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j/'; The use of i, j or ' after consonants
Topic Started: Aug 18 2008, 01:33 PM (4,113 Views)
IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
Quote:
 
Well, in my opinion it helps simplify the language if we DON'T have confusing rules like ja = я because that's two letters to one


Well, that's undeniably true!

Honestly, I don't mind not using them in the standard Cyrillic orthography of Slovianski, although I think it would be good to have them optionally.

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kon' + -a = konja (??)


Not so hard if you realise that ' is just j written at the end of the word, to prevent konj. No, I have bigger problems with sjagnut' vs. t'agnut'.

I know that many speakers of Slavic languages pronounce p'/pj differently from t'/tj. My point is only that I don't think we need to be explicit about this distinction in Slovianski. Heck, we don't even distinguish between i and y, so what would we need this kind of details for?

Also keep in mind that for most non-Slavic speakers the difference between, say, tj and t' is hardly audible or pronounceable.

Jan
Človeku, ktoromu je trudno s soboju samim, verojetno to bude trudno s vsim inim.

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iopq
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Quote:
 
Also keep in mind that for most non-Slavic speakers the difference between, say, tj and t' is hardly audible or pronounceable.
For most non-Slavic speakers the difference between t and d is hardly audible or pronounceable.

In English t is aspirated so both t and d in Slavic languages sound like d to English speakers.

Same thing with Mandarin Chinese, some German dialects and a lot of other languages that don't have one of the sounds.

Doesn't mean we should get rid of the t/d distinction. We should just focus on what is meaningful to Slavic speakers.

If you look at my Slovianski alphabet it will all be clear. I just have five letters t', d', l', r', n' and write j after all of the rest.

So the real argument is whether to write konja or kon'a. We agree on everything else.
Bo v c'omu žytti pomiž baletom i svobodoju zavždy potribno vybyraty svobodu, navit' jakščo ce čehoslovac'kyj general.
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IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
"Iopq"
 
[...]Doesn't mean we should get rid of the t/d distinction. We should just focus on what is meaningful to Slavic speakers.


Of course. But then, the i/y distinction is more than meaningful to most Slavic speakers. Yet, we abandoned it for the sake of simpliciation. I realise that a distinction betwen t'/d'/etc. and tj, dj make the language more naturalistic; but it also make it a hell of a lot more complicated. Too complicated for an IAL, if you ask me.

Quote:
 
If you look at my Slovianski alphabet it will all be clear. I just have five letters t', d', l', r', n' and write j after all of the rest.


Is it online somewhere? All I could find was something I copied from Google cache a while back? Unfortunately, even the Wayback Machine didn't preserve any of your Slovianski stuff, except for Slovjanskaj.

Anyway, what do we get? delan'e, mor'e? Or perhaps delan'je?

If you ask me, this is both ugly and unnecessary. Like I said, the spelling delanje, morje does not exclude the possibility of pronouncing them like [t'], [r'] etc., just like the spelling pjat' does not exclude the possibility of pronouncing it the Russian way.

Besides, there is another problem. How to cyrillicise the difference? In the я/ю-variant, we'd have both пять and тягнуть, wouldn't we? At least, I suppose we don't want to create monsters like пьять and тьягнуть! And even in the variant without я/ю, I'd suppose we would have пьать and тьагнуть. In any case I'd hope you are not seriously proposing пйать!...

I agree that Serbian has a few nice characters here, but IMO they shouldn't be used in non-Serbian Cyrillics. BTW, as you may have noticed, I've added those to my transliteration program.

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So the real argument is whether to write konja or kon'a. We agree on everything else.


Quite so!

Jan
Človeku, ktoromu je trudno s soboju samim, verojetno to bude trudno s vsim inim.

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Gabriel Svoboda

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Welcome back, Jan!

Till now I though that the current Slovianski orthography was the best possible one and I liked it very much, being prepared to defend it when I started to read this thread. But after reading this thread, I realised the advantages of your proposal.

It is a public secret that the current Slovianski spelling contained one completely unnatural feature: ьа, ьу.

