Event
simplified spelling of the Russian alphabet as a result of the reform of 1708
Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet and spelling rules over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Russian Cyrillic (Civil Script)”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet and spelling rules over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries.
Old East Slavic adopted the Cyrillic script, approximately during the 10th century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. No 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, Ѧ, Ѩ) were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries.
The emergence of the centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, the consequent rise of the state bureaucracy along with the development of the common economic, political and cultural space necessitated the standardization of the language used in administrative and legal affairs. It was due to that reason that the earliest attempts at standardizing Russian, both in terms of the vocabulary and in terms of the orthography, were made initially based on the so-called Moscow chancery language. From then and on the underlying logic of language reforms in Russia reflected primarily the considerations of standardizing and streamlining language norms and rules in order to ensure the language's role as a practical tool of communication and administration.
The printed Russian alphabet began to assume its modern shape when Peter I introduced his "civil script" (гражданский шрифт) type reform in 1708. The reform was not specifically orthographic in nature. However, with the replacement of Ѧ with Я and the effective elimination of several letters (Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѡ) and all diacritics and accents (with the exception of й) from secular usage and the use of Arabic numerals instead of Cyrillic numerals 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 18th century became rather inconsistent, both in practice and in theory, as Mikhail Lomonosov advocated a morphophonemic orthography and Vasily Trediakovsky a phonemic one.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, miscellaneous adjustments were made ad hoc, as the Russian literary language came to assume its modern and highly standardized form. These included:
By 1917, the only two words still spelled with ѵ in common use were мѵро (müro, [ˈmʲirə], 'chrism') and сѵнодъ (sünod, [sʲɪˈnot], 'synod'). 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 1885 standard textbook of Yakov Karlovich Grot, 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 most recent major reform of Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey Shakhmatov and implemented shortly after the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917.
Shakhmatov headed the Assembly for Considering Simplification of the Orthography whose proposals of 11 May 1917 formed the basis of the new rules soon adopted by the Ministry of Popular Education.
Russian orthography was made simpler and easier by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, conflating the letter ѣ with е, ѳ with ф, and і and ѵ with и. Additionally, the archaic mute yer became obsolete, including the 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").
Examples:
According to the 19th-century spelling prescriptions, the genitive ending of adjectives and participles was spelled -аго (or -яго after soft consonants): добраго, синяго. In fact, those spellings come from Church Slavonic influence, as Old East Slavic documents mostly used -ого, -его. When those endings were stressed, some 19th-century grammarians prescribed the spelling -аго, while others prescribed -ого: живаго, слѣпаго or живого, слѣпого. However, in adjectival pronouns the ending was spelled -ого or -его: его, нашего, того, какого (except pronouns ending with -ый or -ій in the nominative: котораго, всякаго). The reform replaced the genitive adjectival ending -аго with -его after ж, ц, ч, ш, and щ (лучшаго → лучшего), in other instances -аго was replaced with -ого, and -яго with -его (for example: новаго → нового and ранняго → раннего), respectively. Although the letter г in those endings sounds as в in the standard Russian pronunciation, it was not changed by the reform.
19th-century spelling prescriptions distinguished feminine and neuter plural adjectival endings -ыя, -ія from masculine plural endings -ые, -іе (with no difference in pronunciation). Although Old East Slavic distinction of genders in the plural (masculine -ии, feminine -ыѣ, neuter -аꙗ) had died in speech long ago, 18th-century writers still tried to distinguish genders in the spelling, and Mikhail Lomonosov's variant was chosen as the standard. The reform gave the uniform -ые, -ие for all the three genders (новыя (книги, изданія) → новые).
19th-century spelling prescriptions gave the spellings онѣ, однѣ, однѣхъ, однѣмъ, однѣми for feminine plural forms, but они, одни, однихъ, однимъ, одними for masculine and neuter plural forms. Although these forms were prescribed to be pronounced differently, the difference was not usually observed in everyday speech; pronunciations were used interchangeably, the one with и being more common. The reform gave the uniform spelling они, одни, одних, одним, одними for all genders. However, when онѣ, однѣ were pronounced according to the spelling in poetic rhymes, modern editions write them as оне, одне.
19th-century spelling prescriptions gave the spelling of the feminine pronoun ея (нея) in the genitive case, but ее (нее) in the accusative case, whereas it was usually pronounced as её (неё) in both cases. The reform gave uniform spelling for both cases: ее (нее) (or её (неё), with the optional letter Ё). However, sometimes ея (нея) was pronounced according to the spelling in poetic rhymes. In that case, it is not changed in modern editions.
Prefixes ending with -з/с underwent a change: now all of them (except с-) end with -с before voiceless consonants and with -з before voiced consonants or vowels (разбить, разораться, but расступиться). Previously, the prefixes showed concurrence between phonetic (as now) and morphological (always з) spellings; at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the standard rule was: с-, без-, ч(е)рез- were always written in this way; other prefixes ended with с before voiceless consonants except с and with з otherwise (разбить, разораться, разступиться, but распасться). Earlier 19th-century works also sometimes used з before ц, ч, ш, щ.
In December 1917, the People's Commissariat of Education, headed by A. V. Lunacharsky, issued a decree stating, "All state and government institutions and schools without exception should carry out the transition to the new orthography without delay. From 1 January 1918, all government and state publications, both periodical and non-periodical are to be printed in the new style." The decree was nearly identical to the proposals put forth by the May Assembly, and with other minor modifications formed the substance of the decree issued by the Soviet of People's Commissars in October 1918.
In this way, private publications could formally be printed using the old (or more generally, any convenient) orthography. The decree forbade the retraining of people previously trained under the old norm. A given spelling was considered incorrect only if it violated both the old and the new norms.
However, in practice, the Soviet government rapidly set up a monopoly on print production and kept a very close eye on the fulfillment of the edict. A common practice was the forced 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 became widespread 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 if, from the point of view of the letter of the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, such uses were mistakes). Nonetheless, some academic printings (connected with the publication of old works, documents or printings whose typesettings predated the revolution) came out in the old orthography (except title pages and, often, prefaces) up until 1929.
Russian – and later Soviet – railroads operated locomotives with designations of "І", "Ѵ" and "Ѳ". (Although the letter Ѵ was not mentioned in the spelling reform, contrary to the statement in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it had already become very rare prior to the revolution.) Despite the altered orthography, the series names remained unchanged up until these locomotives were discontinued in the 1950s.
Some Russian émigré publications continued to appear in the former orthography until the 1970s.
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 yats (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 typesetting, due to the exclusion of Ъ at the end of words—by the reckoning of Lev Uspensky, text in the new orthography was shorter by one-thirtieth.
The reform removed pairs of completely homophonous graphemes from the Russian alphabet (i.e., Ѣ and Е; Ѳ and Ф; and the trio of И, І and Ѵ), bringing the alphabet closer to the Russian language's actual phonological system.
According to critics, the choice of Ии as the only letter to represent that sound and the removal of Іі defeated the purpose of 'simplifying' the language, as Ии occupies more space and, furthermore, is sometimes indistinguishable from Шш.
The reform also created many homographs and homonyms, which used to be spelled differently. Examples: есть/ѣсть (is/to eat) and миръ/міръ (peace/world) became есть and мир in both instances.
Replacement of онѣ, однѣ, ея by они, одни, её was especially controversial, as these feminine pronouns were deeply rooted in the language and extensively used by writers and poets.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Civil Script”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.