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Mānoa Horizons

Volume 2 | Issue 1 Article 4

9-22-2017 Russian Orthographic Reform Martha . Holland University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

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Recommended Citation Holland, Martha A. (2017) "Russian Orthographic Reform," Mānoa Horizons: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/horizons/vol2/iss1/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Kahualike. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mānoa Horizons by an authorized editor of Kahualike. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Russian Orthographic Reform

Martha A. Holland

Linguistics 102 (Introduction to the Study of Language) Mentor: Dr. Anastasia Kostetskaya

To truly understand a society’ culture, study their language. The history of how the Rus- sian language developed mirrors how Russian society evolved and changed. The written record of how the changed and what influenced it sheds light on milestones within the language and, thus, its cultural as well. This paper takes a historical analysis of the from the early beginnings of the Glagolitic to modern Russian Cyrillic. This paper shows that Russian leadership in the past not only knew that language was key to a unified society, but manipulated it in such a way that would prevent any diversion from their attempts to control orthographic development and thus control an increasingly literate society. The paper will conclude with the most recent official changes to the modern , but with a greater understanding and appreciation for how it was forged in Russian society.

ery few have anything close to an equal cor- an overall standardizing body that all speakers of a lan- Vrespondence between and written charac- guage must recognize, as well as the promotion of the ters, where one character represents only one sound. If reform in a manner that speakers will accept and adopt. the language has a phonetic alphabet, where the charac- This is more difficult if the population has an established ters represent the pronunciation of words, it can a literary tradition, as compared to an illiterate population benefit to students. It has been a linguistic goal by writ- learning new for the first time. One unusual ers in several languages at various times to approach a example of multiple official reforms in a lan- more phonetic representation of the spoken language. guage is Russian. This paper seeks to describe the histo- Benjamin Franklin proposed in a 1779 essay an early ry of Russian orthographic reforms and their implications phonetic alphabet for English, but due to the lack of any for Russian pronunciation and Russian politics, with use overseeing body there have been no official reforms of of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Fig. 1.) to approx- the ’s orthography, only gradual refine- imately describe the sounds of the characters. ments through private bodies like . Spelling The Cyrillic alphabet used to write the Russian is usually the result of centuries of history and highly re- language has been reformed several times over the last sistant to reform. Any change in the language requires four centuries, with major official reforms in 1701, 1885,

I am a transplant from New England by way of Los Angeles. work full-time at a real estate firm, and part-time at a public health clinic in addition to pursuing full time studies at the University of Hawai‘i. I plan to graduate with a degree in Russian Studies and may pursue a graduate degree in the same. I wrote this piece after taking an introduction to linguistics along with my Russian major coursework and becoming fascinated with the origins of the language that I study. I wrote with the intention of taking what would otherwise be a dense, dull set of in- formation and making it accessible and interesting for readers outside of my particular field. With the guidance of Dr. Anastasia Kostetskaya and the Russian Department I am pleased to have wrought this paper into a form that presents a brief look into a thousand years of language history in a manner that engages the audience.

