Taraškievica
Encyclopedia
Taraškievica or Belarusian Classical Orthography (taraʂˈkʲɛvʲit͡sa; ) is a variant of the orthography of the Belarusian language
, based on the literary norm of the modern Belarusian language, the first normalization of which was made by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič in 1918, and was in official use in Belarus
until the Belarusian orthography reform
in 1933. After 1933 Taraškievica has been used informally in Belarus and by Belarusian diaspora abroad. In more common sense sometimes Taraškievica is considered to be a linguistic norm.
Taraškievica name intended to emphasize the similarity of the orthography to the work of Branisłaŭ Taraškievič and may have appeared before World War II
.
Around 1994, an alias, Classical Orthography, was introduced by Vincuk Viačorka
, the promoter and author of the modern codification of the Taraškievica.
In 2005 with the publishing of the Belarusian Classical Orthography was made the modern normalization of Taraškievica. In 2007 Taraškievica got from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
its own language subtag "tarask" (full language tag of Belarusian in the Classical orthography is "be-tarask").
As the result, Taraškievič's proposal was considered to be more preferable. This was based on the following reasons: orthography proposal by Taraškievič was the most well-grounded; it covered the majority of orthographic collisions; it proceeded with the Belarusian orthography which was in use in the prior period; it included exercises what was useful in teaching purposes; was created on the request of Belarusian political leaders of that time.
The work of Taraškievič appeared to be very good experience of creating the list of main features of Belarusian. All the following proposals and reforms of the Belarusian language based on exactly this codification.
an international conference on the reform of the Belarusian orthography was held, where some orthography issues were discussed. In 1927 a Linguistic Committee was formed which consisted of the Belarusian academicians and linguists, which worked on the problems of the Belarusian language and mainly developed the orthography norm by Taraškievič. In 1929 with the end of Belarussification the work of the Committee was stopped. Despite this the results of its work was published in 1930.
In 1930 a group of scientists from the Belarusian Linguistic Institute started working on another proposal of Belarusian orthography reform. The authors of the proposal declared rejection of the ideas of "national democracy", which were, according to their beliefs, the base of the work by Linguistic Committee in 1927–1929. As a result the group in 1933 proposed a deep revision of the Belarusian language, but kept the ideas of Taraškievič for loanwords in Belarusian and almost entirely reproduced the results of 1930 proposal.
Despite this, the proposal was rejected by the USSR authorities because of too low loyalty of approaching of the Belarusian language to Russian
. On 5 May 1933 Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR formed a special Political Committee for revision of the Russian-Belarusian dictionary and new orthography rules of the Belarusian language. The Committee primarily consisted of politicians, and no linguist was included in it.
Till 21 July 1933 a decree of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR was published which stated the end of the work on the Belarusian language reform. On 27 August 1933 the proposal was approved by the decree of the Belarusian Central Committee of the Communist Party without any public discussion.
The Belarusian orthography reform of 1933
adopted all the changes of the Academical 1933 proposal which approached the Belarusian language to Russian. The reform introduced both phonetic
and morphological
changes, as well as vocabulary of Belarusian, where the words with no direct equivalents in the Russian language were excluded and some Russian words introduced. After the reform the manuscripts of the ready academic Belarusian dictionaries were destroyed.
As a result of Belarusian orthography reform of 1933 more than 30 phonetic and morphological features of the Russian language were introduced in Belarusian.
, unlike, e.g., KPZB, neither by the emigrants, who left Belarus after 1944. This rejection was made an issue of ideology, and presented as anti-Russification
. One of the most vocal critics was Jan Stankievič
, beginning with his 1936 publication.
However, rejecting all post-1933 official developments, the community was left with all the problems of the pre-1933 grammar virtually unaddressed and effectively with no unified grammar to use.
After 1930s Taraškievica was primarily used by the Belarusian diaspora abroad. The only wide-scale use of the pre-1933 grammar on the territory of Belarus after the 1930s took place during the German occupation of Belarus in 1941–1944.
