cyrilic alphabet - logic!?

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

Ok. I have to admit, that learning cyrilic alphabet was for me somewhat of a puzzle.
A puzzle that I have not been able to solve for past 24 years.
And the more other languages I understand (especially other slavic lang. that use cyrilics),
the more odd the Russian cyrilic system seems to me.

I will try to explain what I mean the best I can.
But Im not sure that my knowledge of phonetics is good enough,
but Im sure that there are some other people around here (f.ex. thouse who have czech or polish as mother tounge),
who will see what I mean, and plz .  do not be shy in transforming my question into more internationally understandible.

Look, in Russian there is a letter "е"  and it is actionly a combination of й+э, or in some cases just plane э. (whith softer consonant)
Than there is ю which is a combination of й+у. or just y (w.softer consonant)
Than there is я which is й+а
Than there is ё which is й+o

So? so 2 questions:

1st: WHY? why choose 1 consonant "й", and separate into separate letters the combination of it w. vowel ? ? ? 

I mean one could say that its some necesity of cyrilic alphabet, but its not. I can not see any situation were the letters "е ё ю я" would be impossible to replace by combination of other letters.
F.ex. in serbian (where they use in cyrilic same "j" as in English), they spell "Ja" instead of "я".
and if one would wanna make the consonant softer there is always "ь", right ???
Ok, fine, lets say one wants to make a language w. as few symbols in every word as possible. thus one would need more letters.
Seems logical. but why isn't there letters like "Ka", "Ko", and all the other combinations of consonant + vowel, with its own separate letter ?

So, I still can't get the logic. Does anyone get it ?

2nd: Whats the story? what was the historic background?
what was the reason for making "й" this very special letter,
with all the own letters for combination with vowels?
was it Cyrill that fell in love w. it?
or prehaps some of thouse letters came up after Lenins reform of Russian?
 

 

Comments

[dvanoltri.livejournal.com]

They are needed to show that the previous consonant should be soft. This is there main sense. There is no other construction for this in russian.

[imorl.livejournal.com]

Right.
Phonemes Ленин, Льенин, Льэнин, Лйэнин or, as post author suggests, Льйэнин are absolutely different.

[romik-g.livejournal.com]

Here is what we have in English alphabet, compared to Russian:
jh - ж
ph - ф
ts - ц
ch - ч
sh - ш
sh' - щ
you - ю

I can't get the logic too =)

[oryx_and_crake]

So many unnecessary letters! Cyril and Mephody should just have used English alphabet from the very beginning, to avoid confusion.

[kagury.livejournal.com]

+1000!!! :))

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

I can't get the logic of latin alphabet too. Why learn how that "ough" or "e" or "c" should sound in different circumstances when you can just use 'inaf', 'ot' or 'sёkus' instead of 'enough', 'ought' and 'circus' ? ;-)

[zoa-mel-gustar.livejournal.com]

You forgot, that these letters is not just a combination of й ans some over letter. What about words like "племя"? "Племйа" doesn't sounds like that at all,
But even "яблоко" "йаблоко" wouldn't be the same. Every native Russian speaker would pronounce and hear it in a different way. I think, that's because in Russian sounds are more separated, then in English, we pronounce every letter... So you can't make one sound as a combination of two letters.
But don't worry, Russians always have problems with "th", then they're learning English.

P.S. No, Lenin's reforms was very insignificant and just made language more simple.

[besisland.livejournal.com]

It does sound like that at all.

[irre.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_I

Active use of <Й> (or, rather, the breve over <И>) began around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, the differentiation between <И> and <Й> has become obligatory in the Russian variant of Church Slavonic orthography (used for the Russian language as well). During the alphabet reforms of Peter I, all diacritic marks were removed from the Russian writing system, but shortly after his death in 1735, the distinction between <И> and <Й> was restored. <Й> was not officially considered a separate letter of the alphabet until the 1930s.

...but I think the very special letter is this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28Cyrillic%29

[dinasty.livejournal.com]

I would say that these letters are not exactly just a composition of й and other vowel, they do make a difference to the sound.
Compare, for example, words нос and нёс. You can't say that it's only the consonant н which sounds differently here. The vowel sound is softer as well.

So you do need all the vowels as well as the letter й (as it is a separate sound as well).

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

Compare, for example, words нос and нёс.
- - -
try spelling it like THIS:

"ньос"

and ANY russian speaking person will get eeexactly the same sound out of this combination of letters, as from "нёс" ;)

ньос = нёc

:)

[o-jovem-louco.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are absolutely right. There is little logic, especially compared to Serbian.
For example, ь and й NEVER occur in the samo position: ь occurs only after consonants and й occurs only after vowels and in word-initial position.