Mānoa Horizons, Vol. 2, 2017, pp. 11–19 Copyright © 2017 by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 11 12 Mānoa Horizons Vol. 2, Fall 2017

1918, and 1956. In the longer two large reforms diverse and the and additional cod- less contact there ifications, the Rus- is among them, sian alphabet has the more likely systematically re- these dialects will moved characters become separate and streamlined languages, whereas its phonemes and dialects with closer morphemes to contact will remain the detriment of dialects of the par- some diversity of ent language and of sound inventory, each other. Saints but ultimately to Cyril and Metho- the advantage of dius (Fig. 2.) are modernizing and believed to have simplifying the lan- designed the alpha- guage for ease of bet while introduc- use for a progres- ing Christianity to sively literate popu- Slavs in Moravia lation. The Russian at the request of reforms were - the Byzantine - forced by govern- peror Michael III mental policies in the 860s.There starting from - is no known Slav- ter the Great, pro- ic viding an official prior to their ex- standardizing body cursion. Cyril and to identify, evalu- Methodius invent- ate and implement ed the new writing them, and were system to translate aided by the forced religious liturgical compliance of the texts into the lan- Russian-speaking guage of Old Slav- population through ic, understandable manipulation of Figure 1 International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. to the general pop- printed media and ulation of the area censorship of improperly spelled words. and thus helpful to their quest of introducing and clar- The Cyrillic alphabet originated a thousand years ifying Christianity in the region. This original alphabet ago in the Glagolitic alphabet. It was specific to the Mace- subsequently contained characters derived from cursive donian dialects of the spoken , which Greek as well as new symbols to represent the phonetic fell into a continuum with many other Slavic lan- inventory of the that could not be easily guages. The dialect continuum is a theory of language represented using existing characters known to Cyril and evolution. It states that with lack of contact and natural Methodius. The origin of is particularly difficult language evolution, languages with the same parent lan- to trace—Cubberly states that it is possible that Cyril and guage will evolve into varying dialects. Over time, due to Methodius used Hebrew or Coptic symbols as sources for geography and lack of contact, these dialects will contin- the characters of Glagolitic. Another theory Cub- to diverge further and eventually lose mutual intel- berly posits is that Greek characters may have comprised ligibility along a continuum of contact and time. Thus, the vowels while Armenian characters the . Holland Russian Orthographic Reform 13

The Glagolitic alphabet was retained as Old Church Glagolitic IPA Name Slavonic for several centuries, and the saints’ names per- Ⰰ /a/ Az sisted into naming the evolving writing system Cyrillic Ⰱ // Buky after Saint Cyril. The alphabet spread over the next few Ⰲ /ʋ/ Vedi centuries to provide to other Slavic languages Ⰳ /g/ Glagoli along with the Orthodox faith. The original Glagolitic Ⰴ /d/ Dobro alphabet was primarily used for liturgy in the Orthodox Ⰵ /ɛ/ Jest Church, with thick-lined images not far removed from Ⰶ /ʒ/ Zhivete their carved originating logographic glyphs, and Greek Ⰷ /dz/ Dzelo borrowed letters. As the alphabet evolved into early Cyril- Ⰸ // Zemlja lic in order to better write the Old Slavonic Church lan- Ⰹ /i/, /j/ Izhe guage, several characters were dropped and the alphabet began to take a form that was easier to write in cursive Ⰺ /i/, /j/ Izhe with a quill.This evolution preserved some Macedonian Ⰻ /i/, /j/ I and Bulgarian spelling and phonetic conventions (Sulli- Ⰼ /dʑ/ Djervь van 1996). It dropped the (Ѫ /ja/, Ѭ /ju/, Ѧ /ja/, and Ⰽ /k/ Kako Ѩ /ju/). Each of these presented a nasal variety of /j/ with Ⰾ /l/, /ʎ/ Lyudie or without palatalization (the softening of consonants by Ⰿ /m/ Myslite applying a larger amount of the tongue to the palate in Ⱀ /n/, /ɲ/ Nash the mouth during pronunciation). This set of phonemes Ⱁ /ɔ/ On can be found as a legacy in modern Cyrillic as Й, which Ⱂ /p/ Pokoj also usually presents as /j/. Some parts of the original Ⱃ /r/ Rtsi sounds of the yuses have unfortunately been lost entirely. Ⱄ /s/ Slovo Each of these characters represented a sound found else- Ⱅ /t/ Tverdo