,” the official variant of Belarusian. On 14 June 1992 a conference of journalists and publishers who used the Classical orthography was held in Vilnius
.
To solve the problem of standardization the Orthography Improvement Committee was created. The Committee worked in 1991–1992 and in 1993 published its proposals for orthographic changes.
In 2005 to standardize Taraškievica a working group of four people (consisting of Juraś Bušlakoŭ, Vincuk Viačorka
, Źmicier Sańko and Zmicier Saŭka) work proposed codification of Taraškievica called Belarusian Classical Orthography as a result of intensive discussions and several years'. This proposal was adopted by major Taraškievica-using media, including the newspaper Naša Niva
, Belarusian ARCHE
magazine, the Belarusian editions of Radio Free Europe
and Radio Polonia
. As well, this variant of orthography became preferable for use in the Belarusian Wikipedia
in Taraškievica orthography (:be-x-old:).
On 27 April 2007 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned language subtag "tarask" to Taraškievica. The full language tag of Belarusian in the Classical orthography is "be-tarask".
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, based on the literary norm of the modern Belarusian language, the first normalization of which was made by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič in 1918, and was in official use in Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
until the Belarusian orthography reform
Belarusian orthography reform of 1933
The orthography of the Belarusian language was reformed in 1933 under Soviet rule.-Differences between the old and the new orthography:#Change in front of letters of assimilative softness: песня, свет, instead of песьня, сьвет....
in 1933. After 1933 Taraškievica has been used informally in Belarus and by Belarusian diaspora abroad. In more common sense sometimes Taraškievica is considered to be a linguistic norm.
Taraškievica name intended to emphasize the similarity of the orthography to the work of Branisłaŭ Taraškievič and may have appeared before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Around 1994, an alias, Classical Orthography, was introduced by Vincuk Viačorka
Vincuk Viacorka
Vincuk Viačorka is a Belarusian linguist, politician and the former leader of the Belarusian National Front , a Belarusian opposition party.Vincuk Viačorka was born on July 7, 1961 in Brest in the family of a Soviet bureaucrat....
, the promoter and author of the modern codification of the Taraškievica.
In 2005 with the publishing of the Belarusian Classical Orthography was made the modern normalization of Taraškievica. In 2007 Taraškievica got from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System , media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers...
its own language subtag "tarask" (full language tag of Belarusian in the Classical orthography is "be-tarask").
History
In 1918 before independence of Belarus was declared a need of codifying of the Belarusian language raised. The leading linguists made several proposals:- «Biełaruskaja hramatyka dla škoł» by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič (first edition in Łacinka appeared, Cyrillic variant followed it soon)
- «Hramatyka biełaruskaj mowy» by Balasłaŭ Pačopka.
- «Biełaruski prawapis» by Anton Łuckievič and Jan StankievičJan StankievičDr. Jan Stankievič was a Belarusian-American linguist, historian and philosopher....
- «Prosty sposab stаcca u karotkim časie hrаmatnym» by Rudolf Abicht and Jan Stankievič
As the result, Taraškievič's proposal was considered to be more preferable. This was based on the following reasons: orthography proposal by Taraškievič was the most well-grounded; it covered the majority of orthographic collisions; it proceeded with the Belarusian orthography which was in use in the prior period; it included exercises what was useful in teaching purposes; was created on the request of Belarusian political leaders of that time.
The work of Taraškievič appeared to be very good experience of creating the list of main features of Belarusian. All the following proposals and reforms of the Belarusian language based on exactly this codification.