Letters like ю etc. have historical origin. E.g., "iоу" -> "iо" -> "ю". The old letter for я was used to indicate a nasal sound, like Polish "ę", and therefore required a separate letter. So it is a mere tradition, and it is useless to try to find much sense in it.

[besisland.livejournal.com]

Well, it at least makes spelling a bit shorter.

[tlkh.livejournal.com]

Russian redundant letters make text shorter.
If you search for logic, may be you can you explain why does English need "q", "y", "x", "c", but does not have a letter for "th"?

[besisland.livejournal.com]

It used to have a letter for “th” :)

[romik-g.livejournal.com]

Any language is different and not much people in the World will like if every one will speak only English. We all live with our own cultures and that is great from many points of view.

Why Olofström and Göteborg instead of Olofstryom and Gyoteborg?
Why cooperation (coöperation) is pronounced with "oo" instead of "u" like in cook, coos, cooper, etc.?
and so on :)

[besisland.livejournal.com]

Well, cooperation is pronounced like in cook, while coöperation or co-operation is not.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

1. Modern Russian has a pretty strong aversion to digraphs and diphtongs. Some were used in the past, but they were weeded out through much of the language history -- last of them, IIRC, was diphtong "iо", replaced by the infamous letter "ё" by Karamzin, and now in common usage just by "е".

2. Russian phonetics has a distinctive feature called palatalization -- softening of a consonant after an iotated vowel. This is what you talk about when you mention a "softer consonant". But common Russian orthography has literally no way to indicate this palatalization directly -- various asterisks and apostrophes are simply reading aids and aren't used in normal writing. Soft sign also couldn't be used, as it indicates the palatalization if no vowel is present, and, anyway, it would entail an ugly and unwieldy trigraphs like "ньйаньйа" instead of "няня" (or just "ньаньа", if we could drop the iota, which you seem to not like).

So, given that aforementioned aversion to stacking letters on each other, the only way to get around was to invent a whole new set of "soft", or, more really, palatalizing vowels, as they mostly have the same sounds as non-palatalizing ones, with two exceptions: "soft e", which kinda conflates with "palatalizing э" into a common "e", and "hard и", which just has too different sound to "soft и" and thus got its own letter, "ы".

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

or just "ньаньа", if we could drop the iota, which you seem to not like
- - -
touché amigo, touché!
when I read out loud ньаньа I get eeexactly the same sound as when I read "няня" :)
I have missed that aspect in my "table", but not only does your additon make it more compleate,
it only further underlines my point :)

off-topic

[avoider.livejournal.com]

Here is the old joke proposing some similar improvements to the English alphabet:

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil tak over ze world!

Re: off-topic

[romik-g.livejournal.com]

LOL )

[orie.livejournal.com]

perhaps you'll like Ukrainian spelling more :)

[besisland.livejournal.com]

No.

In Ukrainian it is worse because all the same letters are present (є, ю, я) except for “йо/ьо”. It is inconsistent.

It is my proposal to introduce another letter (ϧ) for “йо/ьо” in Ukrainian.

[dobryi-drake.livejournal.com]

Try to learn Chineese for next 24 years.

[alamar.livejournal.com]

Well, there are two ways of writing iotated vowels:
One involves а-я, о-ё, у-ю (or e. g. Korean 아/야, 어/여, 애/얘 etc).

Second involves writing й explicitly and then there are explicitly softened consonants: љ, њ (Serbian does that).

Second way requires most consonants to have hard and soft forms, which isn't really viable, or littering the text with a LOT of ьs, since around half of consonants would need it.
And that ь is not a separate phoneme, it always travels with its owner vowel, for example. See день -> дневной, the implicit ь before е travels behind н together with its owner е.
Why split?

And no, those letters were in Old Church Slavonic, which was notorious for having 40+ letters, I believe.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

And no, those letters were in Old Church Slavonic, which was notorious for having 40+ letters, I believe
- - -
are you sure that all of them were?
someone wrote here that f.ex. ё was introduced by a Russian author.
I think he worked in 19th century.
I'm not claming, Im just asking.
and wondering since I see 2 versions, that seem to colide.

[philena.livejournal.com]

As others have said, ля is not the same as лйa (or льа or лья or льйа . . .). The importance of the special vowels is to indicate palatalization on the preceding consonant, as khathi said in point 2. This usage in fact is a logical, economical factor of the writing system. Most Russian consonants come in pairs: a palatalized phoneme and an unpalatalized phoneme. I think there are fourteen consonants letters that can indicate either a "hard" or "soft" phoneme (leaving aside the velars and hushers, which follow their own rules regarding palatalization). If we did not have these special vowel letters to indicate that the preceding letter represents a palatalized consonant, then the alphabet would need to have fourteen more consonant letters to indicate the palatalized variants of the preceding consonants. In other words, combinations like

ля
ла
бя
ба
ся
са
дя
да

which can be written with six letters---four consonant letters and two vowels----would require nine lettersː eiɡht consonants (to represent the eight different phonemes) and one vowel. As the number of consonant hard/soft pairs increases, the economy of encoding the difference in the following vowel increases.