where in the Cyrillic alphabet, and thus redundant. As the Ⱆ // Glagolitic alphabet progressed into the form now call Ⱇ /f/ Fert Cyrillic, these redundancies only confused the spelling of Ⱈ // Kher words, as words could be spelled using a or another Ⱉ /ɔ/ Oht character. The loss of these characters reduced the na- Ⱋ /tʲ/, /ʃt/ Shta sal vowels available to the language, but standardized the Ⱌ /ts/ Tsi spelling of words so that they could be understood more Ⱍ /tʃ/ Cherv easily by a language community that was only slowly Ⱎ /ʃ/ gaining literacy. Some of the original phonetic values of Ⱏ /ɯ/ these vowels have, however, been lost entirely, and while ⰟⰉ /ɨ/ one can surmise that the loss of the yuses to the language Ⱐ /ə/ Yer’ was no great change, it is reasonable to assume that vari- ation in pronunciation was simplified by the loss of com- Ⱑ /æ/, /jɑ/ plexity and detail. One peculiarity of the of the Ⱖ /jo/ Jo original Bulgarian origins has also persisted into modern Ⱓ /ju/ Ju Russian speech, as the suffixesого - (-ovo) and -его (-evo) Ⱔ /ɛ/̃ Small Yus are pronounced /ovə/ and /jevə/ respectively despite the Ⱗ /jɛ/̃ Small Iotated Yus orthographic indication (or spelling,) to pronounce these Ⱘ /ɔ/̃ Big Yus phonemes as /ogə/ and /jegə/ (Jakobson, 1955). Ⱙ /jɔ/̃ Big Iotated Yus While the printing press was first introduced to Ⱚ /θ/ in 1564, it did not gain instant popularity and Ⱛ /ʏ/, /i/ world-changing power as it had in Western . In- stead, the most well-known, if not the originator, of the Figure 2 Glagolitic Alphabet with reconstructed IPA Pronun- Russian press, Ivan Fyodorov, languished and eventu- ciation. ally quit printing after a failed attempt and expulsion 14 Mānoa Horizons Vol. 2, Fall 2017 from Moscow and three more failed Petrine IPA Name He also sought to establish a European attempts in other cities. The printing identity for Russia while modernizing press slowly gained more usage over А /a/ A the country to adhere to the Enlight- the next few centuries until the reign Б /b/ Be enment principles that were sweeping of . Fyodorov’s most В /ʋ/ the European continent. Heavily influ- notable addition to the earliest printed Г /g/ Ghe enced by his Western European advi- Russian was his Primer of 1574, which Д /d/ sors, Peter built upon the ideals and introduced the Cyrillic alphabet of the Е /jɛ/ Ie reforms of his father Alexis (Smithers, time along with grammatical and or- Ж /ʒ/ 1904). Peter’s reform of Cyrillic spell- thographic notes as the first book an Ѕ /dz/ ing was called “civil script.” From its educated child should read. This was І /i/ I conjunction with his forcible Ortho- followed by books of prayers and other К /k/ dox church reforms and disregard for ecclesiastical works that he also print- Л /l/ the traditional Old Ways, it encoun- ed. This alphabet was presented in М /m/ Em tered protests like many of the Petrine acrostic poems to aid memorizations reforms. Peter attained the label of М /m/ Em of 45 characters, including two forms the Anti-Christ from the traditionalist Н /n/ En of zemlya /z/: one with a tail, , and Расколники (Raskolniki)—the resis- О // O one more resembling the modern з. tant conservative Old Believers who П /p/ Pe Fyodorov accounted for two forms of rejected any modernization of liturgy /u/ which he called “ik” or “uk,” for С /s/ and in pursuit of tradi- the characters $ and u. He included Т /t/ tional Russian values and history they various forms of the yuses, and he in- У /u/ U feared would be lost in reform—of the cluded both forms of /oy/ as ã and оѵ Ф /f/ Orthodox Church. Smithers (1904) using the character izhitsa. His Primer Х /x/ Ha states “adoption [was mandated] of the however was contradictory as several Ц /ts/ modern Russian alphabet in which to characters were omitted or added to in Ч /tɕ/ express the language as spoken—long subsequent sections, for a total of 45 or Ш /ʂ/ Sha before departed from its Slavonic vo- 44 characters depending on the part of Щ /ɕ/ cabulary and with but great difficul- the Primer. Fyodorov’s Primer is a fas- Ь ty expressible by the ancient Cyrillic cinating look into the contradictions Ѣ /ja/ Yat script”. A new, widespread education of early Cyrillic letters and printing, Ъ system was implemented to impart and the relationship of Old Church Ы /ɨ/ Yeru this revised orthography along with Slavonic to Russian and other Slavic Э // E Western knowledge. Civil script elim- languages, especially as Church Sla- Ю /ju/ inated more Glagolitic and obvious vonic continued to distinguish itself Я /ja/ Greek characters and all ex- from the vernacular spoken languages Ѳ /θ/ Fita cept for Й, which persists into modern of Muscovy and the surrounding terri- Cyrillic. The largest changes were to tories over the next few centuries (Ja- replace the Greek characters with more Figure 3 Petrine Civil Script, c. kobson, 1955). 