………………………...13
INTRODUCTION
The importance of writing in the history of the development of civilization is difficult to overestimate. Language, like a mirror, reflects the whole world, our whole life. When reading written or printed texts, we seem to sit in a time machine and can be transported both to recent times and to the distant past. Historically, writing is secondary. We master sounding speech at an early age, it is assimilated as if by itself, without effort. We study writing on purpose, spending many years on comprehension of literacy. Maybe that's why we respect the written language more than the oral one. Meanwhile, the letter has become a common thing in our lives, and rarely does anyone think about how it appeared, where it came from, and why these letters are in our native alphabet. And it is worth noting that the Russian letter is a very important part of the national heritage of Russia, it is it that fixes the Russian language.
Relevance The theme of the research work is to draw attention to the history of the emergence and development of Russian writing, to cultivate respect for the past, for the native language.
When transmitting speech in writing, letters are used, each of which has a specific meaning. A set of letters arranged in a prescribed order is called an alphabet, or alphabet.
The word alphabet comes from the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: α-alpha; β- beta (in modern Greek - vita).
The word alphabet comes from the name of the first two letters of the ancient Slavic Cyrillic alphabet: A - az, B - beeches.
How did the alphabet originate? How did it develop in Russia? What are the features of the modern use of the Russian alphabet? We tried to answer these questions in this study.
Target work - to study the history of the emergence and formation of the Russian alphabet, to identify the prospect of its development.
Research objectives:
1. Identify the cause of the emergence of Slavic writing.
2. Who are they - the creators of Slavic writing - Constantine and Methodius?
3. Cyrillic and Glagolitic - two Slavic alphabets. What do they have in common and what is the difference?
4. Study the composition of the Cyrillic alphabet.
5. Track what reforms were carried out in the Russian alphabet.
6. Find out what are the features of the use of the Russian alphabet at the present stage of its development.
An object research - Russian alphabet. Subject research - the history of its origin and development.
MAIN PART
CHAPTER I
The emergence of the Slavic alphabet
Slavic writing arose at the time when the Slavs, after the great migration, began to create their own states. The heyday of Slavic state associations (Kievan Rus, Great Moravia, Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia) dates back to the 9th century. Then these associations occupied vast areas of Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe, from the Baltic in the north to the Adriatic and the Black Sea in the south, from the Alps in the west to the upper reaches of the Volga and Don in the east. Neighborhood with new peoples, a new way of life and a new worldview that replaced the ancient paganism required the development of new forms of spiritual culture, primarily book culture, which would partially replace or supplement the original Slavic oral tradition, folk culture. It needed its own written language, its own Slavic bookish language, its own bookish education.
The creators of Slavic writing were the enlightened brothers Cyril (Konstantin) and Methodius, also called Thessalonica brothers, since they were from the Greek city of Thessaloniki, in Slavic Solun. They, at the request of the Moravian prince Rostislav and on behalf of the Byzantine emperor Michael III, in 863 brought to Great Moravia the first books in the Slavic language, intended for worship and enlightenment of the Slavs.
Konstantin was a very educated person for his time. Even before his trip to Moravia, he compiled the Slavonic alphabet and began translating the Gospel into Slavonic. In Moravia, Constantine and Methodius continued to translate church books from Greek into Slavonic, taught the Slavs how to read, write, and lead worship in Slavonic. The brothers stayed in Moravia for more than three years, and then went with their students to Rome to the Pope. There they hoped to find support in the fight against the German clergy, who did not want to give up their positions in Moravia and prevented the spread of Slavic writing. On the way to Rome, they visited another Slavic country - Pannonia (Lake Balaton region, Hungary). And here the brothers taught the Slavs book business and worship in the Slavic language.
In Rome, Constantine took the monastic vows, taking the name Cyril. There, in 869, Cyril was poisoned. Before his death, he wrote to Methodius: "You and I are like two oxen; one fell from a heavy burden, the other must continue on his way." Methodius with his disciples, who received the priesthood, returned to Pannonia, and later to Moravia.
By that time, the situation in Moravia had changed dramatically. After the death of Rostislav, his captive Svyatopolk became the prince of Moravia, who submitted to German political influence. The activity of Methodius and his disciples proceeded in very difficult conditions. The Latin-German clergy interfered in every possible way with the spread of the Slavic language as the language of the church.