But by your logic that ' (Latin) / ь (Cyrillic) is essentialy a way how to spell j where it would look ugly (telohronitelj, centraljni), the situation becomes quite simple: we can just always convert Latin "ja", "ju" to Cyrillic "я", "ю" and get an orthography that is very natural for Cyrillic Slavs and very simple for Latin Slavs. If anyone insits that djavol should not be pronounced d'avol, we can just write d'javol in Latin (the ' serves as an separator) and дьявол in Cyrillic (utilising the natural feature of the Russian orthography).

Latin je, ji (used mostly at the beginnig of the word) of course would not be unnatural йе, йи in Cyrillic, but rather є, ї. But jo > йо would probably be acceptable, it would only occur in foreign words (we have recently banned palatalisation before o) and Russian spells iodine as йод rather than ёд.
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IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
Quote:
 
Welcome back, Jan!


Thank you! Nice to be back after such a long break.

Quote:
 
Till now I though that the current Slovianski orthography was the best possible one and I liked it very much, being prepared to defend it when I started to read this thread. But after reading this thread, I realised the advantages of your proposal.

It is a public secret that the current Slovianski spelling contained one completely unnatural feature: ьа, ьу.

But by your logic that ' (Latin) / ь (Cyrillic) is essentialy a way how to spell j where it would look ugly (telohronitelj, centraljni), the situation becomes quite simple: we can just always convert Latin "ja", "ju" to Cyrillic "я", "ю" and get an orthography that is very natural for Cyrillic Slavs and very simple for Latin Slavs.


That is precisely what I was hinting at: it is essentially one letter: in Latin written as j when preceded or followed by a vowel and as ' in other cases, and in Cyrillic as ь after a consonant and as й in all other cases (ьа/йа and ьу/йу become я/ю, but that's a different thing). In others words, '/j and ь/й are completely complementary.

Actually, that is how my new transliteration program works: first, it turns all occurrences of j, ' and i before a vowel into j, and after that starts redistributing them according to the different orthographies.

Quote:
 
If anyone insits that djavol should not be pronounced d'avol, we can just write d'javol in Latin (the ' serves as an separator) and дьявол in Cyrillic (utilising the natural  feature of the Russian orthography).


Indeed, that can be done quite easily.

Quote:
 
Latin je, ji (used mostly at the beginnig of the word) of course would not be unnatural йе, йи in Cyrillic, but rather є, ї. But jo > йо would probably be acceptable, it would only occur in foreign words


Hmm, I'd be very hesitant to introduce Ukrainian letters. I know йе is ugly, but in this case we don't really have an alternative.

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(we have recently banned palatalisation before o)


In the instrumental singular, yes. But we still have the genitive plural putjov, right? At least, I would be very much against turning it into putjev!

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and Russian spells iodine as йод rather than ёд.


Quite. Besides, in Ukrainian the sequence is completely normal, AFAIK.

Cheers,
Jan
Človeku, ktoromu je trudno s soboju samim, verojetno to bude trudno s vsim inim.

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iopq
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йо is also completely normal in Bulgarian
BUT I've been using the Serbian Cyrillic for Slovianski so I never had a problem
After talking with Gabriel we figured out that most languages don't distinguish more from morje anyway except for Czech and Polish
Russian always uses the soft variant, Ukrainian always uses the hard

in regards to your y/i comment most languages just use i after soft consonants and y after hard regardless of etymology so that difference has been nullified in most Slavic languages

Russian ky/ki has been merged to ki, while z'y/z'i has been merged to z'y (but spelled z'i)

so the i/y distinction, although absent in Serbian, would not be useful in the language that allows the distinction between knjiga and nisam
I mean, there would be no difference if it was spelled kniga and nysam (with y pronounced as in Czech)

I don't know about putjov
first of all, putej is a more common form in the languages I know
it also applies to konej and other soft consonant roots

in Polish you have the -y/-i ending for gen. pl. like hotel -> hoteli and not *hotelów
dzień -> dni and not *dniów

Czech has the form dní although dnů also exists as per wiktionary
Slovene also has dni

etc.

