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

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

Although this is a learn_russian community, I dare to ask how would an English pronounce "circus" otherwise than "sёkus" ? Or may be you think it was meant to read 'сёкус' ? If so, I should say it wasn't. It was something between 'сёкас' and 'сёкос', that's why I left it as 'kus' in the end. But you're right, if I propose to write 'ё' instead of 'ir', then 'kus' also needs to be 'kos' or 'kas'. :)

Anyway, all that was just a joke. I don't want 'Льэньын' or 'sёkos', I like the languages as they are and I hate revolutions.

[miconazole.livejournal.com]

How you pronounce it depends a lot on where you're from, but I don't think any English speaker would pronounce the first syllable as сё. It's /ˈsɜrkəs/ or /ˈsɜkəs/. Here's a link with standard American and British pronunciations: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/circus_1

I don't think the i sound exists in Russian, so it's hard to transcribe with any accuracy... but it does match up with how I'd imagine someone with a Russian accent would say it, hence why I said "only a Russian", haha.

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

Well, basically I used 'ё' as something that I had on my keyboard. I could use 'з' probably, but didn't think of it.

Imagine it as I wrote sɜkəs instead of sёkus. I hope you get the point.
Why use combinations of letters that sound differently in different
positions when you can simply use one letter per sound, whatever the letter
looks like, ё or ɜ?

As to 'ё', it can be pronounced by a Russian very closely to [ɜ]. Of course in Hollywood movies 'олл рашнз спик эз барбарианз' :). But that was not what I implied when I wrote 'sёkus'.

Once again, I like the languages as they are.

[miconazole.livejournal.com]

Well, if we're still talking about English here, it has around 15 vowels and a huge range of diphthongs. So if you wanted one letter to represent one sound you'd have to first expand the alphabet.

[ruriktochkase.livejournal.com]

or make a dicision about what combination of letters stand for what sound.
For example in Swedish there is 6 ways of writing "sh" sound as in "should". (sj,sk,sch,sh,s,ch)
Norwegian has VERY similar phonetics but only 1 way of spelling the "sh" sound as in the word should. It's - "sj".
"the genius is simple" :)

So? so Russian spelling is a convention, like all other types of spelling.
And here its hard to find the logic of having many combination of vocals w. "й",
but not w. "K" as say "Ka" "Ko" etc.
As for some additional functions that wolk_off says, that я carries, and combination йа does not,
they can be simply transfered to "йа",
by the same type of convention that я got its extra functions in the first place.

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

Sure! You could use Cyrillic alphabet with its 33 letters or even extended Cyrillics like Tatar or Kazakh alphabets with their 39 and 42 letters respectively. That would be funny. :-)