Methodius was imprisoned, where he dies in 885, and after that his opponents managed to achieve the prohibition of Slavic writing in Moravia. Many students were executed, some moved to Bulgaria and Croatia. In Bulgaria, Tsar Boris in 864 converted to Christianity. Bulgaria becomes the center for the dissemination of Slavic writing. Slavic schools are created here, Cyrillic and Methodius originals of liturgical books (Gospel, Psalter, Apostle, church services) are copied, new Slavic translations from Greek are made, original works inOld Church Slavonic ("0 letters of Chrnorizets the Brave").
The wide distribution of Slavic writing, its "Golden Age", dates back to the reign of Simeon (893-927), the son of Boris, in Bulgaria. Later, the Old Church Slavonic language penetrates into Serbia, and at the end of the 10th century. becomes the language of the church in Kievan Rus.
Old Slavonic alphabets, which are used to write monuments that have survived to this day, are called Glagolitic and Cyrillic. The first Old Slavonic monuments were written in the Glagolitic script, which, as is assumed, was created by Constantine on the basis of cursive Greek writing of the 9th century. with the addition of some letters from other Eastern alphabets. This is a very peculiar, intricate, loop-shaped letter, which for a long time in a slightly modified form was used by the Croats (until the 17th century). The appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet, which goes back to the Greek statutory (solemn) letter, is associated with the activities of the Bulgarian school of scribes. Cyrillic is the Slavic alphabet that underlies the modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian alphabets.
CHAPTER II
Cyrillic and Glagolitic
The first Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic or Cyrillic. Cyrillic and Cyrillic writing was used by Cyril and Methodius and their students. But we still can't say exactly how. Why? Yes, because the manuscripts (monuments) of Cyril and Methodius times have not reached us. The oldest monuments known to us, written in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, date back to the 10th-11th centuries. (Only one monument dates back to the 10th century - a Glagolitic fragment of the mass, stored in Kyiv and therefore called Kyiv leaflets). Thus, almost all of them arose two centuries after the first translations of the creators of Slavic writing, Cyril and Methodius.
Cyrillic composition. The Cyrillic alphabet had 43 letters. The basis for 26 Cyrillic letters was the Greek alphabet. Some of the letters differed from modern ones in writing. Some sounds were designated by two letters. However, it should be noted that it is possible that at one time in the Slavic languages the sounds denoted by such “paired” letters still differed phonetically. The compilers of the Cyrillic alphabet created four letters from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. With the help of Cyrillic letters, numbers were also indicated. This system was borrowed from Greek and was called "alphabetic numerals", in which certain letters meant units, tens and hundreds, and their combinations resulted in multi-digit numbers. Several letters were created individually ... from the letter Shin appeared the letters Sh (Sha) and Shta (the sound "Sch" in the Old Slavonic language sounded like "SHT") B (beeches), Zh (live), Ъ (er), Y (ery), L (er), YAT, YUSY small and large.
It should be noted that each letter had its own name.The first thing that attracts attention is that the names of the letters of this alphabet represent almost all the main parts of speech: nouns (Good, Earth, People, Word), pronouns (Az, OH, Our), verbs of various forms (Lead, There are , Rtsy, Myslete, Yat), adverbs (Zelo, Firmly) and various types of allied particles. However, due to temporary grammatical transformations of the Russian language, primarily related to the ways of word formation, we cannot at the same time confidently attribute one or another letter name to a particular part of speech. For example, the name of the letter T can be interpreted as an adverb - Firmly - and as an adjective - Solid, as well as Peace - Dead, Verb - Reading, etc. But despite this, even a cursory glance at the Cyrillic alphabet suggests that the totality of the mutually agreed words-names of the letters (symbols) of this Russified Old Slavonic alphabet contains some kind of detailed complete thought.
