Ossetian writing

The oldest monument of Ossetian writing is the Zelenchuk inscription - a text on a gravestone of the 10th century , written in Greek letters in the Digor dialect of the Ossetian language. The text of the inscription was deciphered by V.F. Miller and specified by V.I. Abaev . In a later period, Ossetian texts were not fixed ^[1] .

In the middle of the 18th century, under the king of Georgia, Heraclius II , the translation of church books into Ossetian began by the efforts of Georgian Orthodox missionaries. The first such book was printed in 1753 using the Georgian alphabet with the addition of special characters for the Ossetian language ^[2] .

The Short Catechism of 1798. Parallel text, Ossetian right

In 1764, a Russian school was opened in Mozdok by the Russian authorities to train new-baptized Ossetians missionaries and officials. Teaching children in it was in Russian , which did not give the desired result. For this reason, it was decided to develop Ossetian writing and translate a number of liturgical books into it. One of the most active missionaries, Gai (Takaov), compiled the Ossetian alphabet based on Cyrillic Church Slavonic letters, and in 1798 the Short Catechism was published on this alphabet with parallel text in Church Slavonic and Ossetian languages ​​(translated by Takaov) ^[1] . In addition to the letters of the Russian alphabet, in this edition we used digraphs Д҄ж, д҄з, д҄ц, д҄ч, к҄г, к҄х with the diacritical camcorder mark above ^[3] . The translation of the Catechism, despite a large number of obvious errors and typos, is an important source of information about the 18th century Ossetian language: in particular, based on this text, an assumption was made about a later transition to / k /, / g / and / kb / b / h /, / j / and / hj / (for example, the word kyzg is found in the text, which corresponds to modern chyzg ) ^[4] . This alphabet has not received further development.

At the beginning of the 19th century, translator and official John Yalguzidze , a native of South Ossetia, translated a number of different documents from Georgian into Ossetian. He used Georgian letters. In 1819, he published an Ossetian prayer book, which used the church version of the Georgian letter - hutsuri - with the addition of several letters for specific Ossetian sounds. Later, in 1820-1824, several more church books were published in this alphabet. This alphabet also did not find wide application ^{[4] [5]} .

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some scholars ( P. S. Pallas , J. Klaprot , I. A. Guldenstedt, and others ) compiled lists of Ossetian words using various graphic systems. From the point of view of the evolution of writing and the spread of literacy in the Ossetian language, these experiments were not continued ^[6] .

The merit of creating full-fledged Ossetian writing belongs to Academician A. Shegren . In the 1830s, he began research on the Ossetian language. The result of these works was the publication in 1844 of the "Ossetian Grammar" with a Russian-Ossetian and Ossetian-Russian dictionary. In this grammar, the author explains in detail the phonetics of the Ossetian language and the correspondence of sounds to the alphabet he developed ^[5] . Szogren’s alphabet was compiled on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet and had the following composition: a b c ꜧ g ҕ g̀ d d̀ ̀ e з z ꚉ ԫ ј ј k ӄ k̀ ӄ̀ q l m n ң o ӧ p ҧ r s sh t ꚋ tꚋ w y ѵ f x c h ҵ ꚓ . The diacritic gravis (`) signified the softening of the consonant (in some early writings, Sjogren used the letter j after the consonant instead of gravis ). Despite the complexity of the alphabet, it turned out to be very successful and since 1848 in a slightly modified form began to be used in the publication of church literature ^[7] .

On the basis of the Shogren alphabet, several more variants of Ossetian writing were created. So, in 1862, Joseph Chernigovsky compiled the alphabet, which had the following form: a ӕ b c d ҕ d ꚉ ԫ e z і ј k ӄ q l m n o p ҧ r s t ꚋ ӯ ў f x t ҵ h ꚓ ѵ . Until the end of the XIX century, several books were published on it ^[8] .

The logical continuation of the development of the Szogren alphabet was the alphabet proposed by academician V.F. Miller in 1879. In it, in comparison with the alphabet of Szogren, the styles of a number of letters were changed and the total number of characters was reduced. The cultural development of Ossetia that began in the 1860s (the construction of schools, the emergence of secular literature (including works by Kost Khetagurov )) contributed to the spread of the Szogren-Miller alphabet and its transformation into a single national script ^[5] .