Phonetics and spelling
| Official orthography | Taraškievica |
| Alphabet | |
| The variant from 1918. | In the variant of the 2005 normalization of Taraškievica, an optional letter is introduced: ґ, indicating a plosive [g]. |
| The notation of assimilating 'softness' of consonants | |
| The orthoepical norm does not determine it. Examples: снег, з’ява, дзве. |
Determined using the soft sign Soft sign The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels... . Examples: сьнег, зьява, дзьве. |
| The phonetic principle in spelling | |
| Generally limited to unstressed vowels. Examples: стагоддзе, не толькі, тэатр. |
Widespread, including consonants and at morpheme boundaries. Examples: стагодзьдзе, ня толькі, тэатар. |
| Transliteration of foreign words | |
| The syllables [la], [lo], [lu] | |
| Transliterated mostly with a 'hard' [l]. Examples: план, логіка, Платон, клон, дысплей. In 1933 scholars of the Institute of Linguistics called the proposal for the introduction of these standards "Great Power tendencies Russification Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities... ", pointing out that it is a characteristically Russian pronunciation. |
Transliterated with a 'soft' (palatalized) [lʲ] in words of Western European origin except for Anglicisms where the 'hard' (non-palatalized) [l] is used in most cases. In borrowing from other languages, words are transliterated according to the hardness or softness of the sound in the source language. Examples: плян, лёгіка, Плятон, клон, дысплэй The phonetic tradition developed with the newspaper "Наша ніва". The authors of the academic projects of 1930 and 1933 propose to maintain the this norm. The transliteration of the Central European [l] with [lʲ] has been fixed in the forms of the Old Belorussian language (17th-18th centuries) (люнатык, лaбиринт, капалaнъ, каппеллѧ), as well as in the Belorussian forms of the 19th century (ляўр(ы), кляс(а)). The transliteration of the Arabic [l] with [lʲ] has been fixed in the Old Belorussian forms of the 17th century (корабеля < the city Kerbela). According to E. Potekhina, it is now difficult to say with certainty whether such pronunciation was widespread or if it was a characteristics of the intelligentsia's peculiar argot. |
Reform proposals and Belarusian orthography reform of 1933
In 1926 in MinskMinsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
an international conference on the reform of the Belarusian orthography was held, where some orthography issues were discussed. In 1927 a Linguistic Committee was formed which consisted of the Belarusian academicians and linguists, which worked on the problems of the Belarusian language and mainly developed the orthography norm by Taraškievič. In 1929 with the end of Belarussification the work of the Committee was stopped. Despite this the results of its work was published in 1930.
In 1930 a group of scientists from the Belarusian Linguistic Institute started working on another proposal of Belarusian orthography reform. The authors of the proposal declared rejection of the ideas of "national democracy", which were, according to their beliefs, the base of the work by Linguistic Committee in 1927–1929. As a result the group in 1933 proposed a deep revision of the Belarusian language, but kept the ideas of Taraškievič for loanwords in Belarusian and almost entirely reproduced the results of 1930 proposal.
Despite this, the proposal was rejected by the USSR authorities because of too low loyalty of approaching of the Belarusian language to Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. On 5 May 1933 Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR formed a special Political Committee for revision of the Russian-Belarusian dictionary and new orthography rules of the Belarusian language. The Committee primarily consisted of politicians, and no linguist was included in it.
Till 21 July 1933 a decree of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR was published which stated the end of the work on the Belarusian language reform. On 27 August 1933 the proposal was approved by the decree of the Belarusian Central Committee of the Communist Party without any public discussion.
The Belarusian orthography reform of 1933
Belarusian orthography reform of 1933
The orthography of the Belarusian language was reformed in 1933 under Soviet rule.-Differences between the old and the new orthography:#Change in front of letters of assimilative softness: песня, свет, instead of песьня, сьвет....
adopted all the changes of the Academical 1933 proposal which approached the Belarusian language to Russian. The reform introduced both phonetic
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
changes, as well as vocabulary of Belarusian, where the words with no direct equivalents in the Russian language were excluded and some Russian words introduced. After the reform the manuscripts of the ready academic Belarusian dictionaries were destroyed.
As a result of Belarusian orthography reform of 1933 more than 30 phonetic and morphological features of the Russian language were introduced in Belarusian.