Cyrillic alphabet.
|
|
A number of facts indicate that Glagolitic is an earlier alphabet than Cyrillic. The oldest surviving Glagolitic inscription refers toyear and made in the church of the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon in Preslav. The oldest handwritten monuments (including "Kyiv leaflets”, dating back to the 10th century) are written precisely in the Glagolitic alphabet, and they are written in a more archaic language, similar in phonetic composition to the language of the southern Slavs. The greater antiquity of the Glagolitic is indicated bypalimpsests (manuscripts on parchment, in which the old text is scraped off and a new one is written on it). On all surviving palimpsests, the Glagolitic alphabet has been scraped off and the new text is written in Cyrillic. There is not a single palimpsest in which the Cyrillic alphabet would be scraped off and the Glagolitic alphabet written on it. In the treatise "On Letters"Chernorizets Brave(beginning of the 10th century) emphasizes the difference in the writing of Greek letters and the Slavic alphabetCyril and Methodius , apparently Glagolitic: “The same Slavic letters are more holiness and honor that the holy man created them, and the Greek ones are filthy Hellenes. If someone says that he did not arrange them well, because they are still finishing them, in response we will say this: the Greeks also completed many times. From the above quote, we can conclude that there is a certain dissatisfaction with the alphabet of Cyril and Methodius, which, perhaps, led to the transition to Cyrillic.
Alphabet of Glagolitic.
image- | title | numerical value |
1000 |
||
CHAPTER III
Russian alphabet reforms
The development of the Russian nation at the beginning of the 18th century, the emerging need for printing civilian books necessitated the need to simplify the outlines of the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.
In 1708, a Russian civil font was created, and Peter I himself took an active part in the production of sketches of letters. In 1710, a sample of a new alphabet font was approved. This was the first reform of Russian graphics. The essence of the Petrine reform was to simplify the composition of the Russian alphabet by excluding from it such obsolete and unnecessary letters as "psi", "xi", "omega", "Izhitsa", "earth", "like", "yus small". However, later, probably under the influence of the clergy, some of these letters were restored to use. The letter E ("E" reverse) was introduced in order to distinguish it from the iotized letter E, as well as the letter I instead of the small iotized yus.
For the first time, uppercase (large) and lowercase (small) letters are established in the civil font.
The letter Y (and a short one) was introduced by the Academy of Sciences in 1735. On November 29, 1783, the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, PrincessE. R. Dashkova during a meeting of the Academy of Literature proposed to use a new letter Yo "to express words and pronunciations, with this consent beginning like іolka, іozh".Dashkova's arguments seemed convincing, and her proposal was approved by the general meeting of the Academy.
The famous letter Yo became thanks toN. M. Karamzin . In 1796, in the first book of the poetic almanac "Aonides" with the letter Yo the words were printed“dawn”, “eagle”, “moth”, “tears”, “drip”.It should be noted that in the "History of the Russian State" (1816-1829) N.M. Karamzin did not use the letter Yo.
In the XVIII century. in the literary language, the sound denoted by the letter b (yat) coincided with the sound [e]. The letter, thus, practically turned out to be unnecessary, but according to tradition, it was kept in the Russian alphabet for a long time, until 1917-1918.
The spelling reform of 1917-1918. two letters that duplicated each other were excluded: "yat", "fita", "and decimal". The letter b (ep) was retained only as a separator, b (er) as a separator and to indicate the softness of the preceding consonant. With regard to Yo, the decree contains a clause on the desirability, but not the obligatory use of this letter. Reform 1917-1918 simplified Russian writing and thereby facilitated literacy. As a result, the current Russian alphabet appeared, consisting of 33 letters.
Modern alphabet.
CHAPTER IV
Features of the use of the Russian alphabet today and the prospects for its development
However, today the letters of the pre-reform alphabet are gradually returning - to city signs, to the names of firms and goods, the names of which are now accepted.portray in their original spelling appearance: montpensier "Landrin", the film "Empire under attack", TV shows "Vdi", "Russian World", etc. There was even a public movement "Solid Sign": it seeks to unite all firms and organizations that have the letter “b” in its name, which, according to the initiators of the movement, has become a symbol of “a return to the traditions that existed in great Russia, to stability, reliability, “firmness””; a symbol of Russia, "eternal and incomprehensible, stable and always going its own way."