I'd rather have -ej or -i because putej or puti is better
but in fact Russian has strojev where Slovak has strojov so I'd rather the rule was consistent among all declensions and conjugations rather than not
Bo v c'omu žytti pomiž baletom i svobodoju zavždy potribno vybyraty svobodu, navit' jakščo ce čehoslovac'kyj general.
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Silmethule
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Polish also has mecz -> meczów (and meczy as second variant), król -> królów (but with optional króli) etc., most and most words ending with soft has -ów in den. pl.

This will probably in some time become the one "correct" form of forming gen. pl. of masculin nouns.

So in m. -ov is easier and for Poles absolutely understandable.

But yes, for now ending -i (or sometimes -y) is more "correct" prescriptively.
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iopq
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Silmethule
Aug 21 2008, 04:57 PM
Polish also has mecz -> meczów (and meczy as second variant), król -> królów (but with optional króli) etc., most and most words ending with soft has -ów in den. pl.

This will probably in some time become the one "correct" form of forming gen. pl. of masculin nouns.

So in m. -ov is easier and for Poles absolutely understandable.

But yes, for now ending -i (or sometimes -y) is more "correct" prescriptively.

then again, if we do use -ov it has to change to -ev after a soft consonant
1. It's more consistent
2. Russian uses it consistently, even though it's obscured by yokanye

I'd rather use -i in a place where it's not supposed to be used than use -ov after a soft consonant and really make something that sounds bad
Bo v c'omu žytti pomiž baletom i svobodoju zavždy potribno vybyraty svobodu, navit' jakščo ce čehoslovac'kyj general.
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IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
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йо is also completely normal in Bulgarian

Well, one more reason to leave it intact!

Quote:
 
BUT I've been using the Serbian Cyrillic for Slovianski so I never had a problem
After talking with Gabriel we figured out that most languages don't distinguish more from morje anyway except for Czech and Polish
Russian always uses the soft variant, Ukrainian always uses the hard


I’d opt for morje, because otherwise we’d end up with the genitive mora. Which sounds more like a meat snack to me! ;)

Quote:
 
in regards to your y/i comment most languages just use i after soft consonants and y after hard regardless of etymology so that difference has been nullified in most Slavic languages


Oh, I’m certainly not proposing introducing y into Slovianski. If anything, it would be much too late for that now.

Quote:
 
Russian ky/ki has been merged to ki, while z'y/z'i has been merged to z'y (but spelled z'i)


As far as I know, all occurrences of ki come from ky; Early Common Slavic *ki had long been changed to či. Same goes for ži, only the opposite.

Quote:
 
so the i/y distinction, although absent in Serbian, would not be useful in the language that allows the distinction between knjiga and nisam
I mean, there would be no difference if it was spelled kniga and nysam (with y pronounced as in Czech)


Well, agreed of course. The only thing that I find sometimes hard to swallow is the lack of difference between bit’ and bit’.

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I don't know about putjov
first of all, putej is a more common form in the languages I know
it also applies to konej and other soft consonant roots

in Polish you have the -y/-i ending for gen. pl. like hotel -> hoteli and not *hotelów
dzień -> dni and not *dniów


Actually, hotelów is quite common in Polish. And so are for example mężów, bojów etc.

Quote:
 
I'd rather have -ej or -i because putej or puti is better
but in fact Russian has strojev where Slovak has strojov so I'd rather the rule was consistent among all declensions and conjugations rather than not


Dniów would be completely understandable to a Pole. Putej or konej much less so. In any case, I wouldn’t be in favour of –ej, -i or –ev in this case. Several Slavic languages tolerate –iov without any problem. If you ask me, any other solution is introducing irregularity (even a completely new declension) without achieving substantially greater naturalism. After all, Slovianski is supposed to be a highly simplified language; six cases and three genders is already bad enough for a lot of people. If we start introducing even more declensions, they’ll accuse us of reinventing Russian/Polish/other Slavic languages, and not without right.

Okay, I agree that mojo/tvojo etc. had to be changed. As far as I am concerned, that’s the only place were we really needed to make the change. I’m not sure about the instrumental singular, and even much less so about the genitive plural. And say, what would be the dative plural of put’, if not putjom?