1708, with reconstructed IPA pro- Russian characters, producing a more In the 18th century, Peter the nunciation. recognizable form of Cyrillic from the Great introduced the first governmen- Old Slavonic Glagolitic alphabet. This tal orthographic reform as part of his change also introduced the symbols highly protested Westernizing overhaul of reforms on of the hard sign ъ and soft sign ь, which lead to later Russian culture. Peter had been highly influenced by clarification of pronunciation in the hard and soft vowel Western European culture and wanted to bring that cul- and system of the modern Russian language. ture to all Russia, and instituted many reforms during Some of the removals were originally from Greek, Ѡ /o/, his reign. He found himself at odds with the power of Ѯ /‌ks/, Ѱ /ps/, and S /z/. Three of these phonemes per- the Orthodox Church and sought to wrest that power for sist into modern Russian, and only two as separate char- himself, partially by undermining the Church’s language. acters in the Cyrillic alphabet; О and З. Ѱ is written out Holland Russian Orthographic Reform 15 as Пс. This reduced calligraphy and updated the Russian a special following character ь. Grot’s vowels created a alphabet for use with moveable type printing presses system of 6 hard vowels with their own signifierъ if not (Greenberg, 2016). There was a loss of diacritics that also assumed hard by the subsequent vowel, which could be made printing easier, and continued to spread literacy via indicated to be soft with a matching set of vowel charac- the printing press’ accessibility to more speakers of the ters. Hard А /a/ becomes soft Я /ja/,Э /ɜ/ becomes soft Russian language. “A Russian print culture as something Е /jɜ/,О /o/ becomes Ё /jo/, У /u/ becomes Ю /ju/, Ы /ɨ/ distinct from manuscript cultures was a product of the becomes И /i/, and the persisting Й /j/ is considered a Petrine revolution. Petrine civic type not merely looked near-silent consonant. After Grot’s work was interrupted different; it was used for new kinds of books, a new type by his death, little changed in written Russian until the for a new culture.” (Franklin, 2011.) Peter instituted a Revolution, but spoken Russian continued to increasing- policy of using print for all mass-distributed government ly have contact with other languages and continued to proclamations, and thus required standardized symbols change according to the nature of language. for the Russian alphabet. It also served the purpose of Alexei Shakhmatov in the Assembly for Consider- removing control of written language from the Orthodox ing Simplification of the Orthography took the occasion Church, which continued to use Old Slavonic for liturgy. of the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian government Petrine reforms placed writing and literacy into larger in 1917 to work to update to fit the and more public domains with consistent spelling and new Soviet rule. These regular spoken language changes therefore consistent meaning. Franklin (2011) notes that created phonetic dissonance from the alphabet as Greno- the new alphabet resembled common cursive forms that ble (2003) notes in her thesis on Soviet , developed outside of the Church, but the new printed “making a poor match between orthography and sounds.” alphabet did not. Peter’s “civil script” came to be “pre- Certain phonemes had fallen into disuse and others were dominantly associated not just with secular content but not used at all, so that learning Russian was very difficult specifically with print.” This diversity of cursive manu- for the population, and for the Soviet campaign for liter- script prevented clarity and understanding of written acy. The reforms of 1917 from the Assembly for Consid- Russian, requiring future reform and standardization. ering Simplification of the Orthography were adopted by After the Petrine reforms, literary Russian con- the Ministry for Popular Education in 1918 (Vinogradav tinued to evolve especially under Catherine the Great’s 1963). These reforms also decreed that the new orthog- continued push for printed media, introducing the raphy be used in all publications