A history of Bulgarian orthography
(Letters to the LangDev mailing list)


*** A history of Bulgarian orthography (part 1)
[22 December 1999]

Once upon a time there was a Tongue, and that Tongue had Vowels.
And four of those were long, and four were not; and four were high,
and four were not; and four were front, and four were not.

Art keeping count, Reader?  How many?  Not four-and-twenty; no.
Just eight.  Twice two times twain, as the vertices of a cube.
At times they would slide along the edges of the cube: {-lng} Vowels
became {+lng} in derived progressive stems, and {-frt} Vowels
might correspond to {+frt} ones in ancient cognate stems.  But few
other things happened to them.

Until things began to happen.

A Law was passed, which came to be known as the Open Syllable Law;
and it said, That no Syllable might have a Coda any longer.

Then did some of the Codas join the Onset of the next Syllable,
peacefully or otherwise; others were lost without a trace.
So *_gos-tIs_ became _go-stI_, *_ed-t-_ became _e:-st-_.

But the ones with higher sonority turned to the Peak of the same
Syllable and were swallowed by it.  The liquids were preserved,
but were no longer Codas: *_gor-dUs_ became _gro:-dU_ in the South,
_go-ro-dU_ in the North.  The nasals and the glides were dissolved,
and new Vowels came into being.

Aye, new qualities of Vowels.  For by that time the ancient {+lng}
and {-lng} Vowels had come to be different in quality also.
The differences in quantity were still there, but were no longer
the only ones, and were not to bide much longer.

So now there were eleven Vowels:

Long:
   a < *o:
   y < *U:
   u < *{}w
   o~ < *{-frt}{+nas}
   & < *e:, *{-frt}j
   i < *I:, *{+frt}j, occasionally *{-frt}j
   e~ < *{+frt}{+nas}
Short:
   o < *o
   e < *e
Infrashort:
   U < *U
   I < *I

And then Letters were made for all the Vowels, so that every Vowel
could be written exactly as it was spoken.

But no sooner was the Law done than it began to be undone.
In divers ways in the various lands where the Tongue was spoken,
or rather where its Dialects and later daughter and granddaughter
Languages were spoken, some Vowels fell together, others stopped
being pronounced at all; and the scribes were often at a loss
what to do with twice as many Letters as they knew Vowels,
and found it hard to follow the practice of the ancient books.

There was more to come.

(To be continued)


[The Bogomils (an ancient sect that is one of Bulgaria's claims
to glory) taught that God had wrought all the unseen things,
but a fallen angel by the name of Satanael all the seen ones.
The first, methinks, includes the mechanism of distinctive
features, which is all symmetry, and it favours hypercubes.
The second accounts for man's woefully wry articulatory
and acoustic apparatus, which constantly creates asymmetry
by conditional neutralisation of some features.  So it befell
that, as told in the parable, the Proto-Slavic system fell apart.
Turkish offers an unusual case of stable symmetry, perhaps
because there are other phenomena (vowel harmony) to keep it
in place.]

[On the subject of [j-].

That did not generally have phonemic status before {+frt} vowels,
where palatalisation of consonants was also neutralised.  It was
not written by a separate letter; there were special letters,
mostly ligatures in origin, for /j/ or /;/ plus a vowel.

So there were letters for _ja_, _ju_ and _jo~_; but there were
no _j+..._ variants of _o_, _U_ or _y_, because those had fallen
together with _e_, _I_ and _i_, respectively.  Various ways of
distinguishing _e_ and _je_, and _e~_ and _je~_, were developed
in a few places, but they were not a stable part of the script.]


*** A history of Bulgarian ... (part 2): Russian
[29 December 1999]

Yes, there is a reason to talk about Russian here.  Three reasons, in fact:
(1) some netters are acquainted with it or have used it in their langdeving,
and they may find the various details exposed here interesting and/or 
useful;
(2) it illustrates many of the factors that were involved in the 
development
of Bulgarian writing and spelling; (3) it was itself very much one of those
factors.

The two languages have had an interesting historical relationship.
They were little more than dialects of one another when one of them,
the one geographically closer to Byzantium, was written down; and this
one became the language of lore for the speakers of both (and other
tongues beside), so that in all contexts having to do with writing
the terms `Old Slavic' and `Old Bulgarian' refer to the same thing.
It arrived in Russia together with Christianity and its books, in the
late 10C--early 11C, and a somewhat Russianised version of it came to
be known as `Church Slav(on)ic'.

