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

[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!)

[vovanium.livejournal.com]

I don't think is is 'double' spelling (I just used square brackets for spelling of a word before as common in phonetics).

There are many physical and cultural barriers in wohle russian speaking world. I'll be very surprised if people in Siberia starts to pronounce [а] for unstressed 'о' like european russians, it is too cold there to open a mouth so wide. :) Oh, why too far? Two russian capital have their own 'dialects': http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Различия_в_речи_москвичей_и_петербуржцев
I also don't think that TV & radio effect is really significant. I hear Moscow-city speech and country speech in just 100 km away can be reliably distiguished even though there are common TV, radio and great part of commuters. For example in country adjective ending is often pronounced short: ласковая as [ласкова] etc.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

Two russian capital have their own 'dialects'
- - -
which are getting more and more alike.
the distinct SPBG prerevolution pronouciation of the "шипящих"-sounds, has become quite rare, borderline extinct.
(or at least thats what they told us on a lecture in SPBG University).


I also don't think that TV & radio effect is really significant.
- - -
During the lectures in SPBGU, they were telling us quite the oposite.
(I'm not a professor in Russian, so on this subject I can say IMHO, and it "seems" to me.)
But I guess there is always place for a debate even between to higherly scientific views and posibility to agree to disagree, right?

[vovanium.livejournal.com]

Yes, convergence is appear to be. As between many languages whrough the world.

There are many aspects have to be discussed. As I see TV and radio rapidly distribute new words and idioms, changes in pronouncation are so slow in comparison. I'm not professional linguist, I just tell my observations.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

it is very nice to see that we have found some common ground.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Why complicate the visual grammar in favor of the pronunciation?

C has a consistent meaning. Your suggestion adds more rules to Russian spelling.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It is not ideographic -- it is phonematic.

[vovanium.livejournal.com]

Speaking accurately, yes it is phonematic. I wrote 'ideographic' to accent that grammatics and semantics playing strong role on writing.