The Cyrillic script and Brest-Litovsk's finer consequences

Plexus

Plexus

Everybody knows about the Cyrillic script, the script used by the Orthodox Slavs in Eastern Europe, but few know that its position, although quite stable in the Balkans, was not as stable in... Russia?

To illustrate the point I'll be making, I am going to get a generic central powers victory scenario, say, the one from the HOI4 mod "Kaiserreich" because it's very popular, and let's say that our discussion is about some time in the 1920s, just when the new states of Eastern Europe are just stabilizing. In real life, after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Cyrillic script was actually banned by the German occupational authorities. As such, anybody writing would need to use the Latin script instead. This is exactly what happened in Belarus - a new grammar, one made by Branislau Tarashkyevich (in his orthography: Branisłaŭ Taraškiewič) was published and was the only one acceptable by the Germans. This didn't catch on as the Cyrillic script was reintroduced after the defeat of the Central Powers, but it nonetheless makes me wonder about the possibility of its survival (personally, as a student of Slavistics, I find the Latin orthography highly unfit, and I will describe it more in a bit, but I digress). Our next subject is Ukraine, whose orthography was, though not officially implemented like in Belarus, still unsuccessfully latinised multiple times. The most well known attempt is of Josyp Łozynśkyj, but others existed as well. If I were to guess, an alphabet like Łozynśkyj's would be used, with some changes and additions.

So, our first point is down: after the war's end, the new states of Belarus, or (White Russia/Ruthenia), and Ukraine, (or Ruthenia) is established under heavy german influence, and — as a consequence of anti-Russian sentiment among both the Germans and the newly-assigned ruling elite — the Cyrillic script remains outlawed. Now, I'm gonna show some possibilities for the scripts and you guys can give your thoughts as well.

First, I am going to show both the Ukrainian and Belarusian Cyrillic scripts for reference:
АаБбВвГ㥴ДдЕеЄєЖжЗз
ИиІіЇїЙйКкЛлМмНнОоПп
РрСсТтУуФфХхЦцЧчШшЩщ
ЬьЮюЯяʼ
АаБбВвГгДдЕеЁёЖжЗзІі
ЙйКкЛлМмНнОоПпРрСсТт
УуЎўФфХхЦцЧчШшЫыЬьЭэ
ЮюЯяʼ

Now that you've seen the alphabets for reference, I am going to show the Latin alphabets and explain how they work
Belarusian (as by Branislau Tarashkievich):
AaBbCcĆćČčDdDzdzDźdźEeFf
GgHhIiJjKkLlŁłMmNnŃń
OoPpRrSsŚśŠšTtUuŬŭWw
YyZzŹźŽž
Ukrainian (as by Łosynśkyj, with my own "modernisations" — I find it unlikely that the Polish digraphs will hold out. The letters Ďď and Ťť are placeholders — the correct writing is supposed to be with an accent ´ above instead)
AaBbCcĆćČčDdĎďEeÉéFf
GgHhIiJjKkLlŁłMmNnŃń
OoÓóPpRrSsŚśŠšTtŤťUu
WwYyZzŹźŽž

All of the letters behave as they would in Polish — softness before a vowel is written with a preceding i, while softness before a consonant is written with a diacritic ´ (except for the letter l, which is pronounced soft and is used in both situations). The Belarusian letter ŭ is used just like the IRL letter ў, while the Ukrainian letters é and ó signify modern і coming from different etymologies: é from Proto-Slavic ѣ and ó from Proto-Slavic о.

What are your thoughts? Could the Cyrillic script be re-legalised, or even supplant Latin again? Would the letter v replace the letter w, like in the Baltic languages? Or do you think a total Polonisation, with the digraphs sz, cz and the letter ż, would take place instead? This is my first post, so I am open to feedback.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

First off, welcome to the forum! I just made a pot of tea over that way because I just got a chill all of a sudden. Make yourself comfortable.

Second off, let me get back to you soon, as I'm busy with a few things. I don't think it will be simple, but it's an interesting topic worth looking at - particularly for Belarusian, due to its important role in the formation of Esperanto. Ukrainian (and, for that matter, Rusyn) is a bit more fraught due to the importance nationalists held to their unique form of Cyrillic (as compared to, say, Russian), so breaking from that is hard. Belarusian, by comparison, I think is somewhat easier due to their post-modern (before it became a thing) tendency to negate and reject the grand narrative of Slavic history its neighbors propagated. So there is that possibility.
 
