— proposed by the Ponomar Project
The Slavonic script is encoded in a haphazard manner because, unlike modern languages which use easily identifiable character ranges, Slavonic has not been thoroughly and systematically researched and then presented in its entirety for inclusion in the Unicode Standard. Initially, only the modern Slavic languages were represented in Unicode, and it took a few revisions to get the missing pre-revolutionary Russian characters included in the Unicode Standard. Gradually, a number of other characters commonly used in Church Slavonic and Paleoslavonic were proposed and included in the Unicode Standard, but for reasons that are hard to comprehend, the Unicode Consortium has been relatively unsympathetic to meeting the needs of the Eastern Orthodox Church in providing us with a complete character set in order to professionally reprint our worship service books with faithfulness to the historical typographical tradition. The end result is that the Church Slavonic characters are now scattered all over the Unicode BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane), in non-contiguous blocks and lacking any systematic attempt at ordering (for sorting, etc.). Additionally, implementing Church Slavonic by means of using modern letter forms is problematic for a few specific characters which have evolved (or have been “recycled”) over the centuries and currently have an altered linguistic value, meaning and pronunciation.
Regarding the Unicode names of the Slavonic characters: It is unfortunate that the “official” names used in the Unicode Standard are based on those of modern Russian or other Slavic languages, since it leads to some confusion (such as GHE and HA, which in North Slavic languages are properly named/pronounced as GE and KHA). Furthermore, most of the additional Slavonic characters were given names according to the recommendations of the South Slavic (Balkan) scholars who presented them for inclusion in the Unicode Standard; these names are sometimes at variance with traditional North and West Slavic names (such as UK, which is called IK in the Russian tradition). However, it is hardly an issue that is worth quibbling about, but an obstacle that can be worked around.
It is currently possible to print modern Church Slavonic texts (although it is still somewhat challenging to access all the characters because of a lack of well-designed keyboard drivers), but earlier periods of Slavonic typography and manuscript texts are still not completely represented; a few additional characters are currently under consideration for inclusion in the Unicode Standard, and there is some debate by typographers on various problematic characters which were earlier included in the Unicode Standard, but with inaccurate definitions or placements (due to a lack of thorough research which has led to some fundamental misunderstandings). Furthermore, font designers are still attempting to establish a methodology for the placement of diacritical marks and superscript characters, as well as how to access historical alternative character forms, contextual substitutions and discretionary substitutions. When these procedural problems are finally resolved, we will have a fully Unicode-compliant Slavonic typesetting system which will accurately represent the entire range of historical literature; each historical era will be represented with its own set of fonts that represent the characters, letter forms and typographical principles used in the specific eras. A modern set of fonts (a default display) containing the comprehensive Slavonic character range (for all eras of Slavonic literature) will also be released for academic use, accompanied by some optional keyboard drivers.
(For more information about usages of the Cyrillic alphabet, see the Wikipedia articles about Cyrillic Script and Cyrillic Alphabets.)
The complete range of characters used in Slavonic fonts can be subdivided into the following 10 categories:
|1a) Base Characters – Upper and Lower Case Letters
1b) Non-Slavonic modern Cyrillic characters, included for modern font families
|2a) Superscript Case (letter titla and superscript letters)
2b) Double Titla
|3) General Titla Glyphs (non-letter titla)|
|4) Alternate Letter Forms (discretionary forms, including truncated forms)|
|6) Diacritical Marks|
|7a) Standard Punctuation
7b) Ornamental Punctuation
|8) Other Typographical Symbols, including Editorial Marks|
|9) Number Symbols|
|10) Typicon and Rubrical Symbols|
— Characters marked with a pink background are problematic and require resolution.
— Characters marked with a blue background are not included in the current Unicode Standard and must be accessed as discretionary substitutions or by other means; documentation of these characters is provided via links.
— Characters marked with a yellow background are not included in the current Unicode Standard and need to be included; documentation of these characters is provided via links.
— Characters marked with a green background are modern characters which do not rightly belong to the authentic Slavonic character set (although some of these symbols may be found in a few pre-1917 printed sources); these have been added for the sake of compatibility with modern typesetting, particularly for use in academic journals, but should not be included in period reproduction fonts.