Many OBg/ChSl words have been borrowed into Russian, including such
as had regular Russian cognates in existence, usually leading to one
of the following frequent situations:

(1) B and R differ in register:
  (a) R is a substandard word and B the standard one,
  (b) R is the neutral word and B is elevated (literary);
(2) B and R differ in meaning, and then usually B has the more abstract,
  metaphorical etc. sense.

Examples (first the regular Ru word, then the cognate borrowed from 
OBg/ChSl,
which is also the only word in current Bulgarian):
(1a) _nadëzha_ `hope' (regional), _nadézhda_ dto. (standard);
(1b) _górod_ `town, city' (neutral), _grad_ dto. (literary);
(2) _gorozhánin_ `city-dweller', _grazhdanín_ `citizen';
  _golová_ `head (of body)', _glavá_ `head (of family, of state); chapter'.

  *  *  *

Basic literacy was not exactly rare in the Middle Ages, but the high art
of writing was the clergy's reserved territory, and in its complexity
they saw a source of prestige -- and of income.  To what had originally
been a straightforward phonetic script (though containing a few excess
letters for Greek loanwords) they added a wealth of variant letters, 2
(two) aspiration marks (directly copied from Greek, though they no longer
meant anything there either and had never meant anything in Ru or Bg),
and 3 (three) functionally identical stress marks, also from Greek.
There was also a host of ligatures and abbreviations (designed to save
parchment -- increasingly at the expense of brain cells).

When Peter the Great imported the printing press, he also cast out some
of the now useless letters and reformed the shape of the rest after the
image of the Roman script.  Also he abolished the old abbreviations and
all the diacritics.  So if you regret the fact that Russian does not
indicate the placement of stress, you now know whom to blame.

The letters he abolished were the alternative variants of _e_, _o_ and _u_,
zelo (originally /dz/, which had fallen together with /z/), on (Gk omega),
ksi, psi, ja.  The priests had their way with fita (Gk theta) and izhica
(Gk ypsilon) until the year after the Russian Revolution, when the second
great orthographic reform took place.

  *  *  *

PSl had two {-hi,-frt} vowels, short and long, usually written as _a_
(though I wrote them as _o_ in my first tale).  In OSl (OBg) *_a_ > /o/,
while *_a:_ > /a/.  In the contemporary predecessor of Moscow Russian
*_a_ became /o/ only if stressed, /a/ otherwise.  Due to the influence
of OBg, however, all reflexes of {-hi,-frt,-lng} were written as _o_,
and are to this day, much to the regret of schoolkids.

OSl _e~_ > Ru /ja/, falling together with OSl _ja_; the letters
became near-allographs in ChSl, and Peter chose a simplified form
of the ex-nasal and discarded the old _ja_.

OSl _(j)o~_ > Ru /(j)u/; the letters fell into disuse very early.

OSl _(j)u_ > Ru /(j)u/.  Peter kept the second half of the digraph _u_;
the letter _ju_ was not changed.

OSl _y_ > Ru /y/.  Originally that was written as _Ui_, which must have
echoed its pronunciation in OBg, but the first half was replaced by _I_
early in Russia.

OSl _i_ > Ru /i/.  Peter kept three letters for this: izhica stood
for ypsilon in Greek loans, iota (Roman _i_) was written before another
vowel, izhe (Gk eta) elsewhere.  The first two were abolished in 1918.
The Cyrillic _j_ (izhe with breve) was introduced after Peter's time.

OSl _e_ > Ru /jo/ when stressed and not before a palatalised consonant,
/e/ elsewhere.  Both reflexes were written as _e_ (the fact that in ChSl
the vowel is always /e/ being at least part of the reason).  There were
attempts to introduce a separate letter for /jo/ -- a modified _ju_, then
_e_ with diaeresis -- but unfortunately they didn't catch on, so now _ë_
is only used when disambiguation is critical.

Originally /e/ was always preceded by palatalisation (or by /j/
when word-initial), as is the usual way with Russian front vowels.
A separate letter for hard /e/ was only deemed necessary after Peter's
time, and then a reversed open _e_ was borrowed from the then current
Bulgarian hand, where it was a mere allograph of _e_, and made useful.

OSl _&_ was a relatively high vowel in ORu, probably an [ie] diphthong.
It kept a distinct value until quite late, so the letter (jat') was also
needed, but eventually it fell together with /e/, and the distinction
became a purely orthographic one.  In theory it was possible to tell
which /e/ was which (the ones from _&_ do not alternate with /jo/),
but the rule had exceptions (Ru _zvezdá_ `star' < OSl _zv&zda_, so
the letter was jat', despite gen.pl. _zvëzd_), and not every word
with /e/ in it has cognates where the /e/ is in /jo/-able position
(let alone such that one can think of in real time), so long lists
of jat'-ridden words were simply learned by rote -- until 1918.