in the newly formed ё /jo/, replacing ѵ /i/ with и /i/ as they were the same USSR, removing all the old characters from printing of- sound, and replacing ѣ /е/ with е, and Ѳ /fj/, withф fices just as Peter the Great had done, thus insisting on /f/ or т /t/, both with similar if not exact phonetic value consistent spelling and usage despite regional variations (Sullivan, 1996). The textbook of Yakov Karlovich Grot by lack of printed options. The changes eliminated fur- in 1885 introduced a codification of Russian literary or- ther characters such as the Ӏ /i/ that was replaced with И thography that lasted until the next major spelling re- /i/, and the “mute yer” ъ as an inflection signifier in the form of the October Revolution in 1917. This textbook final position was almost completely eradicated except in was used to standardize written Russian in twenty-one some arcane words (Perelstvaig 2017). successive editions for innumerable students. His or- As Russian became the lingua franca, the language of thographic rules persist in the convoluted but consis- common communications, of the through tent Russian spelling conventions to the modern day, shifting policies from a right to native language instruc- especially in the choice of which vowel to use based on tion under Lenin, to increased under Sta- hardness or softness (palatization) of the preceding con- lin and finally compulsory Russian instruction (and the sonant (­Grigorovich-Barsky 1962, Cheshko 1963). The replacement of native and -based alphabets, which palatalization of the consonant preceding the vowel were were briefly used in the 1930s). Under Khrushchev af- enshrined in Grot’s textbook, which continues to define ter Stalin, and Brezhnev after Khrushchev, the Cyrillic spoken pronunciation to this day. Soft consonants are alphabet dominated all languages, and the codification palatal, pronounced with the tongue lifted to the palate in of orthography became even more important to forming the mouth, creating a much softer sound that can be dif- a unified Soviet national identity. Lenin had placed great ficult to hear if one is unfamiliar with the language, and emphasis on how language was to be used in the new in Russian are denoted by the following vowel or with Soviet Union, and imparted his views to Soviet language 16 Mānoa Horizons Vol. 2, Fall 2017 planners. Under the influence of the linguist Nicholas and loss of heritage. Gilyak, or Nivkh, in also had Yakovlevich Marr and his unsupported theories, Lenin a writing system, but it was converted to Cyrillic in 1953. had at first placed emphasis on the “natural right” of the The Baltics and had high literacy and their own non-Russian speakers of the USSR to develop their own long history of written tradition, but also relatively large lexicon and orthography to adapt to the great changes Russian populations that led to easy integration into of Socialism and the new political realities (Grenoble, the Soviet Union and bilingualism, especially once Cy- 2003.) Linguists documented previous unwritten lan- rillic was mandated as the alphabet of all languages in guages, and provided latinate alphabets to record them, Union states. Up to 80% of the population in the Soviet as a political distance from the recently overthrown Tsa- Union by the 1980s claimed fluency as first or second rist empire. Marr proposed in his disproven Japhetic the- language speakers of Russian. Almost every language ory of language development in the 1920s that language was required to use the Cyrillic alphabet, regardless of families supported one universal language underneath, phonetic appropriateness, after the failed shift to latinate which was best expressed in Indo-European languages, alphabets. Behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union had particularly Russian, and purported that all languages absorbed these many smaller republics with their own would eventually evolve into large zonal languages, be- national identities and languages, and replaced these fore further evolving in “leaps and bounds” to one uni- identities and languages with uniform Russian through versal language—which under Russian Socialism would state-provided education and government and other pub- naturally be the Russian language. This supported the lic domains of language use. These languages often had principles of Socialism well, as it stated that language to borrow many words to adopt the new Soviet lexicon, itself would evolve to be Socialist. After Marr’s