|Church Slavonic characters||
|А||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A||а||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A||азъ||[NOTE: The default modern representations (to the left) are intended for academic use, while the authentic major period representations are presented to the right.]||Аа||Аа||Аа||Аа||Аа|
|Б||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BE||б||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE||буки||Бб||Бб||Бб||Бб||Бб|
|В||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE||в||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE||вѣди||Вв||Вв||Вв||Вв||Вв|
|Г||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE||г||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE||глаголь||Гг||Гг||Гг||Гг||Гг|
|Д||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DE||д||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DE||добро||In the Poluustav fonts, unlike all the other eras, the default lower case “DE/Dobro” has a long-legged shape, which is used in the vast majority of occurences. However, in a minority of cases (typically less than 25 percent of the cases), a truncated or “short-legged” variant form is used. [The short-legged version should be used when there is the possibility of the “legs” colliding with characters in the following line of text (ascenders, diacritical marks and titla).] — We propose that for Poluustav fonts ONLY, the default “long-legged” form should be used in the position U+0434, and the “short-legged” form should be located at <ALT1> as an historical variant. The short-legged form is the default form in all other eras.||Дд||Дд||Дд||Дд||Дд|
|<ALT1>||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT-LEGGED DO||Poluustav <ALT1>. See the remarks above.|
|Ꙣ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT DE||ꙣ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT DE||добро мягкое||DE plus palatalization, Ustav era only.||Ꙣꙣ||—||—||—||—|
|Е||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IE||е||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE||есть||Ее||Ее||Ее||Ее||Ее|
|Є||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE||є||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE||(есть большой, есть широкое)||This character is used as the WIDE E in Slavonic typography. The capital form of this letter does not exist beyond the Ustav era. Except for Ustav fonts, the Unicode codepoint U+0404 should duplicate U+0415. [In modern languages, it is used in Ukrainian, based on the Old Cyrillic YEST. It is considered a separate letter, placed after Е.]||Єє||Єє||[Є]є||[Є]є||Єє|
|Ж||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE||ж||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE||живѣте||Жж||Жж||Жж||Жж||Жж|
|Ѕ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DZE||ѕ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DZE||зѣло||Common to all eras of Slavonic, but in modern times is only used in Macedonian and Montenegrin, where it is placed between З and И.||Ѕѕ||Ѕѕ||Ѕѕ||Ѕѕ||Ѕѕ|
|Ꙅ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED DZE||ꙅ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED DZE||(?)||The characters REVERSED DZE, REVERSED TSE and REVERSED YU (Ustav era variants) should not have been included in the Unicode standard, since they are discretionary alternate historical forms (mere calligraphic variations). However, in the earlier days of Unicode, before the Unicode Consortium became extremely conservative in the inclusion of new characters, these variations were unfortunately accepted for inclusion.||Ꙅꙅ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙃ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DZELO||ꙃ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DZELO||(зѣло)||This is a scribal or regional variant of the letter DZE, used in the Ustav era only. (It is rather unfortunate that it was encoded as a separate character, for it is a “discretionary or historical alternative” for DZE.) The Unicode naming is somewhat unfortunate.||Ꙃꙃ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙁ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZEMLYA||ꙁ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZEMLYA||земля||The “tailed form” of the letter ZEMLYA (ZE) is the original (Ustav) form of the letter. It survived up until the Poluustav era, where it existed alongside the newer form ZE (below) and was almost completely analogous to it. However, in the wake of Patriarch Nikon's textual reforms, Muscovite Slavonic (and gradually almost all other resensions) abandoned this older form in favor of the newer form. The Unicode naming is somewhat unfortunate.
In the Poluustav tradition, both forms of the letter “zemlya” are used interchangeably and with a ratio of approximately 50:50 throughout the entire repertoire of printed books using both letter forms; however, the ratio is higher towards the tailed form in the manuscript tradition. There seem to be no absolute rules that were followed in determining which form to use, and at first encounter it seems that it was merely a matter of random choice by the scribe or typographer. However, after much observation, we can tentatively establish a few orthographic rules: 1) The “tailed form”, which is subserviant, almost never occurs in inital position. 2) It is almost never used as a numeral; the dominant form is used instead (some exceptions in the manuscript tradition). 3) It is never used in the upper case, and it seems to have no authentic capital form or usage. (After an exhaustive exercise of culling through early printed books, we have not found a single example; however, a slightly enlarged form is included in the Poluustav fonts to maintain consistency.) In the later Kievan editions, the alternate “tailed form” (including a capital letter) is used far more frequently than the dominant form, while the corresponding Muscovite editions used only the “round form” – an interesting polarization of orthography. In the Synodal editions, this variant is not authentically used.
|З||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZE||з||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZE||земля||In the Poluustav era this character emerged as an almost completely analogous variant of the letter ZEMLYA (above), where they coexisted in the Poluustav script. However, in the wake of Patriarch Nikon's textual reforms, Muscovite Slavonic (and gradually almost all other resensions) abandoned the older form (above) in favor of this newer form.||Зз||Зз||Зз||Зз||Зз|
|И||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I||и||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I||иже||Ии||Ии||Ии||Ии||Ии|
|Й||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT I
|й||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I
|иже краткой||There is no documentation of this letter in the Ustav tradition. In all later traditions, this is decomposable as Cyrillic Letter I (0418/0438) and Combining Breve (0306); conformant fonts should implement it as such.||Йй||Йй||Йй||Йй||Йй|
|І||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I||і||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I||і||NIKITA: In Slavonic typefaces the lower case form should have no dot; there are no documented uses of this character with a single dot. The “DOTLESS I” should be used only when writing numerals in Church Slavonic. [In modern languages it is used in Belarusian, Kazakh, Khakas, Komi, Rusyn, and Ukrainian. It replaces И in those alphabets. Known as "Dotted I" or "Decimal I" («и десятеричное»). (There is an occasional usage of this character in the Poluustav manuscript tradition in place of the letter “И” when attempting to squeeze a word into a tight space.)