OSl _U_ and _I_ were always unstable, and became more so with time.

(1) Where they could not fall out without rendering the word
unpronounceable, they became /o/ and /e/, respectively, and
began to be so written, too.  This was a very early process.

(2) Elsewhere they fell out.

(2.1) If a soft vowel followed, the syllable break remained
where it was, so a four-way distinction was created between
_ta_ > /ta/, _tja_ > /t;a/, _tUja_ > /tja/ and _tIja_ > /t;ja/.
As such both letters served a useful purpose, and they continue
to serve it.

(2.2) If another consonant followed, _U_ ceased to be written
relatively early, whereas _I_ remained, but was now perceived
as a mark of the only thing left of what had once been a vowel
(viz., palatalisation).  (Where the consonant failed to be
palatalised, _I_ also ceased to be written, as in Ru _dni_
`days' from OSl _dIni_.)

(2.3) Word-finally _I_ also became a palatalisation marker
(except after a shibilant, where it is mute).  _U_ was not
a marker of anything, but continued being written until 1918,
wasting large amounts of ink and timber (one author estimates
that over 3% of all letters in pre-1918 Russian writing were
redundant hard signs).  Why Peter didn't discard it is anyone's
guess; in any case, the Revolution did.


A history of Bulgarian orthography (part 3)
[30 December 1999]

Yes, by _y_ I mean a {+hi,-frt,-rnd} vowel.  This convention
is common to all romanisations of Slavic.

  *  *  *

In 1396 Bulgaria fell under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, there
to remain until 1878.  This slowed down all literary activity in
the country, which in turn (along with other factors) sped up the
evolution of the spoken language away from its roots.

The late 18th century, and most of the 19th, were Bulgaria's
Renaissance.  The national language, complete with a written
form, was among the things that were to take shape at that time.

But it was a situation very different from Peter's Russia,
where there was a state -- a strong one -- and an established
lay high speech -- that of Moscow.  In Bulgaria there was a
multitude of dialects, and no central Bulgarian-speaking authority
to coordinate things.

And since Bulgaria had not the resources to satisfy its need
of books, lay or clerical, Russia now `returned the favour'.
Bulgaria imported books, and with them many Russian and ChSl
words, including many that were Bg loans in Ru itself.  Some
of those had synonyms or regular cognates in Bg, and then
one of several situations would arise:

(1) R and B differ in register:
  (a) B is a substandard word and R the standard one,
  (b) B is the neutral word and R is elevated;
(2) R and B differ in meaning, and then usually R has the more abstract,
  metaphorical etc. sense.

So _chčdo_ (B) is `child, offspring (of one's parents)', whereas
_chŕdo_ (from ChSl) is `child, offspring (of the Church)'.
An old priest might call a much younger person the former
(affectionately, referring to his age) or the latter (formally,
referring to his office and rank).

In Ru _odézhda_, the standard word for `clothes', is a loan
fr@m OBg/ChSl; the regular Ru development _odëzha_ is regional.
Bg borrowed it back, but it means `garment', usually when talking
of divine service; the regular word for `clothes' is not related.

The Ru word _lev_ `lion' is likewise a ChSl loan -- the expected
*_lëv_ does not exist (though a man called _Lev_ -- hi, Leo -- is
usually nicknamed _Lëva_).  In Bg `lion' is _lřv_, the regular
cognate; the Ru loan _lev_ is the name of Bulgaria's currency,
which goes back to the lion being the nation's totem animal.

In Ru _dvizhénie_ is `moving (nomen actionis)' as well as `movement,
motion'; in Bg it's been borrowed for the latter meaning, whereas
the former is the homebred cognate _dvězhene_.

And so on.

But not only words were borrowed; orthographic practices were, too.

  *  *  *

The various dialects of Bg have from 5 to 9 vowels.  Present-day
standard Bg has six, /a e i o u @/, with no /j/ or palatalisation
before front vowels and significant, but not complete, raising of
unstressed {-hi} vowels.  No palatalisation before a consonant or
in final position either.

Herein the development of the OBg vowels; the letters we shall
talk about at another time:

OBg _(j)a_, _o_, _(j)u_, _e_, _i_ > Bg ditto.  (Though unstressed
_i_ after another vowel became /j/.)