death and the Common Rule was issued in the 1940s to insist however, the Soviet Union under Stalin reversed course that any spelling of loanwords follow the Russian spell- as Marr’s Japhetic theory was discarded when language ing, irrespective of how those words were spelled or pro- change was shown to be too gradual to support Socialist nounced in the native language. This led to significant goals. Instead Soviet language planners began to provide confusions especially in education for young children and Russified other languages in the who had to learn Russian spelling and in or- Union as much as possible in a lexical purge of foreign der to spell their own native languages, and the Common words as Russian was established as the only acceptable Rule was repealed shortly thereafter (Grenoble, 2003.) lingua franca of the Soviet Union to the detriment of A smaller codification was initiated by the Academy previous “culture languages” (Ornstein, 1959.) This Rus- of Sciences in 1956 under the linguist Vinogradov, with sification was seen from outside perspectives as a con- suggestions and an amendment in 1964. These built on tinuation of previous policies under Tsarist Russia, and the earlier reforms of 1917, seeking to further reduce and remains a force today now for economic reasons. remove foreign words, or to make loanwords significant- Russian was not the only spoken language of the ly more Russian in spelling and pronunciation. This last Soviet Union, however, as it dominated the public do- official codification sought to make the alphabet more mains of education, administration and government, it phonetically resemble spoken Russian. This formalized supplanted many of the minority languages found within several of the rules first instituted by Grot in his text- the vast expanse of Russia especially after the education book, as laid out in “A Pedagogical Journal of Russian” reforms of 1958–59 under Khrushchev. These education- in 1956, in an article entitled “Toward Reform of Russian al reforms posited that Russian should be the language Orthography,” originally found in the 1964 publication of of all education and thus no longer supported instruction Русский язык в национальной школе, Russkiĭ iazyk nat- in the native language of many areas; Russian language sional’noĭ shkole (Russian Language in National Schools), gradually or immediately became a compulsory subject number 6. This reviews the 1956 reforms and suggests from the earliest ages of education. Other languages also further reforms that were not officially taken up by the had their own writing systems—as an example, Mongo- Soviet Union policy makers. These suggested reforms lian had a centuries-old literary tradition with its own al- follow and expand upon the rules first instituted by Grot, phabet, but with the Soviet system of forcible relocation asking for official ruling on several items that had already especially enforced upon minority populations, minority been a literary standard and suggesting further clarifica- language communities were severely weakened through tions of spelling and grammar. loss of speakers, forced disuse of their own orthography, Specifically, the reforms prohibited the use of the Holland Russian Orthographic Reform 17 soft consonant marker ь after any word with elements of words, but the continued existence of adjectives ending сверх- (sverkh- /svɛrx/), меж- (mezh- /mɛʐ/), трех- (tʀekh- with -енский show that others were not. /trɛx/), четырех- (chetyrekh- /tɕɪtɨrɛx/), пан- (pan- /pɑn/), The original reforms declared the letters ы /ɨ/ and транс- (trans- /trɑns/), and контр- (kontr- /kɐntr/). These и /i/ are to follow prefixes. Joint and separate spelling suggestions also posited that ц should always be followed slightly changed some pronunciation rules by mandating by и, confirmingц and some of the other characters as that verbs must keep the negative particle не separate, but universally soft consonants by mandated use of the soft adjectives, like nouns and adverbs, may attach не when vowel. Similarly, these suggestions posited that after the expressing a complete idea, with the acknowledgement husher consonants ж, ч, ш, and щ, о /o/ should be written that it is acceptable to substitute any joined spelling with when the syllable is stressed, and е (/jɜ/ or /ɨ/) should be separated spelling if the word can also be used without written when not stressed, a familiar rule to students of the negation не. Since these words are pronounced with Russian. Like