Jan

Človeku, ktoromu je trudno s soboju samim, verojetno to bude trudno s vsim inim.

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Gabriel Svoboda

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Anyway, it seems like the name Slovianski is obsolete by now. I guess it should now either be Slovijanski, Slovjanski, Slov'anski or even Slovyanski!


Yes, but that's an advantage - we can distinguish between Slovianski jazik and slovjanske jaziki. :-)

Quote:
 
I'd opt for morje, because otherwise we'd end up with the genitive mora.


Well, we already have two neuter declensions (-o and -e), don't we? So they can be different more than just in singular nominative. Mesto > mesta, more > morja [mor'a].

Quote:
 
At least, I would be very much against turning it into putjev!


Well, I guess that the phonological evolution was something like [put'ov] > [put'ev] > [put'ew] > [put'ej]. So putev might look like a good middle form between put'ov and putej, wouldn't it?
BTW, put' is feminine in Czech, but it is of course not supported by a majority of languages.

Quote:
 
Hmm, I'd be very hesitant to introduce Ukrainian letters. I know йе is ugly, but in this case we don't really have an alternative.


We have - not to sacrify naturality for easy typing. I know, that's a matter of preferences, but I wouldn't like to go back in terms of naturality of orthography. It was unnatural to write ньу, but at least it could have been perceived as a "desligatured" variant of natural Serbian њу; but йе is not an option, there is no way to justify it. If you want an easy typing on a Russian keyboard, we'd have to have je = е and e = э, which would give us a Belarusian-like result. Personally I consider Belarusian to have the ugliest Cyrillic orthography of all Slavic languages, but I could live with it, because it is natural. However, I wouldn't know how to distinguish ji from i in such a spelling if Ukra*nian letters are not allowed.
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IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
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Well, we already have two neuter declensions (-o and -e), don't we? So they can be different more than just in singular nominative. Mesto > mesta, more > morja [mor'a].


Not really. They are one declension, really. Except for the e/o thing in the nominative singular, they are identical.

Quote:
 
So putev might look like a good middle form between put'ov and putej, wouldn't it?


As a middle form it would be good. But, what’s wrong with putjov?

When I invented Slovianski-N 27 months ago, it was because I wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to have a Slavic interlanguage with six cases and little or no irregularities - as an naturalistic alternative to pidginesque and schematic solutions. What I liked pretty much about the idea was the it turned out to be possible to make one declension for all masculine nouns, one for all neuter nouns and two for all feminine nouns. The process goes:
- we need a genitive plural for masculine nouns...
- well, we have -ov, -ev, -ej, -i, -u, …, …
- does one of them exist in all Slavic languages?
- yes, -ov does
- ok, praise the Lord, so let’s have -ov then!
Every Slav will instantly recognise -ov as a masc.gen.pl. And that’s where we should stop. Reasoning like: under phonological condition X sound Y should become Z are only making things harder. It even may lead to a higher degree of naturalism, but understandability will be improved only marginally (and for f.ex. Poles it will rather make it less understandable). It would also mean abandoning the original design principles of Slovianski-N: instead of “a Slavic interlanguage based with little or irregularity based on forms that exist in most if not all Slavic languages”, we’d end up with “a Slavic interlanguage based on everything the Slavic languages have in common”.

As an artlanger, I love the idea of a hypothetical descendant of Common Slavic. Declension and conjugation tables? Yummy! But for an auxlang it won’t fly. Slovianski can still be reminiscent of a hypothetical descendant of Common Slavic, though, since there are natlangs too that simplify declension etc. a lot.

Quote:
 
BTW, put' is feminine in Czech, but it is of course not supported by a majority of languages.


No, and besides, it wouldn’t solve our problem. Put’ is only one example, but we also have boj, muž etc. to consider.

Quote:
 
Quote:
 
Hmm, I'd be very hesitant to introduce Ukrainian letters. I know йе is ugly, but in this case we don't really have an alternative.


