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- Esperanto...in Cyrillic!
Esperanto...in Cyrillic!
Awhile back I'd posted expressing interest in alternate writing systems for Esperanto, among them Cyrillic, given the strong history of Esperanto in Russia and the fact I had seen Esperanto material in Cyrillic before but had no clue how to read it. Then I stumbled across this!
26 Comments
2104
Wow, this is really nice.
I have tried several times before to learn the sounds of the Cyrillic alphabet, and while I was able to do so, I always forgot it quickly because the sounds/letters were never presented in an order or pattern that made sense to me.
For example, the letter "Ж" was always likened to the letter "s" in treasure and pleasure, even though the English "S" sound was written with a Cyrillic "C". But when you compare the Cyrillic letters to their Esperanto equivalents (such as "Ж" is equivalent to "Ĵ"), it becomes much easier to me to understand the Cyrillic letters and the sounds they make.
Thanks for sharing, LazyRavenclaw!
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...except in slavic languages, where it is "ž".
In Upper Sorbian (Hornjoserbski), many letters exist in two forms, hard and soft, example ч (ĉ): ćett (hard) and čej (soft). Don't quote me on that, but I seem to remember there are hard (ź) and soft (ž) variants of the ж-sound (ĵ), too.
It is interesting even in latinised serbo-croatian, ĝ is written as "dž"; cyrillic serbo-croatian has a single letter "џ" for it.
If you "mix" serbian cyrillic with one letter from Belarussian and one from Tartaric ("һ" for "h"), you get a 1:1 correspondence of Esperanto to cyrillic. The only diacritic sign you need is the breve in "ŭ", belarussian "ў", everything else is unmodified.
You can chose whether you want to follow the Ukrainian system, G=Ґ and H=Г, or the common cyrillic G=Г with Tartar H=Һ.
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This article presents only one possible system. I made a Cyrillic converter for Esperanto that supports several systems (with Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian letters, etc.).
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It looks great, I like it.
DK4XK made a system that, besides the Esperanto Chapeloj, also makes it possible to spell the whole ICAO alphabet:
| letero | nomo | korespondas kirile | fonto |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | alfa | А а | ICAO |
| b | bravo | Б б | ICAO |
| c | caro,cetinje | Ц ц | originala,jugoslava |
| ĉ | ĉelovjek | Ч ч | rusa |
| d | delta | Д д | ICAO |
| e | eko/exo(eĥo) | Е е | ICAO |
| f | fokstrott | Ф ф | ICAO |
| g | golf | Ґ ґ (ukraina) aŭ Г г | ICAO |
| ĝ | ĝamija | Џ џ | jugoslava |
| h | hotel | Г г (ukraina) aŭ Һ һ | ICAO |
| ĥ/x | xariton (ĥariton) | Х х | rusa |
| i | india | И и | ICAO |
| j | jadran | Ј ј | jugoslava |
| ĵ | ĵirovnica,ĵenja | Ж ж | jugoslava,rusa |
| k | kilo | К к | ICAO |
| l | lima | Л л | ICAO |
| m | meik | М м | ICAO |
| n | november | Н н | ICAO |
| o | oskar | О о | ICAO |
| p | papa | П п | ICAO |
| q | kvebek | (Ϙ ϙ)(Qoppo) | ICAO |
| r | romeo | Р р | ICAO |
| s | sierra | С с | ICAO |
| ŝ | ŝibenik | Ш ш | jugoslava |
| t | tango | Т т | ICAO |
| u | uniform | У у | ICAO |
| ŭ | uniform breve | Ў ў | originala |
| v | viktor | В в | ICAO |
| w | viskej | (Ϝ ϝ)(Digamo) | ICAO |
| ⲝ | eks-rej | Ⲝ ⲝ (kopta) | ICAO |
| y | yenki | (Ѵ ѵ)(Iĵitso) | ICAO |
| z | zulu | З з | ICAO |
| ϗ | kaj signo | ϗ(greka) | originala |
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See the article ( http://www.liberafolio.org/2010/41b43044243843d430-43b43844243544043e-41d435-43443043d43a43e43d ) Латинай литерой? Не данкон! It was a joke for April 1st and then several commenters switched to writing Esperanto in cyrillic letters. This has become a "just for fun" exercise for Esperanto speakers that pops up from time to time.
Ooo, Esperanto in Cyrillic looks cool.
I came across this script (non-cyrillic) a few years back that I thought was pretty interesting ... http://esperanto.us/sxava_alfabeto/ It's kinda like shorthand for esperanto.
Esperanto and Cyrillic alphabet go together quite well since Zamenhof borrowed nearly the whole sound system of Esperanto from Slavic languages (especially Polish and Serbo-Croatian, which sound nearly mistakingly like it to foreign ears), minus the palatalization of consonants which can nevertheless be indicated simply by adding j. All sounds of Esperanto perfectly map into the Cyrillic alphabet without any need for diacritics (except the micron of ŭ and short i which stands for j), and conversely, nearly all sounds of slavic languages written with Cyrillic can translate into Esperanto letters, except for the hard i which could be indicated with a j used in lieu of a vowel (or without any vowel at all as Czech does with its own latin alphabet). Chërnobyl could thus be written Ĉjornobjl.