OBg _y_ > Bg /i/.

OBg _e~_ > Bg /e/.  OBg _(j)o~_ > Bg /(j)@/.  (These stayed nasal
until quite late, and may still be in some dialects.)

OBg _&_ > Bg /ja/ when stressed and not before a syllable with a
front vowel, /e/ otherwise.  There are many exceptions, however,
due to analogy and other reasons.

OBg _U_ and _I_ were always unstable, and became more so with time.

(1) Where they could not fall out without rendering the word
unpronounceable, _U_ became /@/ and _I_ became /;@/, /@/ or /e/.
(I write /;@/ here, not /j@/, because a consonant always preceded it.)

(2) Elsewhere they fell out; and if a syllable break followed,
it was also lost, so all of _tja_, _tUja_ and _tIja_ > /t;a/.


A history of Bulgarian orthography (part 4)
[04 January 2000]

Three questions were asked, and thrice each one was answered:

(1) Must there be one speech, and one writing?
  a. nay and nay;  b. nay and aye;  c. aye and aye.

(2) What must a word know?
  a. its roots;  b. its kin;  c. itself.

(3) What must a tongue know?
  a. its roots;  b. its peers;  c. itself.

So if one man says [maIt] and the other says [mIxt], (1a) each might
spell the word in a way that reflects his own pronunciation; or (1b)
they might both spell it the same, say _might_, but pronounce it in
different ways; or (1c) one pronunciation, say [maIt], might be made
standard and reflected in the spelling, and the others would have to
cope with that.

And a word such as [saIn] might be (2a) spelt with a _g_ in it
because it comes from Latin _signum_, or (2b) spelt with a _g_
because it is cognate to ['sIgn@l], or (2c) spelt without _g_,
because no [g] is pronounced.

And the whole orthography might be made to assert (3a) the tongue's
ancient lineage and old glory, or (3b) its kinship and liaisons with
others (this one need not be a conscious priority; see below), or
(3c) its individual and inimitable character (this is where national
scripts and `national characters', such as Spanish _ń_, come in).

  *  *  *

The Bulgarian loremasters tended to be under the influence of
Church Slavonic, which for a long time they equated with Old Slavic.
Most were educated (or at least had lived) in the free Orthodox
Slavic lands, Russia and Serbia (when the latter was liberated).

And it showed in the way they wrote.

Mostly they were confused by the sound /@/, which did not exist
in Russian (and, by extension, ChSl).  One writer called it an
abomination (how can Bg need a sound that is absent in ChSl? can
the daughter be of a different nature than the mother, can a woman
give birth to a monkey, or vice versa?) and wanted it abolished
and replaced by /o/, /e/ or /u/, mirroring the development of
_I_, _U_ and _o~_ in ChSl/Ru.  The less radical ones merely wanted
a way to write it; but the letter _o~_ and the original use of _U_
(and _I_) had been forgotten.  So some started to write /@/ as _a_
with a breve, as in Roumanian; in unstressed position, however,
unadorned _a_ was often written, the rest being left to reduction.

And most employed the letter _e~_ in its ChSl function, for /ja/,
although its reflex in Bg is /e/.  Some writers also used _e~_
with a breve for stressed /j@/.

That's what Peter Beron did in his famous _Fish Primer_, printed
in Bucharest in 1824.  Those breved _a_ and _e~_, plus a special
letter for /dZ/ (the same one that is used now in Serbian), were
the only things that set his spelling apart from ChSl.

So he used the whole array of diacritics, variant letters and
redundant letters for Greek words.  All of those were abandoned,
however, when the civilian Cyrillic style was introduced in the
mid-19C.  Aye, even theta and izhica, which lived on in Russia
until 1918.  Only iota stayed for a while, because a few were
considering using it for /j/ or replacing the descendant of eta
(the regular Cyrillic _i_) with it.

  *  *  *

Eventually the loremasters formed schools, and some of those were
liberal and some were conservative.  A well-known representative
of the latter was Najden Gerov, whose dictionary, published in six
instalments in 1985--1908, is a very important reference work.
He wanted the written language, including its orthography, to be
based on the speech of the people.  Except he wanted it to be
all things to all people.  And since no two OSl vowels have the
same reflexes in all dialects, he ended up employing all OSl vowel
letters (including _je_, though not _je~_); he also found a job
for _ë_ /jo/.  In all he used 16 vowel letters.  (His ery was made
with a big er, not a wee one as most other writers'.  And yes, he
used iotated versions of the regular Cyrillic _a_ and _e_ -- for
him the `reversed R' was not a _ja_, but a proper civilian form
of the wee jus, and was to be pronounced as /e/, /ja/ or perhaps
/en/, depending on one's native dialect.)

