Dear Stephen,

I would advance one other reason for some use of new orthography in Slavonic
texts, and that is to make them accessible to a great many people who do not
read Slavonic. How many contemporary Russians would simply choose not to pray at
all if they had no access to prayer books printed in civil script? For that
matter, I have found texts of the hours, etc. in civil script to be a very
useful tool for beginning readers, who often need "training wheels," so to
speak. For choirs also, if you are trying to get them to sing from text, new
orthography printouts can be a big help.

In Christ,

Fr. Hermogen

--- On Fri, 7/10/09, stephen_r1937 <stephen_r1937@...> wrote:

> From: stephen_r1937 <stephen_r1937@...>
> Subject: [ustav] Re: Modern orthography
> To: ustav@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, July 10, 2009, 3:51 PM
> In addition to the information Nikita
> supplies about old & new orthography in Russian, there
> are some further points pertaining to Slavonic. Slavonic
> became a literary language largely to accommodate
> translations from Greek; consequently, the Cyrillic alphabet
> contains letters that would not have been necessary for
> words from the native Slavic lexical stock, but represent
> Greek letters that in most cases have come to be pronounce
> in Greek just like other letters--the vowels omicron and
> omega, and the vowels iota, eta, and ypsilon, along with the
> diphthong omicron-iota, are all pronounced the same in
> Greek. Slavic needs only the eta- and omicron-derived
> letters, and that is all one finds in the modern
> orthographies. The spelling of words of Greek origin is
> therefore drastically changed. This does not matter much in
> modern languages, but in Church Slavonic it is preferable to
> be able to represent these words in a way resembling their
> appearance in Greek.
>
> (The original purpose of the letters y and z in the Latin
> alphabet was to spell Greek words; Latin didn't need them.)
>
>
> Furthermore, Slavonic is pronounce a bit differently by
> every Orthodox Slavic nation. The old orthography
> accommodated these differences easily in a single spelling
> system. The new orthographies cannot do so and therefore
> impose one national system, necessitating different systems
> for one and the same language.
>
> The reason for the prevalent use of new orthographies with
> Slavonic is simply that the old orthographies were
> suppressed by dictatorial governments during the twentieth
> century. It was impossible to get fonts or typewriters in
> the old orthography. This is no longer the case, and
> continued use of new orthographies results from laziness or
> slovenliness.
>
> Of course, if you adhere to the notion that there is only
> one correct way to pronounce Slavonic, then you have a
> reason for imposing the new orthography on it; but it is
> better not to be hoodwinked by an absurd prejudice, so in
> the long run it is not good for you.
>
> Stephen
>
>
> --- In ustav@yahoogroups.com,
> "Nikita Simmons" <starina77@...> wrote:
> >
> > I forgot to mention that the old orthography is not
> completely dead. Folks in the Russian diaspora (especially
> in ROCOR) have traditionally tried to maintain the use of
> the old orthography, whether successfully or not is
> debatable. As a personal observation, it's extremely
> difficult to maintain a strict adherence to the old
> orthography in a world that is in constant contact with
> modern Russia, and until the past few years we have not even
> had computer fonts containing all the necessary characters
> for typesetting the old orthography. The results of 90 years
> of using the reformed spelling means that it's almost
> impossible to hold onto the old system in today's world,
> despite our best efforts. In essence, it's a lost cause, and
> whatever valiant efforts are made are still "too little, too
> late".
> >
> > It is interesting that a few brave souls are trying to
> keep the old orthography alive, even in Russia, as we can
> see from this web site:
> > http://nasledie.russportal.ru/
> > If you really want to know much more about the old vs.
> new orthographies, see the articles at this page:
> > http://www.russportal.ru/index.php?id=oldorth
> >
> > Nikita
> >
> > --- In ustav@yahoogroups.com,
> "Nikita Simmons" <starina77@> wrote:
> > >
> > > From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography
> > >
> > > "The most recent large reform of the Russian
> spelling was prepared by Aleksey Shakhmatov and carried out
> shortly after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian orthography
> was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and
> pronominal inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat)
> with å, ³ (depending on the context of Moscovian
> pronunciation) and ѵ with è, ѳ with ô, and
> dropping the archaic mute yer ú (hard sign) in the terminal
> position following a consonant (thus eliminating practically
> the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable
> system). For instance Ðûáèíñêú for Ðûáèíñê
> ("Rybinsk")."
> > >
> > > ... a rather simplistic explanation, but
> accurate. I recommend reading the whole Wikipedia article to
> understand the reform in a clearer context. The loss of the
> direct historical connection was a linguistic tragedy, but
> it did make the goals of public literacy quite a bit more
> attainable. The spelling rules are admittedly easier, but
> it's a rather utilitarian and inelegant system compared to
> what we had previously.
> > >
> > > Nikita
> > >
> > > --- In ustav@yahoogroups.com,
> Philip Silouan Thompson <himself@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Nikita Simmons wrote:
> > > > > ...most texts available on the web are
> in modern orthography.
> > > >
> > > > Besides the obvious cosmetic presentation of
> the typeface, what is the
> > > > difference between the old orthography and
> the modern? I read Serbian
> > > > badly, Russian and Slavonic *very*
> minimally, and had assumed the modern
> > > > Cyrillic orthography was simply an updating
> of the look of the letters.
> > > > Is there a more significant difference?
> > > >
> > > > Silouan
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
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