The revival of the pre-reform spelling was also a reflection of that politicized public consciousness of the first years of perestroika, which not only insisted on preserving traditions, but also considered the reform of 1917-1918 to be a dead end. the result of the action of some dark force that had mastered the language, and therefore tried in every possible way to return the Russian spelling allegedly illegally taken away by the Bolshevik decrees. So, Archbishop Averky wrote that “only the old spelling is in the proper sense of the word ... spelling, and that corruption ... that was forcibly put into use by the Bolsheviks in Russia enslaved by them ... is only a distortion of the spelling.” And the poet Andrei Voznesensky stated that “the repressed“ solid signs ”and“ yat ”were the twins of those killed in the basements” ...
The use of old graphemes in this or that name, advertising is always intended to serve as a hint of stability, solidity, inviolability of traditions: “ Bank", " Chocolate "Sladkov" - traditions of high quality», « Restaurant "Shustov". Revival of traditions», « SMIRNOV. Russian character" and etc.
However, the illiterate use of the letters of the pre-reform alphabet in the modern urban space (the indistinguishability of "b" and "b", the automatic replacement of "e" with "”, “and” to “i”, etc.) often brings to mind those whom M. Pogodin ridiculed a century and a half ago. Among such inventions of modern "signboard literates" is the name of the cooperative " GOODS I SHCH", restaurant "Reortir", shops "Chay", "Gallery of shoes", "Shoes", "APBATςKAÿ LABITSA", etc.
On the contrary, the presence of Latin elements in any name becomes a symbol of novelty, fashion today: store " CONTAINER", restaurant "Skvoznyak", party "Zavod SHOW", play "Bummer off ", a snack for beer" BEERka ", Internet cafe " Star ", cocktail bar " KEEP ON ”, etc. Note that the question of the romanization of the Russian alphabet as a whole has been raised more than once: it first arose back in 1927, and even today there are voices of supporters of such a reform.
The manipulation of two alphabets in the modern text serves as a technique of language play, is used as a means of expressiveness and switching attention: for example, by mixing alphabets in the title of the show "The Bronze Horseman-3003" (the plot of Pushkin's poem takes place in 3003), the fusion of the classical and the innovative is emphasized; title of the article ART PLAQUE » pushes Russian artillery attack (‘unexpected massive artillery attack’) and foreign language art- (from English art ‘art’;art business, art gallery, art dealeretc.) and due to this it acquires the meaning of ‘attack on art’; in expressions Propaganda and playing against the rulesthe meaning of the term “PR” is read, etc.
So answering the question of how many letters are in the modern Russian alphabet is not so easy ...
In fairness, it should be noted that the mixing of the Russian and Latin alphabets has already taken place in our history. In December 1919 Moscow Linguistic Society received a letter from the scientific departmentPeople's Commissariat education, which stated: "In the central institutionsRSFSR the idea arose of the desirability of introducing the Latin script for all nationalities inhabiting the territory of the Republic. The reform would be a logical step along the path that Russia has already embarked on by adoptingnew calendar style and metric system of measures and weights . The initiators see it as an essential means for strengthening international cultural ties... The planned transformation would be, firstly, the completionalphabetical reform , completed at the timePeter I , and, secondly, it would be in connection with the last spelling reform.
This letter was discussed at the meetings of the Moscow Linguistic Society, whose members were the largest Russian linguists. First, they answered the question: is it possible to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one at all? “As for the fundamental, theoretical side of the matter,” the scientists wrote, “from a scientific point of view, there is nocontraindications for use with known changes in the Latin alphabet instead of the usual Russian font, just as there would be no objections to any other alphabet, as long as it wasproperly adapted to transmit the sounds of Russian speech.
Much more important, from the point of view of linguists, was the second, practical question: is this reform necessary? Replacing the alphabet would lead to a break with the traditions of Russian culture. And then all the books written and published before Latinization, foreverslammed shut would be for new readers, or they would have to master two graphic systems at once ...
One often hears: "This language sounds nice" or "I don't like the way this language sounds."Melodika language causes certain associations; for example, forOsip Mandelstam English sounded "more piercing whistle". However, there is also the aesthetics (beauty) of writing that affects the eye, and it is undoubtedly an important part of culture. For many people, Pushkin's poems,recruited in Latin, will cease to be poems by a beloved poet, but will turn into poems by a certain Pushkin. Or Ruskina ? And the famous lines of his poem might look like this:Ja vas lúbil: lúbov "eščo, byt" možet..." Graphics and spelling are the most conservative areas of culture. They never dieon their own even if very uncomfortable. To reform them, powerful external factors are needed. Culture develops gradually, step by step. At the same time, the Russian alphabet and spelling changed slowly, century after century...