The orthography that was made official by law in 1899 may look
very conservative now -- but it was quite moderate compared to
Gerov's (and to some other projects).

(To be continued)

A history of Bulgarian orthography (part 5)
[06 January 2000]

The belief that Bg was a direct descendant of ChSl didn't make it
into the 2nd half of the 19C, and the plain and iotated big jus
(_o~_ and _jo~_) were restored in their etymological places.  Some
advocated using them for /@/ and /j@/ (or /;@/) everywhere.  That
proposal clashed against tradition, however, as well as the fact
that the common standard language wasn't done taking shape yet,
and one of the most authoritative loremasters (Marin Drinov, the
founder of the Academy of Sciences) pointed out that in some parts
OBg _o~_ was sounded as the vowel in English _bud_ and OBg _U_ as
the one in _bird_.

That being so, the iotated jus was effectively restricted to the
1st and 3pl present tense endings of verbs with a soft final stem
consonant.  (The same forms of verbs with a hard stem contained
a plain jus.)  But that was not universal: some dialects had /a/
(resp. /ja/) in those endings, stressed or not, and their speakers
(among whom were some of the most successful writers, journalists
and editors) wrote them so, which meant that they had no use for
the iotated jus.

  *  *  *

Word-final _U_ wore off early, as in all Slavic languages.  Since
that was almost the only way for a word to end in a hard consonant,
the direction of the implication was reversed from the actual
"_bogU_ `god' is consonant-final because _U_ used to be pronounced,
and therefore written, at the end" to the apparent "_U_ must be
written, though not pronounced, at the end of _bogU_ because it
is consonant-final".  So _U_ came to be written after every
word-final hard consonant, including such as were borrowed from
other languages after the fall of the ers and had never ended
in any vowel represented by _U_.  Many realised that that was
just a waste of paper and ink (12% of it all, according to one
estimate), but tradition was strong.

Word-final _I_ also fell off.  The consonant before it remained
soft for a long time, but in most dialects all palatalisation
was eventually lost except before a [-frt] vowel.  Yet _I_ was
still written at the end of certain words.  There were rules
that helped one determine if a consonant-final word was to
be written with _U_ or _I_ at the end, but errors were common.

Stem-internally OBg _I_ had become /@/, and was now written _U_
(except for Gerov and his school, who insisted on _I_).  But the
fact that it had had something to do with palatalisation got it
a new job: it began to be used for palatalisation (but not /j/!)
before /o/ and sometimes /e/, there being no universally accepted
iotated forms of those vowels.  Some writers, however, preferred
_j_ (_i_-breve) even after a consonant.

  *  *  *

There was one context in which final _U_ and _I_ were not lost.
OBg did not have a definite article, but the placement of the
demonstrative pronoun _tU_ after a noun was common, and in Bg
(though not in the other Slavic languages) the two were pulled
into a single form.  The article then lost its er, but protected
the noun's, where _U_ > /@/ and _I_ > /;@/, eg _bykU tU_ `bull
that' > /bi'k@t/, _konI tU_ `horse that' > /'kon;@t/ (both stress
patterns are frequent with monosyllabic stems).  So in the
dialects that formed the standard; but just about any [-frt],
resp. [+frt], vowel can be found in some part of the country.

Also depending on the region, but orthogonally to both stress
and the quality of the vowel, the /t/ of the article could
wear off, giving such forms as /bi'k@/, /'kon;@/.

Two things about this whole matter confused the loremasters.
First, they didn't know which of the many forms of the article
to choose as standard.  (Their usual tie-break, OBg, was useless,
since it didn't have an article.)  One of them suggested that
three forms be taken, but for different syntactic functions,
both to keep everyone happy and to make up for the loss of
morphological case.  It was a crazy idea, but was not rejected
altogether, and although it was decided that the vowel of the
article had to be /@/, every standard has acknowledged two forms,
a long and a short one (with and without /-t/), with artificial
rules governing the choice between them.