Neoteros

Neoteros

Dan1988 said:
First off, welcome to the forum! I just made a pot of tea over that way because I just got a chill all of a sudden. Make yourself comfortable.

Second off, let me get back to you soon, as I'm busy with a few things. I don't think it will be simple, but it's an interesting topic worth looking at - particularly for Belarusian, due to its important role in the formation of Esperanto. Ukrainian (and, for that matter, Rusyn) is a bit more fraught due to the importance nationalists held to their unique form of Cyrillic (as compared to, say, Russian), so breaking from that is hard. Belarusian, by comparison, I think is somewhat easier due to their post-modern (before it became a thing) tendency to negate and reject the grand narrative of Slavic history its neighbors propagated. So there is that possibility.
Click to expand...

Also, the variant of old Ruthenian spoken in Belarus is more tied to the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in which it was one of the official languages) than the variant of old Ruthenian spoken in Ukraine - I can see the Belarusian government adopt a Lithuanian-flavoured script... while insisting that theirs is the true Lithuanian language, with the Baltic tongue spoken to their west being mere peasant speech. :p
 
Plexus

Plexus

Dan1988 said:
First off, welcome to the forum! I just made a pot of tea over that way because I just got a chill all of a sudden. Make yourself comfortable.

Second off, let me get back to you soon, as I'm busy with a few things. I don't think it will be simple, but it's an interesting topic worth looking at - particularly for Belarusian, due to its important role in the formation of Esperanto. Ukrainian (and, for that matter, Rusyn) is a bit more fraught due to the importance nationalists held to their unique form of Cyrillic (as compared to, say, Russian), so breaking from that is hard. Belarusian, by comparison, I think is somewhat easier due to their post-modern (before it became a thing) tendency to negate and reject the grand narrative of Slavic history its neighbors propagated. So there is that possibility.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the welcome! I'm not sure about whether the modern Ukrainian orthography was widely used in the Russian empire or not. Still it is possible for Cyrillic to be reinstated. Not sure about Rusyn though — being spoken in Austria, perhaps a Latin script orthography does win in the end? (Maybe the language could be named "Galician" or "Red Russian/Ruthenian" instead as well)

Belarusian orthography is definitely postmodern, now that you say it. Very phonetic, perhaps too phonetic for its own good, with writing vowel reduction and such. Not to mention the letter ў which is in entirely complementary distribution with в.
 
Plexus

Plexus

Neoteros said:
Also, the variant of old Ruthenian spoken in Belarus is more tied to the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in which it was one of the official languages) than the variant of old Ruthenian spoken in Ukraine - I can see the Belarusian government adopt a Lithuanian-flavoured script... while insisting that theirs is the true Lithuanian language, with the Baltic tongue spoken to their west being mere peasant speech. :p
Click to expand...
Can't say Lithuanian was any less Polish back then. In fact, maybe Lithuanian orthography could still retain some "Polishness" with using the letters W and Ł. The digraphs, though, will probably still be replaced.
 

Screwhorn77

Plexus said:
I'm not sure about whether the modern Ukrainian orthography was widely used in the Russian empire or not.
Click to expand...
The Ukrainian orthography that appears to be the most in use in Russian Empire was Yaryzhka, basically spelling Ukrainian with Russian alphabet (as it was at the time), mandatory since 1876. There were many different ideas on a Ukrainian Cyrillic standard before modern spelling came into use. The Kharkiv standard of 1928, which is different from current orthography (but saw use by Ukrainian diaspora and, until a certain point in time, Ukrainian TV network STB), has a few things in common with Taraškiewič's Belarusian Cyrillic.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Plexus said:
Thanks for the welcome! I'm not sure about whether the modern Ukrainian orthography was widely used in the Russian empire or not.
Click to expand...
Early incarnations of the Ukrainian orthography, with some regional distinctions in both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires due to different underlying phonemic inventories, had been around for a long time, at least from Meletius Smotrytsky/Smotritskiy's Church Slavonic grammar - yes, a grammar for Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian/Old Macedonian, if you go down that angle) that provided a model for Ukrainian orthography. So something like it did exist that far back, even if by modern standards it doesn't seem all that systemic because you're trying to apply writing rules that work better not just for Bulgarian but also Ancient/Byzantine Greek onto a language from a completely different branch of the Slavic language family.

