Rosettatype’s Twitter Archive—№ 4,514

Some more pondering about Glagolitic, a thread, but maybe you will find it interesting.
On twitter.com ❤️ 1 Favorite 2022 May 27 Mood +2 🙂

…in reply to @rosettatype
Since we might be using different notions of the terms alphabet, similarity, writing, and script, I will try to unpack that. There are questions of origin/evolution and similarity of: (a) the systematic mapping of graphemes to phonemes and of (b) the visual appearance.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
1. Glagolitic is the first known writing system used by any Slavic language. It is possible they Macedonian Slavs used Greek before that.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
2. It has been established that Glagolitic predates Cyrillic. Interestingly, there are palimpsests with Cyrillic superimposed over Glagolitic, but none in the other direction.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
3. Glagolitic seems to have been derived from minuscule/cursive Greek letters with additions (probably by Constantin) for sounds/phonemes specific to Old Slavic (Old Church Slavonic), e.g. ts/c,č,š,ž. The Greek-derived shapes have marked ornamentation compared to the minuscule.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
4. When the script got banned in Moravia and the disciples of Constantin and Methodius fled, some of them ended up in Bulgaria where Cyrillic developed.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood -2 🙁

…in reply to @rosettatype
5. Based on the visual similarities, Cyrillic seems based on the simpler Greek capitals/majuscule for the Greek sounds and, also simplified, Glagolitic for the Slavic sounds.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
6. Should we call Glagolitic or Cyrillic the versions of Greek (or anything older). I don’t think so. They are different both in the systematic mapping of the phonemes (there are more of them) and visually.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
7. Can we call Cyrillic a simplification of Glagolitic? I think so. The phonetic mapping is almost identical. They are visually distinct: the Greek letters use the simpler capital construction (see 5 above) where the Slavic letters use the simplified Glagolitic letters.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
8. In Old-Church-Slavonic Cyrillic there are two Greek letters that are not in Glagolitic (ksi, psi). I do not know what to think about that., but I don’t think that this addition makes Cyrillic a different beast altogether.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
9. As mentioned before, Cyrillic and Glagolitic were not distinguished by name until much later after their introduction. It seems to me that the term “style” is closer to their use at the time: two styles of the same script.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood -2 🙁

…in reply to @rosettatype
10. Today, Unicode considers these two different scripts as that reflects the contemporary convention.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood 0

…in reply to @rosettatype
I claim no expertise in this, but I hope you will take this _theory_ into consideration. As with my original tweet, it certainly challenges our immediate ideas of where things and ideas come from.
Permalink On twitter.com 2022 May 27 Mood +1 🙂

…in reply to @rosettatype
Main reference: Cubberley, P. *The Slavic Alphabets* In: Daniels, PR & Bright W. The world’s writing systems, 1996. For visuals, see Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_minuscule
Permalink On twitter.com ❤️ 1 Favorite 2022 May 27 Mood +1 🙂