Reforms of Russian orthography

The reform of Russian orthography refers to changes made to the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language.

Early Changes

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 (common among pre-Christian Slavs, if the attestation of the monk Khrabr is to be believed) was simultaneously discarded, and so thoroughly discouraged that today there are no uncontested specimens of it in existence.

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 standardization properly succeeded.

Eighteenth century changes

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

The printed Russian alphabet assumed its modern shapes when Peter I introduced his civil script (гражданскій шрифтъ, graždanskij šrift (spelled "гражданский шрифт" in modern Russian), [ɡrɐˈʐdanskʲɪj 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.

Nineteenth century changes

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 standardized 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.

The post-revolution reform

The most recent large reform of the Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey Shakhmatov and carried out shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Specific changes

The Russian orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat) with е, і (depending on the context of Moscovian pronunciation) and ѵ with и, ѳ with ф, and dropping the archaic mute yer, as well as ъ (the "hard sign") in final position following consonants (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable system). For instance, Рыбинскъ became Рыбинск ("Rybinsk").

Practical implementation

In accordance with the edict, "all government publications, periodicals (newspapers and journals) and non-periodicals (scientific works, digests, etc.), all documents and papers must, starting 15th October, 1918, be printed according to the enclosed new orthography."

In this way, private publications could formally be printed using the old (or more generally, any convenient) orthography. Retraining of people previously trained under the old norm was forbidden by the decree. A given spelling was only considered a misspelling if it violated both the old and the new norm.

However, in practice, the government set up a monopoly on print production soon enough and kept a really close eye on the fulfillment of the edict. A common practice was the removal of not just the letters І, Ѳ, and ѣ from printing offices, but also Ъ. Because of this, the usage of the apostrophe as a dividing sign reached wide proliferation in place of ъ (e.g., под’ём, ад’ютант instead of подъём, адъютант), and came to be perceived as a part of the reform (even though, from the point of view of the letter of the decree of Sovnarkom, such uses were mistakes). Nonetheless, some academic printings (connected with the publication of old works and documents and printings whose typesetting began before the revolution) came out in the old orthography (except title pages and, often, prefaces) up until 1929.

It is worth noting that Russian — and later Soviet — railroads operated locomotives with designations of "І", "Ѵ" and "Ѳ". Despite the reformed orthography, the series names remained unchanged up until these locomotives were discontinued in the 1950s.

Favourable aspects of the reform

The reform reduced the number of orthographic rules having no support in pronunciation—for example, the difference of the genders in the plural and the need to learn a long list of words which were written with "yat"s (the composition of said list was controversial among linguists, and different spelling guides contradicted one another).

The reform resulted in some economy in writing and print setting, due to the exclusion of Ъ at the end of words—by the reckoning of Lev Vasilyevich Uspenskiy, text in the new orthography was shorter by one-thirtieth.^{[citation needed]}

The reform removed pairs of completely homophonous graphemes from the Russian alphabet (i.e., ѣ and Е, Ѳ and Ф, И and I), bringing the alphabet closer to Russian's actual phonological system.

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.

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, Russkoje pravopisanije, [ˈru.skə.jə ˌpra.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 oral distinction is retained even today in syllables once denoted with ѣ.

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.^{[citation needed]} According to Lev Uspensky's popular linguistics book A Word On Words (Слово о словах), yat was "the monster-letter, the scarecrow-letter [...] which was washed with the tears of countless generations of Russian schoolchildren".^[1] (This book was published in the Soviet period, and accordingly it expressed strong support towards the 1918 reform.) The schoolchildren had to memorize very long nonsense verses made up of words with ѣ:

Бѣдный блѣдный бѣлый бѣсъ	[ˈbʲɛ.dnɨj ˈblʲɛ.dnɨj ˈbʲɛ.lɨj ˈbʲɛs]	The poor pale white devil
Убѣжалъ съ обѣдомъ въ лѣсъ	[u.bʲɪˈʐal sɐˈbʲɛ.dəm ˈvlʲɛs]	Ran off with lunch into the forest
...	...	...

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^[2] and in 1918 were required. Orthography thus became an issue of politics, and the letter yat, a primary symbol. Émigré Russians generally adhered to the old spelling until after World War II; long and impassioned essays were written in its defense, 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.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as a tendency occasionally to mimic the past appeared in Russia, the old spelling became fashionable in some brand names and the like. For example, the name of the business newspaper Kommersant appears on its masthead with a word-final hard sign, which is superfluous in modern orthography: "Коммерсантъ". 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.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, almost no one knew its proper usage, which had become somewhat debased^{[clarification needed]}, relative to the ancient Old Slavonic norms^{[clarification needed]}, even prior to its elimination.

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 / веде́ние [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, as most Cyrillic letters are only as tall as the x-height, while ѣ is both taller than the x-height, and has a cross bar, making it stand out.

More recent modifications

A codification of the rules of Russian orthography and punctuation^[3] was published in 1956 but only a few minor orthographical changes were introduced at that time.^[4] Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented.^{[dubious – discuss]}

A notable de facto modification of spelling is the replacement of the letter ё with е. Used regularly for a brief period following World War II, today the ё is still seen in books for children and dictionaries, 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.)

See also

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

References and notes

1. ^ Успенский, Лев: Слово о словах. Лениздат 1962. p. 148.
2. ^ "Декрет о введении нового правописания (Decree on introduction of new orthography)" (in Russian). Известия В.Ц.И.К. 13 October 1918, #223 (487). 1917. http://bibliography.ufacom.ru/method/dekret.html. Retrieved 2009-03-15. 
3. ^ (Russian) Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации 1956 г.
4. ^ These include the changing of "цы" to "ци" in a few words such as "панцирь" and adding a hyphen to the words "по-видимому" and "по-прежнему". Отбой учебной тревоги (Russian)

External links

• Criticism of 1917 reform (Russian)
• CyrAcademisator Bi-directional online transliteration for ALA-LC (diacritics), scientific, ISO/R 9, ISO 9, GOST 7.79B and others. Supports pre-reform characters