Plexus said:
Not sure about Rusyn though — being spoken in Austria, perhaps a Latin script orthography does win in the end? (Maybe the language could be named "Galician" or "Red Russian/Ruthenian" instead as well)
Click to expand...
Rusyn is actually kind of an interesting case study of a prominent microlanguage because for a long time Ruthenian was the cover term used for both Belarusian and Ukrainian, so Ukrainians on both sides of the border used to refer to themselves as such. As the Kremlin sought to monopolize Russian identity for itself ("Ruthenian" is basically a Latinization of Rus'ian or Russian, whatever you prefer) and sought to stamp out the separate identities of the people that had never been under the jurisdiction of Moscow until that point, it was understandable that the Ukrainian and Belarusian identities would emerge as a reaction to that. So Ruthene/Ruthenian, nowadays Rusyn, is basically interesting insofar as it retains features archaic in Ukrainian (let alone Belarusian) and had long been its own thing alongside or in competition with Ukrainian identity (as both the Galician variant of literary Ukrainian and Rusyn were based on the same phonemic inventory). Hence the debate over whether it's its own language or just merely a dialect of Ukrainian (to which my response would be why not both? since that's the same debate raging against Galician in Spain as to whether it's its own language or just merely an archaic and heavily Spanish-influenced dialect of Portuguese). As far as I know, though, all versions of Rusyn had always adapted Ukrainian orthography for its own purposes, so it would remain using the Cyrillic script.

Plexus said:
Belarusian orthography is definitely postmodern, now that you say it. Very phonetic, perhaps too phonetic for its own good, with writing vowel reduction and such. Not to mention the letter ў which is in entirely complementary distribution with в.
Click to expand...
Well, Belarusian identity is to some degree post-modern, though I'm not sure a written language could be called that. ;) But point taken for a phonemic orthography, so it could just as well use Latin script - after all, under Zamenhof's pen, Belarusian provided an important model (along with his native Yiddish) for the basic structure of Esperanto. One could do a one-on-one mapping of Belarusian to Esperanto orthography and come up with an equally valid writing model, and there's always the possibility of Tarashkievich to go beyond simply deriving the graphic model from Polish (and, to a far lesser extent, Czech) orthography. @Neoteros mentioned the possibility of using an orthographic model similar to the Baltic languages like Lithuanian, which is absolutely fascinating.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Screwhorn77 said:
The Ukrainian orthography that appears to be the most in use in Russian Empire was Yaryzhka, basically spelling Ukrainian with Russian alphabet (as it was at the time), mandatory since 1876.
Click to expand...
Yaryzhka proper was actually more or less limited to the period between 1876 and 1905, as beforehand variations of it were used that used a lot of diacritics to mark where there were differences in pronunciation - and ultimately stems back to an earlier Church Slavonic orthography from a few centuries earlier that was imposed as part of the Nikonian reforms of Russian Orthodox Christianity. What we do see, in fact, is use of some form of etymological orthographies (which all tend to be conflated with yaryzhka and the like - all of which, surprisingly, coincide with how certain peripheral varieties sound like, hence Rusyn) that try to navigate around the gap between Ukrainian and Russian, of which the Maksymovychivka is one example of reforming the etymological orthography (the Drahomanivka, following similar principles as Serbian, forced the issue of a phonetic orthography and heralded that shift).
 
Augenis

Augenis

Plexus said:
Can't say Lithuanian was any less Polish back then. In fact, maybe Lithuanian orthography could still retain some "Polishness" with using the letters W and Ł. The digraphs, though, will probably still be replaced.
Click to expand...
I don't think that's likely, since Lithuanian orthography had already abandoned the Ł (aside for the shift away from Polish-based to Czech-based alphabet, it found very little use) and the same had happened to W. Most of the standard orthography was established in the Varpas newspaper in the early 1900s. There could be some playing around with later letters though, Ū was a controversial later addition, and there were some ideas of also adding Ē to be used for the æː sound, which in OTL uses the same E letter as the short sound ɛ.
 
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