We have - not to sacrify naturality for easy typing. I know, that's a matter of preferences, but I wouldn't like to go back in terms of naturality of orthography. It was unnatural to write ньу, but at least it could have been perceived as a "desligatured" variant of natural Serbian њу; but йе is not an option, there is no way to justify it. If you want an easy typing on a Russian keyboard, we'd have to have je = е and e = э, which would give us a Belarusian-like result. Personally I consider Belarusian to have the ugliest Cyrillic orthography of all Slavic languages, but I could live with it, because it is natural. However, I wouldn't know how to distinguish ji from i in such a spelling if Ukra*nian letters are not allowed.


Yes, but one of the original design principles of Slovianski was that every Slav can write it on his own keyboard without extra tools. Every Cyrillic alphabet has я/ю, except Serbian. That’s why we added ја/ју for the Serbians. But Ukrainian letters? No one but the Ukrainians can write them! And I’m not even sure if the average Russian, Bulgarian or Serbian John Doe will even understand the characters when he sees them. He might note that йе is ugly, but he will at least understand it.

As for ji, IMO we don’t need that sequence at all. Polish just write i in such cases: stoi instead of stoji. In Slovianski it works. AFAIK there is no Slavic language where y follows a vowel or j.
Look at a word like “Serbija/Сербия”. The genitive “Serbiji/Сербийи” looks hopeless in both Latin and Cyrillic. IMO it should be “Serbii/Сербии” in both cases.

Jan
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iopq
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more already implies that the r was soft historically because the only nouns that end in -e are the ones who had a soft letter before it

so morje and more are just graphical/sound variants
any noun that ends in -e by default has a -ja plural anyway

but I'm fine writing morje

Quote:
 
As an artlanger, I love the idea of a hypothetical descendant of Common Slavic.

That's the only way to choose NORMAL forms of words
otherwise we get wack Slovio shit like completely different reflexes in the same words

zlato/molotok? give me a break

I think that it should not be putjov though because no language has -jov in gen. plural
you can't really count Russian it's even spelled ев

Quote:
 
[put'ov] > [put'ev] > [put'ew] > [put'ej]

more like two competing forms were used and some languages used one, some used the other

I think -i and -ej are cognates from something like *ьj, but not -ov which is a cognate with ů

-ji can be also replaced with -i pretty easily

but if we keep logically extending the changes you make to the alphabet we get initial -е in Cyrillic like so:
Мне потребна еда.
Mne potrebna jeda.

йе is not a choice, it just doesn't exist outside of anomalies
Bo v c'omu žytti pomiž baletom i svobodoju zavždy potribno vybyraty svobodu, navit' jakščo ce čehoslovac'kyj general.
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Gabriel Svoboda

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As for ji, IMO we don’t need that sequence at all.


OK, you are right. According to the Slavic names for Ukraine, -i- has 3,5 votes (Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Bulgarian/Macedonian), -ji- has 2,5 votes (Ukrainian, Czech-Slovak, Serbian/Croatian/Slovenian). What a pity, Slovianski now loses the feature I liked so much, that j is written wherever pronounced and the reader doesn't have to make up anything. But fair enough.

Quote:
 
Yes, but one of the original design principles of Slovianski was that every Slav can write it on his own keyboard without extra tools.


Good a design principle, but I am afraid it was just a nice night dream. After waking up, the only universal Cyrillic letters are:

а б в г д е ж з к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш

With no possibility to write [ i ] or [ j ], such alphabet is unusable. So we still have to pick some non-universal letters and say their non-universality is negligible. You say it about я/ю, I say it about є/ї; it's obviously you who is more right, but none of us has followed the original design principle of Slovianski.

So the only remaining natural variant is the Belarusian spelling - э [e], е [je]/['e]. To lower the frequency of э (this letter is why I hate the Belarusian spelling), е would always be written after softenable consonants:

Украински министер од заграничне вэшчи сказал, чо Украина есть приготовэна отворить своя противракэтна оброна к эвропэйскэ и ине чуджэ сили.

Transliteration to Latin:
э > e
е > je

Ukrainski ministjer od zagraničnje vešči skazal, čo Ukraina jest' prigotovena otvorit' svoja protivraketna obrona k evropejske i inje čudže sili.

