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The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, approximately during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. An earlier rune-like and possibly syllabic script was simultaneously discarded, and so thoroughly discouraged that today there are no uncontested specimens of it in existence. The name Old Russian language has been applied to different things. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by certain Slavic languages — Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—as well as many other languages of the former Soviet Union... Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in Greece, Russia, Armenia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity. ...

In this way, no sharp distinction was drawn between the vernacular language and the liturgical, though the latter was based on South Slavic rather than Eastern Slavic norms. As the language evolved, several letters, notably the yuses (Ѫ, Ѭ, Ѩ) were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries, and not one of several attempts at linguistic standardisation properly succeeded. Little Yus and Big Yus , or Jus, are the letters representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels, in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. ...

Peter I made the final choices of letter-forms by crossing out the undesirable ones in a set of charts

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Introduction of the civil Russian alphabet by Peter I

The printed Russian alphabet assumed its modern shapes when Peter I introduced his civil script (гражданскій шрифтъ, graždanskij šrift, [grɐˈʐda.nskʲɪj ˈʂrʲift]) in 1708. The reform was not specifically orthographic in nature. However, with the effective elimination of several letters (Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѡ, Ѧ) as well as all diacritics and accents (with the exception of й) from secular usage, there appeared for the first time a visual distinction between Russian and Church Slavonic writing. With the strength of the historic tradition diminishing, Russian spelling in the eighteenth century became rather inconsistent, both in practice and in theory, as Lomonosov advocated a morphological orthography, and Trediakovsky, a phonetical one. Image File history File links Russian_alphabet_(marks_by_Peter_I),_page_5. ... Peter the Great or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov (Russian: Пётр I Алексеевич Pyotr I Alekse`yevich, Пётр Великий Pyotr Veli`kiy) (9 June 1672 – 8 February 1725 [30 May 1672–28 January 1725 O.S.][1]) ruled Russia from 7 May (27 April O.S.) 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his... Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Peter the Great or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov (Russian: Пётр I Алексеевич Pyotr I Alekse`yevich, Пётр Великий Pyotr Veli`kiy) (9 June 1672 – 8 February 1725 [30 May 1672–28 January 1725 O.S.][1]) ruled Russia from 7 May (27 April O.S.) 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his... // Events March 23 - James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth July 1 - Tewoflos becomes Emperor of Ethiopia September 28 - Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya Kandahar conquered by Mir Wais In Masuria one third of the population die during the plague J... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The name Lomonosov may refer to: Mikhail Lomonosov, a polymath and writer of Imperial Russia Lomonosov Gold Medal, an annual award given by the Russian Academy of Sciences Lomonosov, Russia, a city named for Mikhail Lomonosov (formerly Oranienbaum) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other... Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky (February 22 (March 5, New Style), 1703 -- August 6 (August 17), 1768) a Russian poet, who laid foundations of classical Russian literature. ...

Miscellaneous adjustments were made on an ad-hoc basis throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the Russian literary language came to assume its modern and highly standardised form. These included the introduction of the letter ё /jo/ (yo) and the gradual loss of ѵ (izhitsa, corresponding to the Greek upsilon and the Latin y), in favor of и (both of which represented /i/); and ѳ (corresponding to the Greek theta), in favor of ф or т. By 1917, the only two words still usually spelled with ѵ were мѵро (müro, [ˈmʲi.rə], "myrrh") and сѵнодъ (sünod, /sʲɪˈnod/, "synod"), and that rarely. The ѳ remained more common, though it became quite rare as a "Western" (French-like) pronunciation had been adopted for many words; for example, ѳеатръ (ḟeatr, [fʲɪˈatr], "theater") became театръ (teatr, [tʲɪˈatr]). Attempts to reduce spelling inconsistency culminated in the standard textbook of Grot (1885), which retained its authority through 21 editions until the Russian Revolution of 1917. His fusion of the morphological, phonetic, and historic principles of Russian orthography remains valid to this day, though both the Russian alphabet and the writing of many individual words have been altered through a complicated but extremely consistent system of spelling rules that tell which of two vowels to use under all conditions. A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Izhitsa (Ñ´, ѵ) is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. ... Yakov Karlovich Grot, R Яков Карлович Грот (1812-1893), was a nineteenth-century Russian philologist of Swedish extraction who worked at the University of Helsingfors. ... The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of political and social upheavals in Russia, involving first the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, and then the overthrow of the liberal and moderate-socialist Provisional Government, resulting in the establishment of Soviet power under the control of the Bolshevik party. ... Russian orthography (правописание ) is formally considered to encompass spelling (орфография ) and punctuation (пунктуация ). Russian spelling, which is quite phonetic in practice, is a mix of the morphological and phonetic principles, with a few etymological or historic forms, and occasional grammatical differentiation. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In Russian, the term spelling rule is used to describe a number of rules relating to the spelling of words in the language that would appear in most cases to deviate from a strictly phonetic transcription. ...