the rule on ц, the suggestions prohibited the the negation run into the beginning of the next word, use of ь after the same husher consonants, affirming their only the slowest or most particular of speakers would status as soft palatalized consonants as well. Alternation have been affected, but it did seek to clarify spoken and was prohibited in root spellings such as гар- (gar- /gaɹ/), written Russian and distinguish negation between verbs гор- (gor- /goɹ/), раст- (rast- /raɟt/), рост- (rost- /ro‌ ɟt/), and and other parts of speech, especially for a nation of many зор- (zor- /‌zoɹ/), зар- (zar- /zaɹ/) so that only one root was new Russian learners. used for consistency, which while confusing accurate lin- Adverbs were likewise standardized. The new rules guistic tracing of the Russian language would encourage stated adverbs which come after prefixes with a follow- a more consistent spelling and pronunciation. These root ing part that is not used separately like nouns, should words change pronunciation based on the location of em- be written together; that adverbs with solid and tempo- phasis in the word, so that as an example either /gaɹ/, rary meaning should be written together; and adverbs /gɑɹ/ or /goɹ/ could also be pronounced /gʌɹ/ or /gəɹ/, formed with the combination of prepositions or verbal depending on the , thus Vinogradov’s suggestion to nouns (with roots in к or other suffixes) should be writ- remove alternate spellings of the root makes more sense. ten together. Words with separate adverbial meanings, The suffixesинский - (-inskiĭ /ɪnski/) and -енский (-enskiĭ when placed with prepositions and adverbial nouns that /ɛnski/) were suggested to combine to only -инский, as do not change meaning with the inserted attribute and the suffixesец - (-ets /ɛts/) and -иц (its /ɪts/) were to com- when the noun is not declined, were also instructed to be bine to only -иц, which would have forced a slight change written together, but it was permitted to write together or in pronunciation as well, but more phonetic consistency separate adverbial units which represent transitive parts with current pronunciation. of speech, such as between adverbs and particles as in There was reiteration of eliminating doubled conso- case constructions (Vinogradov, 1963). nants in foreign loanwords, however permitting them in There were additional spelling and certain Russian words. The grammatical note also per- conventions for the use of quotation marks and capi- mitted doubled consonants in suffixes, but not in prefix- talization, as well as new rules for printed media con- es. Another requested change was to combine genitive cerned hyphenation and carrying letters to the next line case nouns and ordinal numbers with to form in print—new concerns for better readability of Soviet one synthetic word and increase understanding by at- publications. One specification instructed not to break taching the one part to another. It was also suggested to off the charactersь or ъ from preceding syllables. The combine nouns (especially from foreign roots 1956 reforms also purported to finally remove theъ from like унтер- and обер-, unter- and ober- from German) be- print, however modern usage of the character persists ginning with вице- (vitse- /vitsɛ/), унтер- (unter- /ʊntər/), as a matter of phonetic necessity to indicate hard conso- обер- (ober- /obɛr/), экс- (ex- /ɜks/), лейб- (leĭb- /leɪb/), nants when there is not a succeeding vowel, and doubled and штаб- (shtab- /ʂtab/) together with prefixes including consonants also remain in more words deriving from вне- (vne- /vnʲɛ/), после- (posle- /poslə/), ультра- (ul’tra- Russian roots (Grigorovich-Barsky 1962, Cheshko 1963.) /ʊltrɑ/) and initial composite parts пан- (pan- /pɑn/), Across all languages in the Soviet Union, “When a квази- (kvazi- /kvazɪ/), and псевдо- (psevdo- /psʲɛdə/). new term is needed . . . it must not be created anew but Some of these suggestions were accepted, like the re- must boldly be taken from Russian, which is the richest peated request to eliminate doubled consonants in loan- of languages and which in the Soviet Union is the inter- 18 Mānoa Horizons Vol. 2, Fall 2017 national language” (Bolshevik No.8, 1952; cited in Greno- with the addition of new foreign loanwords and the grad- ble 2003.) This introduced a large expansion of Russian ual linguistic changes of all languages. words into the lexicon of all the languages of the USSR, Despite reforms across several centuries, current and