CONCLUSION
The history of the emergence and development of the Russian alphabet is unique. The Russian alphabet has come a long way of becoming. Throughout the history of the Russian alphabet, there was a struggle with "superfluous" letters, which culminated in a partial victory in the reform of graphics by Peter I (1708-1710) and a final victory in the spelling reform of 1917-1918.
I would like to believe that the Russian alphabet, and with it oral and written speech, will be able to cope with the expansion of the Latin alphabet, with an abundance of borrowings, often duplicating native Russian words and littering “the great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language ... It is impossible to believe that such a language was not given to a great people!”
May 24 - Day of Slavic culture and writing (Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius), a holiday known as the day of memory of the first teachers of the Slavic peoples - the brothers Cyril and Methodius. The celebration of the memory of the holy brothers in the old days took place among all Slavic peoples, but then, under the influence of historical and political circumstances, it was lost. At the beginning of the 19th century, along with the revival of the Slavic peoples, the memory of the Slavic first teachers was also renewed. In 1863, a decision was made in Russia to celebrate the memory of Saints Cyril and Methodius.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Zemskaya E. A. Russian colloquial speech / Ed. Kitaygrodskoy M.V. - M.: Nauka, 1981. - 276 p.
2. Ivanov V. V., Potikha Z. A. Historical commentary on Russian language classes inhigh school . - M.: Enlightenment, 1985. - 200 p.
3. Ivanova VF Modern Russian language. Graphics and spelling. - M.: Enlightenment, 1976. - 50 p.
4. Ivanova T. A. Old Slavonic language. - M.: Higher School, 1977. - 482 p.
5. Likhachev D. S. Questions of history. – M.: Nauka, 1951. – 260 p.
6. Likhachev D. S. Monuments of literature of Ancient Russia. – M.: Nauka, 1988. – 158 p.
7. Minin Yu. P. The solution of the Russian alphabet / Ed. Ivanova K. R. - M .: Culture, 1985. - 143 p.
8. Rosenthal D. E., Golub I. B., Telenkova M. A. Modern Russian language. - M.: Iris-Press, 2002. - 250 p.
9. Speransky M. N. Russian forgery of manuscripts at the beginning of the 19th century. // Problems of source studies. M.: Slovo, 1986. V.5. P.72.
10. Yakubinsky L.P. History of the Old Russian language. - Moscow.: Higher School, 1953. – 450 s.
11. http://www. detisavve. en
12.https://ru.wikipedia.org/
All types of writing could not stand the competition of the alphabet. Alphabets, also called phonemic alphabets, are a set of letters that are usually arranged in a certain order. Each of these letters represents one or more phonemes. As a rule, letters are divided into vowels and consonants. This division has its own characteristics in each of the languages, letters, which is quite natural, are used to compose words.
The word "alphabet" comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - alpha and beta. It was the Greeks who contributed to the spread of alphabetic writing in most countries of the world. The English word is arranged in a similar way abecedary or Russian ABC(according to the names in the first case, four, and in the second - the first two letters, respectively, of the English and Church Slavonic alphabets).
In fact, the origin of the alphabet is shrouded in mystery, and only the later stages of its history are relatively clear. The Cyrillic alphabet, currently used in Russia and some countries of Eastern Europe, was invented in the 9th century AD by the enlightener saints Cyril and Methodius. It is based on the Greek alphabet with a few extra letters added. The modern Western alphabet (used by the English, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians and some other peoples) is identical to the Latin alphabet used under the Roman Empire; the only difference is the letters J, U and W, added in the Middle Ages (the Romans used I and V to represent these sounds). We know this for certain, as well as the common origin of the Greek and Latin alphabets.
The Phoenicians, who kept constant trade records, need a different, simple and convenient letter. They came up with an alphabet in which each sign - a letter - means only one specific sound of speech. They are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 simple letters. All of them are consonants, because consonants played the main role in the Phoenician language. To read a word, it was enough for a Phoenician to see its backbone, which consisted of consonants.