Second, there was the matter of the spelling.  In the long form
_-tU_ was added to the noun, which already ended in _-U_ or _-I_,
so in that position (though not in any other) _I_ was sounded
as /;@/.  That was etymologically precise, although synchronically
the vowel before /t/ belonged to the article, not to the noun.
The short form was tougher: the article was just /@/ or /;@/,
but it could not be written as _-U_/_-I_, because word-finally
they had to be mute, or as _-o~_/_-jo~_, as they didn't belong
there etymologically.  So _-a_/_-ja_ became the preferred spelling
(though the pronunciation it was derived from was not preferred!),
even when stressed, and with nothing but context to indicate
whether _kraka_ was /kra'ka/ `legs' or /kra'k@/ `the leg'.

  *  *  *

Thus in the last quarter, and especially in the last decade,
of the 19C a _de facto_ standard spelling already existed,
although the search for a better one never ceased; every now
and then the Acad of Sci would come out with a project, or
the Min of Ed (after the Liberation) would form a committee
with the purpose of making one, or a writer (or group of them)
would launch a journal and try out a new spelling in it.  But
the climate turned out to be hostile to really radical changes.


*** A history of Bulgarian orthography (part 6)
[11 January 2000]

In 1899 a decree of the Min of Ed made the _de facto_ orthography
official.  One change was made: the juses were taken out of the
1sg and 3pl verb endings and replaced by _a_ and _ja_, although
the speakers of most dialects pronounced them as /@/ and /;@/,
stressed or not.  The change implied that the iotated ius went
out of business, although it could still be seen in some editions,
at the very end of the alphabet.

This orthography made use of 32 letters, which were the ones that
Russian now uses minus ery and reversed /e/, but plus two others:
(1) jat (called `double /e/'), which was to be written wherever OBg
had had _&_ and pronounced as /e/ if it was unstressed or followed
by a palatalised or palatoalveolar consonant or a syllable with a
front vowel and as /ja/ otherwise (though exceptions abounded), and
(2) big jus (called `wide /@/' because of the width of the letter),
which was to be written stem-internally wherever OBg had had _o~_.

  *  *  *

After WWI the Agrarian Union was voted into power.  That was a
left-of-the-centre organisation that enjoyed wide support among
the population of then predominantly rural Bulgaria.  The new
government started carrying out one democratic reform after
the other.  Most of those were designed to soften the effect
of the war, which BG had fought on the wrong side, and had
been severely punished for it.

That was hard work, so the government took their time with
the orthography.  But its turn came eventually, and in 1921
the Min of Ed of the Agrarian Union decreed the following:

(1) The letter double /e/ was abolished, and replaced by _e_
or _ja_, depending on its pronunciation.

(2) The letter big er was abolished, and replaced by wide /@/
where it was pronounced and by nothing where it was not.

(3) The letter wee er was abolished, and replaced by _j_ where
it was a palatalisation marker, by _ja_ where it stood for /j@/
(in the full form of the definite article), and by nothing where
it was not pronounced.

So there were 29 letters in the reformed alphabet.

  *  *  *

The rule of the Agrarian Union was appreciated by most layers of
society -- but not by all.  The fat cats decided they would have
no more of it, and on 9 June 1923 a fascist coup took place.
The PM and leader of the AU was assaulted by a gang of assassins,
stabbed with knives and hewed at with axes and then left to bleed
to death.  Reaction reigned throughout the country.

Having seized the power, the extreme Right set on undoing the AU's
reforms -- including their orthography.  The 1899 standard was
brought back and made official again, with one change:  Double /e/
was now only to be written for /e/ if another form of the same
word or a cognate word had /ja/, and vice versa.  This made things
easier, but not by much.  Wide /@/ and the two ers, schwaful or
mute, were restored to their former glory.

  *  *  *

And so it was until 1945, a year after the Patriotic Front took the
power.  That was a time of great changes in all walks of life, and
orthography not the last; and the reform that was decided upon, the
most recent one, included the following:

(1) The letter double /e/ was abolished again -- this time for good
-- and replaced by _e_ or _ja_, depending on its pronunciation.

(2) The letter wide /@/ was abolished, and replaced by big er;
except in the form /s@/ `(they) are', which was now to be written
_sa_.  (The writing of word-final er was generally avoided, as
people had been used not to pronounce it at all there; where there
was no way around it, as in Turkish loans, it was recommended that
a stress mark should be written over the er.)

(3) The mute word-final big er was abolished (as in 1921).

(4) The mute word-final wee er was likewise abolished, and
the one in the article, read as /;@/, was replaced by _ja_
(as in 1921); but it was kept as a marker of palatalisation
before /o/ (and occasionally /e/).

  *  *  *

And so the tale is now told.


Created and maintained by Ivan A Derzhanski.
Last modified: 17 January 2015.