Metelko alphabet (slovene: metelčica) was a slovenian writing system developed by Franc Serafin Metelko. It was used by a small group of authors in years 1825 - 1833 but it was never generally accepted. Franc Serafin Metelko (1879-1860) was a Slovenian poet who designed the current Slovenian alphabet. ... Year 1825 (MDCCCXXV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Year 1833 (MDCCCXXXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...

Example of metelčica - poem Cesar in opat (The emperor and the abbot)

Metelko introduced his alphabet in book Lehrgebäude der slowenischen Sprache (a book for learning Slovenian; written in German). He invented his alphabet in order to replace the formerly used Bohorič alphabet (bohoričica), which was problematic in certain situations. Metelko was influenced by the ideas of Jernej Kopitar, well known linguist who participated also in development of modern serbian alphabet (created by Vuk Karadžić - following Kopitar's ideas). Bohorič alphabet (slovene bohoričica) was slovene writing system used in years 1550-1850. ... Jernej Kopitar (born 21 August 1780 in Repnje, died 11 August 1844 in Vienna) was a Slovenian linguist. ... The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect (former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language). ... Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Вук Стефановић Караџић) (November 7, 1787 - February 7, 1864) was a Serb linguist and major reformer of the Serbian language. ...

Metelko alphabet has 32 letters in following alphabetical order:

A B D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V

Special letters are explained in following table (other letters have the same meaning as in modern slovene):

Metelko alphabet

majuscule	minuscule	IPA	modern slovene
		/ts/	c
		/tʃ/	č
S	s	/s/	s
		/ʃ/	š
		/ʃtʃ/	šč
		/z/	z
		/ʒ/	ž
H	h	/h/	h
		/x/	h
		/lj/	lj
		/nj/	nj
E	e	/ɛ/	e (wide e; also ê)
		/e/	e (narrow e; also é)
		/ə/	e (halfvowel e; also ə)
O	o	/o/	o (narrow o; also ó)
		/ɔ/	o (wide o; also ô)

Metelko wanted to solve the problem of formerly used digraphs ZH (for /tʃ/) and SH (for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/) by replacing them with special letters , and . IPA may refer to: The International Phonetic Alphabet or India Pale Ale ... Digraph has several meanings: directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ...

Metelko also added special letters for common groups , and .

The difference between glotal and velar H (/h/, /x/) is in fact not important for slovene speakers, therefore the letter was omitted by some authors.

In formerly used Bohorič alphabet certain words with different pronunciation had the same spelling. Metelko wanted to solve this problem by splitting E in three and O in two variants. Metelko's letters E, and represent vowels /ɛ/, /e/ and /ə/, which were formerly written with E. Metelko's letters O and represent vowels /o/ and /ɔ/, which were formerly written with O.

The main problem of Metelko alphabet was its graphical design. Metelko's letters appeared strange to average slovene writer and the alphabet itself soon got nicknamed krevljica - twisted alphabet. Some letters were in fact difficult to write in handwriting. Besides Metelko was strongly influenced by his own dialect - certain solutions were not accepted by speakers of other dialects. Soon a strong opposition rose against Metelko alphabet.

After the so-called Slovenian alphabet war Metelko alphabet was forbidden in 1833. A few years later Slovenes accepted Gaj's Latin alphabet (slovene: gajica) which is easier to write. In this alphabet variants in pronunciation are written using accents (é, ê, ó, ô, etc) but only in cases when it's necessary in order to distinguish two words (eg. klóp = bench; klôp = tick). Year 1833 (MDCCCXXXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Latin alphabet used by the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian and Serbo-Croat languages was devised by Ljudevit Gaj, in his book 1830 Kratka osnova horvatsko-slavenskog pravopisanja (A short primer of Croatian-Slavonic orthography) (Note that there is an ongoing debate as to whether some or all of these... Classic garden bench For metonymic and other uses see Bench (metonymy) and Bench A bench is a piece of furniture, which mostly offers several persons seating. ... Binomial name (Linnaeus, 1758) Ixodes ricinus, known as the sheep tick or castor bean tick is a hard-bodied tick (family Ixodidae) of Europe. ...

See also

• slovenian alphabet

|The Slovenian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet and is used in the Slovene language. ...

External links

• Metelčica, text example

Resources

• Enciklopedija Slovenije, 7. zvezek, Metelčica. Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 1993.