The letters in the Phoenician alphabet were arranged in a certain order. This order was also borrowed by the Greeks, but in the Greek language, unlike the Phoenician, vowels played an important role.
Greek writing was the starting point for the development of all Western alphabets, the first of which was Latin.
The alphabet as a writing system that reflects the sounds of a language has many advantages over non-alphabetic writing systems - but it is precisely this property that is fraught with a certain danger. Living languages are constantly changing, while alphabets fixed in printed and handwritten texts tend to be more resistant to change. As a result, the degree of suitability of the alphabet, the degree of its ability to reflect the sound system of the language, is reduced.
The Latin alphabet, when applied to the English language, contains three "extra" consonants - c, q and x- and discovers the lack of six other letters that are needed to convey the specific consonant sounds of the English language. These are sounds that are pronounced at the end of words. bath[q], bathe [ð], splash [š], much [č], beige [ž], bring. To convey these sounds in English writing, there are digraphs, for example, th, sh, ch, ng, however, at best, they do not fully cope with their task. For example, the sound [š] can be written not only with a combination of letters s and h(as in the word shapes), but also through ch(chartreuse), through ti(nation) and through s(sugar). In addition, digraphs do not always convey the same sound. So, ch reads like [k] in words chlorine and technique; th read like [t] in the name Thomas, and is omitted (colloquially) in the word clothing. The situation with the designation of English vowels is no better. Letter a, for example, is read in five different ways in words same, cat, ball, any and star. Letter o read differently in words hot, to, go and (in most varieties of English) for. On the contrary, the same vowel sound can be written in different ways. For example, the sound [u] is written in eight different ways in words soon, chew, true, tomb, rude, suit, youth and beauty.
For a long time there was an opinion that the letter came to Russia along with Christianity, with church books and prayers. A talented linguist, Kirill, creating the Slavic letter, took the Greek alphabet, consisting of 24 letters, as a basis, supplemented it with hissing (zh, u, w, h) and several other letters characteristic of Slavic languages. Some of them have been preserved in the modern alphabet - b, b, b, s, others have long gone out of use - yat, yus, izhitsa, fita. So the Slavic alphabet originally consisted of 43 letters, similar in spelling to Greek. Each of them had its own name: A - "az", B - "beeches" (their combination formed the word "alphabet"), C - "lead", G - "verb", D - "good" and so on. The letters on the letter denoted not only sounds, but also numbers. "A" - the number 1, "B" - 2, "P" - 100. In Russia, only in the 18th century. Arabic numerals replaced the "letter" ones.
As is known, the Church Slavonic language was the first to receive literary use among the Slavic languages. For some time, along with the Cyrillic alphabet, another Slavic alphabet, the Glagolitic alphabet, was also in use. She had the same composition of letters, but with a more complex, ornate spelling. Apparently, this feature predetermined the further fate of the Glagolitic alphabet: by the 13th century. she has almost completely disappeared. This is not the place to expand on which Slavic tribe this language belonged to, the Bulgarians or the Pannoians.
The earliest examples of Sumerian writing are tags (usually made of clay) with a seal and a note about the quantity that were tied to objects or animals. Then more complex accounting tables appeared. An outstanding achievement of the Sumerians was that they designated the quantity with a separate sign. For example, five cows corresponded to five ovals and an image of a cow, and not five drawings of a cow, as in various scriptures. Gradually, the system became more complex. Standard signs appeared - hieroglyphs, with the help of which it was easier to depict specific frequently mentioned things - the sun, a cow, a bird, etc. Signs-drawings began to be used for similar words: for example, the hieroglyph “sun” began to mean “bright”, “light”, “day”.
For some concepts, a combination of signs was used. So, the word “slave” was denoted by two drawings - women and mountains, - since slaves were usually brought to Sumer from the mountains. Gradually, the icons looked less and less like drawings. The Sumerians had standard conventional signs, consisting of wedge-shaped dashes, very vaguely reminiscent of previous drawings. Perhaps the appearance of Sumerian writing is due to the fact that the signs were scratched out on wet clay. In the form of cuneiform features, the Sumerian writing and its successors in Mesopotamia were called cuneiform.