Ugly, but natural at least for Belarusians (unlike йе natural for nobody), and still quite easily transliterable.
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iopq
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Well if you're talking about and [j] then we have two variants:
и/і and й/j which exist on every Slavic keyboard

I'm still using the Serbian/Macedonian spelling

btw, I like the pronunciation prigotovjena because the verb is prigotovit' which produces a j after adding the -en for the passive since it's an -it' verb

Why does it make a difference? Because I'd like the option of writing korabl' instead of korab, and also prigotovlen
the vj -> vl' change as well as other labial+j -> labial+l' are useful and the majority of Slavic languages had this change
Bulgarian later simplified it back, so only West Slavic didn't undertake this change
East + South > West
you might disagree with that, but at least give a backwards compatibility so if we decide not to use vl', we can at least translate from prigotovjen to prigotovlen and vice versa

so in Gabriel's version we can at least write приготовен to indicate latin vj
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IJzeren Jan
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Jan van Steenbergen
Quote:
 
Quote:
 
As for ji, IMO we don’t need that sequence at all.


OK, you are right. According to the Slavic names for Ukraine, -i- has 3,5 votes (Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Bulgarian/Macedonian), -ji- has 2,5 votes (Ukrainian, Czech-Slovak, Serbian/Croatian/Slovenian). What a pity, Slovianski now loses the feature I liked so much, that j is written wherever pronounced and the reader doesn't have to make up anything. But fair enough.


Remember that Slovianski pronunciation is rather free. In other words, it doesn't really matter whether a person says "Ukrajina" or "Ukra-ina". Both are ok.

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Yes, but one of the original design principles of Slovianski was that every Slav can write it on his own keyboard without extra tools.


Good a design principle, but I am afraid it was just a nice night dream. After waking up, the only universal Cyrillic letters are:

а б в г д е ж з к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш

With no possibility to write [ i ] or [ j ], such alphabet is unusable. So we still have to pick some non-universal letters and say their non-universality is negligible.


As Igor noted, for [ j ] we have two variants: and й/j which exist on every Slavic keyboard.

As for [ i ], I'm not so sure. Every Slavic language except Belarussian has и. But how common are Belarussian keyboards? I don't know much about Belarus, but my intuition tells me that Russian keyboards are far more common there than Belarussian keyboards; besides, doesn't a Belarussian keyboard have и anyway?

If not, then we should indeed allow і.

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You say it about я/ю, I say it about є/ї; it's obviously you who is more right, but none of us has followed the original design principle of Slovianski.


On the contrary, я/ја and ю/ју are just as universal as й/j. That cannot be said of є/ї, because only Ukrainians can write them. In other words, even if we allow them for Ukrainians, we should find an alternative way of writing them by Russians, Belarussians, Serbs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians. Obvious, Serbs and Macedonians would write је/ји, but for the rest, I can't think of any other solution than йе.

As per the above, йи can be eliminated. But йе cannot be avoided. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. It's ugly, but the main purpose of Slovianski is to be understandable, not to be pretty.

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So the only remaining natural variant is the Belarusian spelling - э [e], е [je]/['e]. To lower the frequency of э (this letter is why I hate the Belarusian spelling), е would always be written after softenable consonants:


I'm against that. Again, э is far from universal (besides, I agree with you: overusing it looks ugly). It exists only in Russian and Belarussian, doesn't it? In other words, there should be an alternative for Ukrainians and Bulgarians.

Besides, what's the story about softenable consonants? Why would n be softenable and p wouldn't? The whole idea is that e may or may not be softening, and that it depends on the speaker how he pronounces it.

йе may not look nice, but it is understandable to anyone. If people really don't like it, I can imagine one other solution: that we use Cyrillic е for both [ e ] and [ je ]. How frequent is э in Russian? I'd say not so frequent at all. What MIGHT be possible is that we use ае for aje. That would leave us with two problems: how to handle cases like poet and how to distinguish between Estonija and jedat'?

Well, poet could be written as "по-ет". It's ugly, but it works. But at the beginning of words I really cannot imagine anything else but йе that is even remotely universal.

Jan
Človeku, ktoromu je trudno s soboju samim, verojetno to bude trudno s vsim inim.

Slovianski - Словянски - Словјански
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