[mithrilian.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. It could've been a single modifier like '

ла = ла
ля = л'a
ба = ба
бя = б'а etc

[mithrilian.livejournal.com]

Do not ever look for logic in a natural, that is, not created/constructed languages. Think of English spelling, and tell me where you see logic there.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

unfortunatley Im not a voter in England (unlike Russia),
thus I can not effect the rules of English in any way or fashion.

[ex-tritopor.livejournal.com]

Ёж - ежи.

But not "Йож - йежи".

Russian cyrillic have the best logic in the world.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

Ёж - ежи.
But not "Йож - йежи".
- - -

the phonetic version would be:

Йож - йэжи


Russian cyrillic have the best logic in the world.
- - -
if it was always true, than there wouldn't be need to change it every now and than ;)

[old-radist.livejournal.com]

Oh no...

This fonetic stuff is the mostly hated part of learning in school, and really the most useless. It neither belongs to grammar itself nor helps to understand the logic of the language.

More read, more speak - there are the only really important things. The best way to deal with the fonetic is to forget it as soon as possible completely.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

nor helps to understand the logic of the language.
- - -
I disagree.
understanding of fonetics helps you not only to understand your own language deeper,
but also makes understanding of the surrounding/similar languages much easier.

for example: knowing phonetics of Russian, reading Ukrainian is much easier than without it.
same goes for Belorussian, especially when the Belorussian is writen in latin script.

[vovanium.livejournal.com]

There are mostly historic reasons, which are very strong in russian.
Letters я and ю initially was just a ligatures for іа and іоу (and [u] sound was written as оу, because is was derived from greek ου)
Letters э and ё was invented not so long ago (17 and 18 century), so they have limited use. Letter й known to be used just slightly earlier, in 15-16 centuries.
AFAIK every original cyrillic character mached to individual sound. It was so with hard and soft signs: whey was denoted short wovels which completely reduced. Lenin's reform discontinued archaic ъ uses (онъ -> он), removed some characters that sound same as another (іѵ->и ѣ->е) so it made russian writing more logical.
Note also г is read as [в] sometimes (pronoun его, -го ending in adjectives), as it is originated from voiced [х] there and is still there in ukrainian.

Russian have some features that make truly fonetic writing improbable: complex positional sound changes and lots of dialects. It seems that russian writing is more ideographic than phonetic: same morpheme mostly have single written form or limited set of them while spoken very different:
c-плотить [сп...]
с-давить [зд...]
с-жать [жж...]
с-шить [шш...]

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

First of all: thank you for the historic background!
There has been a few previous commentators touching on dif. parts of your comment,
but probably not as compleate and comprehensive as info in your comment.
so - thanks! :)

secondly as far as dialects go, I mean pretty much evry language has this problem in one form or another.
Considering the area of Russia, and the density of population, I would say that russian dialects are quite alike each other.
Also TV & Radio seem to have huge positive effect in leveling out that types of problems.
(naturally there will be always some border regions that will have "trasjanka" & "surzhik",
but I'm not 100% sure if they could be called Russian dilects in the first place).

as for words in your example: why not use the duoble spelling as sugested by you?
I mean you seem to have worked it out, and your system seems very logical to me.
(I all for it!)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Obviously you dislike the existing tradition, but then dude, you have to give up: it's here to stay. Russian alphabet suits Russian phonetics very well -- and it's not because the alphabet is phonetic as you may think: it's not phonetic, it's phonematic. I understand that you are having a lot of fun trolling this community, but I think you have heard enough good arguments already, and there is no further necessity to ask for more of them. If you do not like them, that's just your personal problem, not this community's. First warning, second means ban, no reconsideration, so would you please stop trolling.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

While I agree with you, I too very often try to understand things that are unfortunately less logical and more historical. Please don't be too judgmental (unless, of course, this is deserved as I haven't read the last two thirds of this enormous thread).

[jaymus2.livejournal.com]

I've not read this enormous thread either, but looking for logic in an orthography? They just don't work like that - not the ones that arise with natlangs anyway, and if they do its usually a result of various reforms, which phonetic shift will make a mockery of in a few years anyway.

It seems like you're looking for a closed system where one doesn't need to exist.