The appearance of the alphabet was preceded by several stages in the development of methods for writing speech. Traditionally, in the history of writing, among the pre-alphabetic systems, pictographic (pictorial) writings stood out - images of specific objects, which also designate them, and ideographic ones, conveying some abstract meanings (ideas), most often through the image of specific objects associated with these meanings. Ideographic writings were also called hieroglyphic - after the name of Egyptian writing, first used by the ancient Greek scholar Clement of Alexandria and literally meaning "sacred carved [letters]".
After the work of the American historian and writing theorist I. Gelb, a slightly different periodization became widespread, distinguishing between the stages of non-writing (drawings that are not connected with the signified conditional connection), pre- or proto-writing, using the ideographic principle, which it was proposed to rename to semasiographic(recording the meaning), and the actual writing, using phonographic(recording sound) principle.
At the same time, Gelb proposed to include not only the two main varieties of alphabetic writing - syllabic and literal, but also the so-called verbal-syllabic(logographic-syllabic) writing, to which practically all historically recorded types of hieroglyphic writing actually belong. The signs of such scripts, according to Gelb, are considered to denote not ideas, but words, in connection with which they were named logograms(or logographs). In almost all hieroglyphic writing systems attested in history, in addition to logograms, there were signs used to record parts of a word, usually syllables, i.e. syllabograms, as well as the so-called determinants to indicate which category a particular word belongs to.
Alphabets and syllabaries are much more efficient than logographic systems. The number of characters in them is much smaller, and it is much easier to learn such a writing system. The creation of a syllabary may require from 50 to 200 characters, and the creation of an alphabet may be limited to a dozen or two characters, sufficient to write all the words of a given language. English, which has about 33 phonemes in most dialects, requires an ideal 33 characters.
The earliest monument of Latin writing is an inscription on a golden brooch of the 6th century. BC, known as the Prenestine fibula. It reads simply MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NVMASIOI ("Manius made me for Numasius"). Like Etruscan and early Greek inscriptions, it is written from right to left. From the following century, a vase with another inscription from right to left and a pillar from the Roman forum, inscribed in an alternating (boustrophedon) manner, survived. After the 1st century AD almost all inscriptions began to be made from left to right.
An alphabet is a specific form of writing based on a standardized set of characters. They denote linguistic phonemes, but there is practically no unambiguous correspondence between sounds and letters. It is believed that the first alphabet was invented in the Phoenician state about 3 millennia ago. However, some historians believe that such writing systems existed earlier, but the Phoenician letter is the progenitor of modern alphabetic systems.
Origin of the alphabet
Separate elements of the phonetic record, which preceded the appearance of the alphabet, were used in ancient times in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were written in the era of the Middle Kingdom, a system of 1-, 2- and 3-consonant phonemes was used. The writing of Ancient Egypt was a combination of ideography and phonetic writing. The latter was used more and more often over time, at first to designate foreign words and proper names, the sound of which could not be conveyed using hieroglyphs, and then to convey everyday information in a simplified, more understandable form for the population.
Development of alphabetic systems
In the XIX-VIII century BC. The Phoenician alphabet was borrowed by the Greeks, who for a long time used it almost unchanged. As a result, the names of the Greek letters practically do not differ from those used in the Phoenician alphabetic system. But on the basis of the Greek alphabet, the Latin alphabet appeared, which soon became the main writing system for almost all the peoples that inhabited the European continent. Somewhat later, on the basis of the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet was created, which is used by us to this day. Although individual facts indicate that even without the invention of Cyril and Methodius, the Slavic peoples had their own writing system - Glagolitic, and even earlier -.
At the beginning of the 5th century AD. Monk Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet, which had 22 characters, which is very reminiscent of the Phoenician system already familiar to us. The latter, having undergone significant changes over time, became the basis for the development of the written language of the Semitic languages. It should be noted that the letters, for example, of the Hebrew alphabet, are written somewhat differently than in the Phoenician system, but their names and sequence have remained almost the same.
Linear alphabetic systems became widespread in the 14th century - it was then that the Proto-Canaean and Proto-Sinaitic varieties of writing arose. In these alphabets, there is a connection and phonetics, as in the Old Slavic Glagolitic alphabet. Ugaritic texts dating back to the 13th century deserve special attention. They contain 30 cuneiform symbols, which defines the Ugarit alphabet as the first non-acrophonic system.
Loading...