The most recent large reform of the Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey Shakhmatov and carried out shortly after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat) with е, і and ѵ with и, ѳ with ф, and dropping the archaic mute yer ъ (hard sign) in the terminal position following a consonant (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable system). For instance Рыбинскъ for Рыбинск ("Rybinsk"). Aleksey Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov (5 June 1864 - 16 August 1920) was an outstanding Russian philologist credited with laying foundations for the science of textology. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... Yat or Jat (, ) is the name of the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet, or of the sound it represents. ... Rybinsk (Ры́бинск), with population exceding 250,000, is the second largest city of the Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia. ...

A codification of the rules of Russian orthography and punctuation^[1] was published in 1956 but only a few minor orthographical changes were introduced at that time^[2]. Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented. A car from 1956 Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ... For the band, see 1990s (band). ...

A notable de-facto modification of spelling is the replacement of the letter ё with е. Used regularly for a brief period following WWII, today the ё is still seen in books for children, but is usually absent in regular print. Though pronounced correctly in educated speech, its absence in writing has led to confusion in the transliteration of certain Russian names (for example, Khrushchev is actually Khrushchyov: Хрущёв), and occasionally even in their native pronunciation (e.g. Chebyshev, Чебышёв, also spelled as Tschebyschoff or Chebyshyov.) Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв) (nih-KEE-tah khroo-SHCHYOFF) (April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union... Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (Пафнутий Львович Чебышёв) (May 4, 1821 - November 26, 1894) was a Russian mathematician. ...

Yat-reform

The Old Russian letter 'yat'

The story of the letter yat (ѣ) and its elimination from the Russian alphabet makes for an interesting footnote in Russian cultural history. Image File history File links Cyrillic letter Yat, with rules, set in Bukvica font. ... Image File history File links Cyrillic letter Yat, with rules, set in Bukvica font. ... Yat or Jat (, ) is the name of the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet, or of the sound it represents. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Its retention without discussion in the Petrine reform of the Russian alphabet of 1708 indicates that it then still marked a distinct sound in the Moscow koiné of the time. By the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the polymath Lomonosov (c. 1765) noted that the sound of ѣ was scarcely distinguishable from that of the letter е, and a century later (1878) the philologist Grot stated flatly in his standard Russian orthography (Русское правописаніе, Russkoye pravopisanie, [ˈru.skə.jə ˈpra.və.pʲɪˈsa.nʲjə]) that in the common language there was no difference whatsoever between their pronunciations. However, dialectal studies have shown that, in certain regional dialects, a degree of aural distinction is retained even today in syllables once denoted with ѣ. Peter the Great or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov (Russian: Пётр I Алексеевич Pyotr I Alekse`yevich, Пётр Великий Pyotr Veli`kiy) (9 June 1672 – 8 February 1725 [30 May 1672–28 January 1725 O.S.][1]) ruled Russia from 7 May (27 April O.S.) 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his... // Events March 23 - James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth July 1 - Tewoflos becomes Emperor of Ethiopia September 28 - Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya Kandahar conquered by Mir Wais In Masuria one third of the population die during the plague J... In linguistics, a koiné language (common language) is a standard language or dialect, specifically one that has arisen as a result of language contact much as pidgins or creoles, but where the original dialects are mutually intelligible. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Leonardo da Vinci, a polymath, is seen as the epitome of the related term, Renaissance Man A polymath (Greek polymathÄ“s, πολυμαθής, having learned much)[1][2] is a person with encyclopedic, broad, or varied knowledge or learning. ... Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (Михаи́л Васи́льевич Ломоно́сов) (November 19 (November 8, Old Style), 1711 – April 15 (April 4, Old Style), 1765) was a Russian writer and polymath who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. ... Year 1765 (MDCCLXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... 1878 (MDCCCLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ...