Of course Cyrillic is not official in Esperanto but Zamenhof would have approved of it given the fact that he himself was tolerant of alternate typing systems whenever there were no typewriters with accented letters, and in Soviet Russia there was no other typing and printing equipment available other than in Cyrillic. Esperanto should now and then appear in Cyrillic so as for the general public to get acquainted to that alphabet the easy way and no longer be afraid by Russian inscriptions.
- 426
Wow, that's amazing. I've not heard of it. Thanks for sharing
EDIT: I've made another post about it: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/13546245
how about using something like Хь instead of Ҳ (H), and УЪ instead of Ў (Ŭ). the ь character softens the sound before it, so in Esperanto it would soften ĥ to h.The Ъ hardens the sound before it turning u into ŭ. I suggest this because the characters Ҳ and Ў are only available in one or two versions of cyrillic, one of which isn't even in use anymore, none of which have all the other characters used for Esperanto. Ĥ would still be Х because the Х is an Ĥ sound in Russian already. ь is typed with x key already, & Ъ is typed with SHIFT+6 using the russian keyboard layout. The only downside is the Ъ is huge compared to a lowercase у (u). ь could also be used in place of Ъ so it would be more proportional but it might make remembering хь/х confusing.
Um... you do know that the hard and soft signs both come in capital and lowercase versions, right? They're perfectly normal letters in that regard.
So you can have ХЬ хь and УЪ уъ... all proportional already.
I found it. ъ is SHIFT+5. I found Ъ before but apparently I skipped 5 and didn't realize it.
How about I give it a try? A=А а B=Б б V=В в G=Г г D=Д д E/Je=Е е Jo=Ё ё Ĵ=Ж ж Ĝ=Ӂ ӂ -ĵd=Җ җ Z=З з Dz=Ѕ ѕ I=І і Ji=Ї ї T=Ѳ ѳ I=И и J=Й й K=К к Q=Ԟ ԟ L=Л л M=М м N=Н н Ks=Ѯ ѯ O=О о P=П п R=Р р S=Ш ш T=Т т -ĉj-=Ћ ћ U=У у Ŭ=Ў ў U=Ꙋ ꙋ F=Ф ф Ĥ=Х х H=Ӿ ӿ Ps=Ѱ ѱ O=Ѡ ѡ C=Ц ц Ĉ=Ч ч Ŝ=Ш ш Ŝt=Щ щ '=Ъ ъ -j-=Ь ь E=Э э Ju=Ю ю Ja=Я я *"Е" is "je" at the beginning of names and words and after vowels and "e" elsewhere, with "e" beïng represented by "Э" at the beginning of words and after vowels. The rest marked with an asterisk are just for loanwords and foreign names. I'd like to know what you guys think.
Creating spellings defeats the purpose of writing Esperanto in any alfabet.
Also, I use the one presented on Wikipedia, with only two differences: Җ/җ = Ĝ/ĝ Й/й = J/j
Since the asterisks won't bother to SHOW UP, the ones I marked with an asterisk are Ѳ ѳ, И и, Ԟ ԟ, Ꙋ ꙋ, Ѱ ѱ, and Ѡ ѡ.
Asterisks italicise things. Try putting a backslash before them if you want them to show up.
This made me laugh so much, dankon mia kara amiku! :) could this mean that if there were an esperanto course for russian speakers, it could show the course in both cyrillic and latin alphabets (like it does on the course already)? This was really intresting so ,again, thank you ;)
No, an Esperanto course for Russian speakers would use abcĥĉĝ etc. just like Esperanto for English, Spanish, or Chinese speakers.
Cyrillic Esperanto is completely unofficial.
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Subskribu kaj disvastigu nian pledon ĉe Avaaz por ke instruistoj prezentu unu lecionon pri Esperanto kaj ĝia lingvo-komunumo al siaj lernantoj.
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Manuel Halvelik wrote a book in his "Normlingva / Universala Esperanto"-Project, Universala skribo (1966).
I haven't been able to get a copy of it yet. In his "Universal Key to Scientific Terminology" he uses it. It looks like he looked at every Esperanto sound, determined how it is expressed in Latin script the most common, and set this letter as the written form.
This creates an interesting Modus for Esperanto that makes it phonemically intuitive for the widest number of people. Eg, even people not speaking Croatian often know that the ĵ-sound there corresponds to ž and the ĝ-sound to dž and even people not knowing Castilian tend to know it writes the /ĥ/-sound as "x" ("Teĥ-Meĥ", "Meĥiko").
If somebody knows where the "Universala Skribo" is online, please post the link.
Take a look at the mongolian cyrillic ! It is exactly like Esperanto!