introduced Russian spellings wherever possible as spelling is still not entirely phonetic (Lizubugova, 1964). well as pronunciation. Between specifications of gram- Current orthography shows some phonetic changes such mar and spelling for a new mass printed media era, the as palatalization with the use of the silent signifierь , the Soviets sought absolute control over the language and in- persistence of the character ъ to indicate a lack of pal- formation consumed in their associated lands. Any action atalization, segment deletion in certain word structures that encouraged a single Russian national identity in the when declined, and the replacement of dental or velar USSR and rejected foreign influence continued a tradi- consonants with palatal versions of the same sounds tion of Russian identification through its speech commu- (Derwing & Priestly, 1980). Certain phonetic changes nity, and further encouraged the cohesion of the Soviet found in spoken Russian are however not shown by or- Union. These reforms were not as effective as removing thography and must simply be learned as esoteric rules, objectionable letters from the printing presses, which en- such as , which shows a change in pro- forced spelling absolutely. Further Soviet reforms had to nunciation that alters the sound of a vowel depending be enforced by censors watching every piece of written on where the stressed syllable is located in a word, and language, striking any incorrect spellings, grammatical final consonant devoicing, where voiced consonants are errors, and their writers. pronounced as their voiceless equivalents if at the end Marked shift to Russification of language in the sec- of a syllabic unit (Elson, 1975). Compared to the origi- ond half of Soviet Union’s existence further decreased nating alphabets of Glagolitic, Old Slavonic, and Old any influence that other languages had in the Soviet Cyrillic, each reform has purported to reduce duplicated sphere. Russian was the dominant language, and Soviet phonemes and approach as close as possible to a 1:1 cor- language planners sought to clarify and expand the influ- respondence between sound and character. ence of the Russian language ostensibly so all citizens of the Soviet Union could participate in their government, understand official media, and communicate with one Conclusion another. The grand goal of Stalin’s linguistic policy to see Socialism play out in the reduction of languages and Each , whether official or due to the nat- eventual emergence of one global language of commu- ural evolution of the written language, has sought to nication was furthered by his and later Soviet policy: of simplify the complexities of Russian orthography and to Russian as the official language, of print media mostly if bring it more in line with the actual pronunciation of the not only available in Russian, of education available but spoken language. The Petrine and Soviet reforms were only in the Russian language, and of deportations and re- very political, striking power from the Russian Orthodox locations of possibly problematic populations and speech Church and any perceived outside linguistic influences, communities. Through the end of the Soviet Union’s and seeking a more solidified, codified Russian identity regime these policies guided the development and through the spelling of the language. Both reforms also spread of the Russian language, with strict rules if not served to increase the literacy of the Russian language on pronunciation but on print, in spelling and grammar community by providing simpler and standardized spell- (Grenoble, 2003). The Soviet paradigm is only beginning ing for the vast vocabulary of the language, specifically to be usurped by the continued natural development of through printed medium in a growing number of pub- the Russian language past the fall of the Iron Curtain, lic domains. While modern Russian continues to adopt loanwords and stray towards variations of spelling, as А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З does any living language, the reduction of redundant И Й К Л М Н О П Р characters and the attempts to simplify already complex С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Russian orthography serve to effectively communicate the phonology of the Russian language throughout its Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я continuing evolution. Figure 4 Modern Holland Russian Orthographic Reform 19

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