Calls for the elimination of yat from the Russian spelling began with Trediakovsky in the eighteenth century^{[citation needed]}. A proposal for spelling reform from the Russian Academy of Science in 1911 included, among other matters, the systematic elimination of the yat, but was declined at the highest level, and the letter remained for the time being the nightmare of Russian schoolchildren, who had to memorize very long nonsense verses made up of words with ѣ: Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky (March 5 (O.S. February 22) 1703 in Astrakhan — August 17 (O.S. August 6) 1768 in Sankt Petersburg) a Russian poet, who laid foundations of classical Russian literature. ... Russian Academy of Sciences (Росси́йская Акаде́мия Нау́к) is the national academy of Russia. ... Year 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...

The spelling reform was finally promulgated by the Provisional Government in the summer of 1917. It appears not to have been taken seriously under the prevailing conditions, and two further decrees by the Soviet government in December 1917 and in 1918 were required. Orthography thus became an issue of politics, and the letter yat, a primary symbol. Emigré Russians by and large adhered to the old spelling until after World War II; long and impassioned essays were written in its defence, as by Ilyin in c. 1952. Even in the Soviet Union, it is said that some printing shops continued to use the eliminated letters until their blocks of type were forcibly removed; certainly, the Academy of Sciences published its annals in the old orthography until approximately 1924, and the Russian Orthodox Church, when printing its calendar for 1922, for the first time in the new orthography, included a note that it was doing so as a condition of receiving a license for impression. To the builders of the new regime, conversely, the new spelling visibly denoted the shining world of the future, and marked on paper the break with the old. The large-scale campaign for literacy in the early years of the Soviet government was, of course, conducted in accordance with the new norms. The Russian Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd after the deterioration of the Russian Empire and the abdication of the Tsars. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Year 1952 (MCMLII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the rap album, see 1924 (album). ... The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian: ), also known as the Orthodox Christian Church of Russia, is a body of Christians who are united under the Patriarch of Moscow, who in turn is in communion with the other patriarchs and primates of the Eastern Orthodox Church. ... Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Likbez (Russian: ликбе́з = ликвида́ция безгра́мотности) was a campaign of eradication of illiteracy in Soviet Russia in 1920s and 1930s. ...

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a tendency occasionally to mimic the past appeared in Russia, the old spelling became fashionable in brand names and the like. Calls for the reintroduction of the old spelling were heard, though not taken seriously, as supporters of the yat described it as "that most Russian of letters", and the "white swan" (бѣлый лѣбѣдь) of Russian spelling. Nonetheless, almost no one knew its proper usage, which had become somewhat debased, relative to the ancient Old Slavonic norms, even prior to its elimination. The rise of Gorbachev Although reform stalled between 1964–1982, the generational shift gave new momentum for reform. ...

In objective terms, the elimination of the yat, together with the other spelling reforms, decisively broke the influence of Church Slavonic on the living literary language. It can be argued as well that the morphological-compositional nature of Russian spelling was somewhat damaged, since a number of inflections and common words had previously been distinguished by е / ѣ (For example: ѣсть / есть [jesʲtʲ] "to eat" / "(there) is"; лѣчу / лечу [lʲɪˈtɕu] "I heal" / "I fly"; синѣ́е / си́нее [sʲɪˈnʲe.jɪ], [ˈsʲi.nʲɪ.jɪ] "bluer" / "blue" (n.); вѣ́дѣніе / веде́ніе [ˈvʲe.dʲɪ.nʲjə], [vʲɪˈdʲe.nʲjə] "knowledge" / "leadership"). On the other hand, the modern spelling is, unequivocally, greatly simpler than the old one. The choice in the matter, insofar as it can be made today, is one of psychology. The presence of ѣ in a printed text noticeably alters its apperception. It is significant, therefore, that many Russians today consider texts in the old spelling quite difficult to read. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