Post 1933
The legitimacy of the reform of grammar in 1933 was never adopted by certain political groups in West BelarusWest Belarus
West Belarus is the name used in reference to the territory of modern Belarus which belonged to the Second Polish Republic between 1919 and 1939. The area of West Belarus was annexed into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic following staged elections soon after the Nazi-Soviet Invasion of...
, unlike, e.g., KPZB, neither by the emigrants, who left Belarus after 1944. This rejection was made an issue of ideology, and presented as anti-Russification
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
. One of the most vocal critics was Jan Stankievič
Jan Stankievič
Dr. Jan Stankievič was a Belarusian-American linguist, historian and philosopher....
, beginning with his 1936 publication.
However, rejecting all post-1933 official developments, the community was left with all the problems of the pre-1933 grammar virtually unaddressed and effectively with no unified grammar to use.
After 1930s Taraškievica was primarily used by the Belarusian diaspora abroad. The only wide-scale use of the pre-1933 grammar on the territory of Belarus after the 1930s took place during the German occupation of Belarus in 1941–1944.
Today
During the perestroika period of the late 1980s, the movement for the return of Taraškievica in Belarus was initiated. At the beginning of 1990s Taraškievica was used in Belarus along with the so-called “NarkamaukaNarkamauka
Narkamawka or Narkamauka is a colloquial name for the reformed and currently normative Belarusian grammar. Evolved from the Belarusian narkam , abbreviated early Soviet name for the Minister, people's commissar ....
,” the official variant of Belarusian. On 14 June 1992 a conference of journalists and publishers who used the Classical orthography was held in Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
.
To solve the problem of standardization the Orthography Improvement Committee was created. The Committee worked in 1991–1992 and in 1993 published its proposals for orthographic changes.
In 2005 to standardize Taraškievica a working group of four people (consisting of Juraś Bušlakoŭ, Vincuk Viačorka
Vincuk Viacorka
Vincuk Viačorka is a Belarusian linguist, politician and the former leader of the Belarusian National Front , a Belarusian opposition party.Vincuk Viačorka was born on July 7, 1961 in Brest in the family of a Soviet bureaucrat....
, Źmicier Sańko and Zmicier Saŭka) work proposed codification of Taraškievica called Belarusian Classical Orthography as a result of intensive discussions and several years'. This proposal was adopted by major Taraškievica-using media, including the newspaper Naša Niva
Naša Niva
Nasha Niva is one of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspapers founded in 1906 and re-established in 1991.The current editor-in-chief is Andrej Skurko, who succeeded Andrej Dyńko....
, Belarusian ARCHE
Arche
Arche is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'sovereignty', 'domination' as extended meanings. This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'...
magazine, the Belarusian editions of Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
and Radio Polonia
Radio Polonia
Polish Radio External Service is the official international broadcasting station of Poland.Polish Radio External Service is a part of Poland’s public radio network - Polish Radio. Its aim is to broadcast programs on developments in Poland, Polish foreign policy, the economy, business and foreign...
. As well, this variant of orthography became preferable for use in the Belarusian Wikipedia
Belarusian Wikipedia
There are two Belarusian Wikipedias: one in the orthography of the Belarusian language which is official in modern Belarus , and another one in the pre-reform of 1933, classical orthography .-History:The first Belarusian Wikipedia was started on August 12, 2004...
in Taraškievica orthography (:be-x-old:).
On 27 April 2007 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned language subtag "tarask" to Taraškievica. The full language tag of Belarusian in the Classical orthography is "be-tarask".
External links
Online copy of Belarusian Classical Orthography book- 1968: Grammatical Changes in Modern Literary Belarusian Language by Professor R. G. A. de Bray
- Naša Niva dictionary (Classical orthography) // Naša NivaNaša NivaNasha Niva is one of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspapers founded in 1906 and re-established in 1991.The current editor-in-chief is Andrej Skurko, who succeeded Andrej Dyńko....
, 2001. Textbook Speak Belarusian to me. The base course of the classic Belarusian language.