At the same time, the alphabet, not to mention the rules of spelling, was not established at that time, therefore, different editions use its different variations. The development of the Ossetian national press, which was especially active after the 1905 revolution , contributed to the development of a single alphabet, but the discord in the publications continued. So, in the Khurytyn magazine for the sound [dz] the z sign was used, and in the Ufsir magazine for him the sign g ^[9] .

On July 10-16, 1917, a teacher’s congress took place in Vladikavkaz, at which a single Ossetian alphabet was developed, which was based on the Szogren-Miller alphabet. This alphabet had the following form: a ӕ b c d h d g z z i ј k ӄ q l m n o p ҧ r s t ꚋ u ў f x c ҵ h ꚓ ѵ ꜧ . But even after the congress, the disagreement in the alphabets used continued ^[10] .

There is also an attempt to create Ossetian script based on Arabic script - in 1912 S. Taisaev published a primer for the needs of Muslim Ossetians in Temir Khan- Shur, which used the Arabic alphabet with the addition of a large number of special characters to display the characteristics of Ossetian phonetics. This experience turned out to be single and did not receive further development ^[5] .

In 1920, in Ossetia, a discussion began on the issue of switching to Latin script , but then he met criticism from the advocates of the existing letter. In 1923, a competition was announced for the best design of the alphabet, but he did not identify the winner. Soon, on the basis of the submitted projects, the People's Commissariat of the High Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic compiled the Ossetian Latinized alphabet. After the coordination of the alphabet with South Ossetia in 1923, it was approved and immediately began to be introduced into the fields of education and the press. The ligatures and letters with diacritical marks that existed in the Sjogren-Miller alphabet were replaced by digraphs, which met with criticism ^{[5] [11]} .

Ossetians were the first in the North Caucasus and one of the first in the USSR to switch to the Latinized alphabet ^[12] , which made the alphabet non-standardized with other alphabets of the peoples of the USSR ^[11] .

According to the journal Culture and Writing of the East (No. 1, 1928), the first version of the Ossetian Latinized alphabet was as follows: a in cdefighjklmnoprstuvz æ yuqx ś ż t 'p' k ​​'c' ç ç 'dz dž į . However, the really used alphabet (after the exclusion of the letters W w and Ꜧ ꜧ from it in the mid-1920s) ^[11] looked like this ^[13] :

This alphabet was used until 1938 .

In 1938, in the South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug , which was then part of the Georgian SSR , the Ossetian script was transferred to the Georgian graphic basis (while in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , which was part of the RSFSR , the Cyrillic alphabet began to be used from the same year). Thus, in two Ossetian autonomies at that time two parallel writing systems coexisted. The Georgian alphabet for the Ossetian language included all the letters of the Georgian alphabet, as well as ჷ ჲ ჳ ჶ ჽ . In 1954, this writing was canceled, and the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in South Ossetia, the same as in North Ossetia ^{[14] [1]} .

The alphabet was as follows:

In 1938, during the process of cyrillization of the written languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, the Ossetian alphabet in North Ossetia was translated into Cyrillic. In 1954, the Ossetian script of South Ossetia was also translated into Cyrillic. Since then, no changes have been made to Ossetian writing ^[15] .

Modern Ossetian alphabet:

The letters ,, ш, щ, щ,,,,,,, ю ,,, I (as well as вне outside digraphs) are used only in borrowings. The letter y designates at the same time 2 phonemes - [y] and [ў] ^[15] . The digraphs к, пъ, тъ, цъ, чъ denote glottalized ( abusive ) sounds , гъ - an uvular voiced trembling consonant , хъ - an uvular deaf, occlusive consonant, j, dz - affricates; г ligature is an anterior wide vowel ^[16] .

The letters Е, Ж, Ш, Щ, Ь ,Ь, Э, Ю, Я are used only in borrowings from the Russian language.

• Bigulaev B. B. History of Ossetian writing. - The dissertation for the degree of candidate of sciences. - Dzaudzhikau: North Ossetian Research Institute, 1945.
• Sjogren A. M. Ossetian grammar with a short dictionary of Ossetian-Russian and Russian-Ossetian . - SPb. , 1844 .. A cleaner scan of the 2009 reprint book is also available.
• Ossetian texts // Notes of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Volume 14, Issue 2. St. Petersburg. : Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1868.