An urban legend holds that the yat was dropped because it somewhat resembles a church with belltower or spire, or an orb and cross (globus crucifer), signifying the tsar's role as defender of the Orthodox Christian faith. There was also a popular joke that since the word for bread in Russian was spelt with a yat (хлѣбъ, khlěb), once the yat was removed by the Bolsheviks there was no more bread, hence the ensuing famines. An urban legend or urban myth is similar to a modern folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them. ... For the architectural structure, see Church (building). ... The Belltower at University of California, Riverside, a center piece of the campus at UC Riverside. ... A modern spire on the Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre A spire is a tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, particularly a church tower. ... Queen Elizabeth II holding the Orb The Sovereigns Orb is a type of regalia known as a globus cruciger and is one of the British Crown Jewels. ... ...

Proposed but not implemented reforms

The proposed orthographic reform of 1964 included the following changes, which were eventually rejected^{[citation needed]}: The proposed Russian language reform of 1964 was related to the orthography. ...

• Always writing О instead of Ё after Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ: e. g. жолтый, чорный, шолк, щотка. (This would likely have influenced English spelling as well, resulting in more correct spellings of Russian names such as "Khrushchov" and "Gorbachov".)
• Always writing ''ЦИ instead of ЦЫ: e. g. циган, циплёнок, огурци.
• Dropping Ь (soft sign) at the end of words ending in ЖЬ, ЧЬ, ШЬ, ЩЬ: e. g. рож, ноч, мыш, мощ, ты читаеш. (This change was originally proposed in 1904 and was meant to go together with the removal of the final Ъ.)
• Replacing double consonants with single in all borrowed words except ванна, сумма, гамма: e. g. комунизм, абревиатура, акумулятор, колектив, кореспондент, асимиляция.
• Replacing all occurrences of Ъ (hard sign) with Ь (soft sign), so removing Ъ from the alphabet: e. g. сьезд, обьявление, адьютант.
• Replacing НН with Н in some adjectives and verbal forms.
• Replacing Ю with У in words брошюра, жюри, парашют: i.e. брошура, жури, парашут.

These other changes have been proposed unofficially by some of the Russian linguists at one point or another^{[citation needed]}: Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв) (nih-KEE-tah khroo-SHCHYOFF) (April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union... Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: ; Pronunciation: mih-kha-ILL ser-GHE-ye-vich gor-bah-CHOFF) (born March 2, 1931), was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. ...

• Writing the prefixes ending in -С / -З using the -З form only: e. g. изток, низпослать, возстать, разпустить, безплатный, черезполосица. (I.e., revert to pre-1918 spelling^{[citation needed]}.)
• Obligatory use of Ё (in fact, implemented for several years after World War II, but later dropped).
• Replacing all occurrences of Й with Ь, so removing Й from the alphabet: e. g. покоь, раьон, ьод.
• Introducing a new letter, Җ (a voiced analog of Щ) — using it in such words as еҗу (езжу), доҗ (дождь), җёт (жжёт).
• Replacing Г with В where it is pronounced /v/: e. g. ево, севодня
• Switching to the Latin script completely (contemplated very seriously at the end of the 1920s, but dismissed later).

Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and most of the languages of western and central Europe, and of those areas settled by Europeans. ... The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ...

Notes

See also

• Russian alphabet
• Russian orthography
• Russian language
• Cyrillic alphabet

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Russian orthography (правописание ) is formally considered to encompass spelling (орфография ) and punctuation (пунктуация ). Russian spelling, which is quite phonetic in practice, is a mix of the morphological and phonetic principles, with a few etymological or historic forms, and occasional grammatical differentiation. ... Russian ( , transliteration: , IPA: ) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by certain Slavic languages — Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—as well as many other languages of the former Soviet Union...

External links

• Criticism of 1917 reform (Russian)