Reforms of Russian orthography

The Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, almost certainly 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 was simultaneously discarded, and so thoroughly discouraged that today there are no uncontested specimens of it extant.

Related Topics:
Russian language - Adopted - Cyrillic alphabet - Eastern Christianity

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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 standardisation properly succeeded.

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The printed alphabet assumed its modern shapes when Peter I introduced his "civil script" (?????????i? ?????? {{IPA|/grʌ.'ʒda.nskʲɪj 'ʃrʲift/)}} 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 ?) 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.

Related Topics:
Peter I - 1708 - Church Slavonic - Lomonosov

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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 standardised form. These included the introduction of the letter ? {{IPA|/jo/}} (yo) and the gradual loss of the letters ѵ {{IPA|/i/}} (corresponding to the Greek upsilon and the Latin y), in favor of ? {{IPA|/i/}}; and ѳ {{IPA|/f/}} (corresponding to the Greek theta), in favor of ? {{IPA|/f/}} or, more usually, ? {{IPA|/t/}}. By 1917, the only two words still usually spelled with ѵ were ?ѵ?? {{IPA|/'mʲi.ro/}} "myrrh" and ?ѵ???? {{IPA|/sʲi.'nod/}} "synod", and that rarely. The ѳ remained more common, though phonetic evolution had made it quite rare, as a "Western" (French-like) pronunciation had been adopted for many words, for example ѳ????? {{IPA|/fʲɪ.'atr}}/ which became ?????? {{IPA|/tʲɪ.'atr/}} "theater". 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.

Related Topics:
Literary language - Yo - French - Grot - Russian revolution - 1917 - Russian orthography - Russian alphabet

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The most recent large reform of the Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian revolution (see below). The Russian orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat) with ?, ? and ѵ with ?, ѳ with ?, and dropping the archaic mute yer ? (hard sign) in the terminal position following a consonant (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable system).

Related Topics:
Russian revolution - Orthography - Yat

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Minor adjustments were made in 1956, but attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented.

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A notable de-facto modification of spelling is the replacement of the letter ? with ?. Used regularly for a brief period following WWII, today the ? is still seen in books for children, 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 Khrushchov ??????), and occasionally even in their native pronunciation (e.g. Chebyshev ???????, also spelled as Tschebyschoff, Chebyshov.) Curiously, Brezhnev was ??????? during WWII.

Related Topics:
Khrushchev - Chebyshev - Brezhnev - WWII

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