ALEKSANDR & YURI: Though the Unicode naming makes this somewhat confusing, the Roadmap proposes to use this character as the base form of the letter ї. Thus, this character should be dotless. As a standalone, it is used only in numerals to denote the number 10. It also serves as the base for the placement of diacritical marks over the ї. Thus, Small I with Acute Accent і́should be implemented as 0456 + 0301, not as 0457 + 0301. (If a dotted form is necessary, it should be implemented as 0456 + 0307 .)
|Ї||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YI
|ї||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YI
|(і)||NIKITA: Used in Church Slavonic, Rusyn, and Ukrainian.
Considered a separate letter, placed after І. (There is an occasional usage of this character in the Poluustav manuscript tradition as an ornamentation at the ends of paragraphs that taper to a point.)
ALEKSANDR & YURI: The letter Small I with Kendema (which is the form used when no diacritical mark is placed over ї) is encoded as 0456 + 0308. In Unicode, this is equivalent to 0457. Conformant fonts should implement this character in such a way that 0456 + 0308 is equivalent to 0457. Note that 0456 only should be used as the base form.
|Ꙇ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTA||ꙇ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTA||(іота)||This is a modern academic invention for use with transliterating Glagolitic texts, used to represent the Glagolitic letter IOTA, which is derived from the Greek letter IOTA.||Ꙇꙇ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙉ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DJERV||ꙉ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DJERV||джервь||The Palæoslavonic letter DJERV is only encountered in early South Slavic Ustav manuscripts. Its usage was rare; the only instances that
we have ever encountered is the first letter of the transliterated Hebrew word “Gehenna”, and in a few place Hebrew names (Genesaret and Gergesenes/Gerasenes).
NOTE: This is not the same as the CYRILLIC LETTER DJE or the CYRILLIC LETTER TSHE (see below), which are completely modern letters, despite similar apppearances (although it is likely that this this character had some influence on the choice of the modern characters and their shapes).
|К||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KA||к||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KA||како||Кк||Кк||Кк||Кк||Кк|
|Л||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EL||л||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EL||люди||Лл||Лл||Лл||Лл||Лл|
|Ꙥ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT EL||ꙥ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT EL||(люди мягкое)||EL plus palatalization, Ustav era only.||Ꙥꙥ||—||—||—||—|
|М||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EM||м||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EM||мыслѣте||Мм||Мм||Мм||Мм||Мм|
|Ꙧ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT EM||ꙧ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT EM||(мыслѣте мягкое)||EM plus palatalization, Ustav era only.||Ꙧꙧ||—||—||—||—|
|Н||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN||н||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EN||нашъ||Нн||Нн||Нн||Нн||Нн|
|Ҥ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LIGATURE EN GHE (SOFT EN)||ҥ||CYRILLIC SMALL LIGATURE EN GHE (SOFT EN)||(нашъ мягкий)||This character has two usages in the history of Cyrillic scripts, which are not lingustically equivalent.
1) The original usage is “EN plus palatalization”, which was used infrequently (or rarely) in the Ustav era only. This decomposable character has been identified by South Slavic scholars, but it has not yet been accepted into the Unicode Standard. (The Unicode name for this character is erroneous, since it is not a ligature.)
2) In modern times this glyph has been used as a LIGATURE EN GHE for the Altay, Mari and Yakut languages, and is not decomposable.
The codepoints 04A4 and 04A5 represent the modern version of this character, and until such time (if any) that it becomes accepted by Unicode as a Slavonic character, the modern placement will have to suffice, but the typographer should be aware that this is technically inaccurate.
|О||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER O||о||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O||онъ||This is the default medial and final form of the CYRILLIC LETTER O (not used in initial position).||Оо||Оо||Оо||Оо||Оо|
|Ѻ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ROUND OMEGA||ѻ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ROUND OMEGA||(онъ большой)||This character is erroneously named, as it is the initial form of the CYRILLIC LETTER O, derived from GREEK OMICRON (not OMEGA). The name should be corrected in future revisions of the Unicode Standard to CYRILLIC LETTER INITIAL O or CYRILLIC LETTER ROUND O.||Ѻѻ||Ѻѻ||Ѻѻ||Ѻѻ||Ѻѻ|
|CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER NARROW O||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER NARROW O||(онъ узкий)||NIKITA: This character has not yet been included in the Unicode Standard. Documentation and submission of this character are currently under way; there is an upper case form in the Ustav era (a stylistic variant), but only a lower case form in succeeding eras.
In the first several decades of Slavonic printing, the NARROW O was a space-saving version of the regular round O (U+043E), which could also have diacritical marks and titla over it; orthographic rules for its usage were either lacking or inconsistent. However, by the early decades of the 17th century, most publishers had agreed upon the orthographic rule that the NARROW O was not to be used in conjunction with diacritical marks or titla, nor was it to be used by itself in initial or final position. This character is essential in reproducing pre-Nikonian literature, where it is the unaccented form of the letter “O” in medial (non-initial and non-final) positions; it sometimes accounts for over 50 per cent of the occurences of the letter O on a single page.
It is also used as the first element in the CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK (U+0478/9); the standard round “O” should NOT be used in this case, even in modern Slavonic fonts. (See below.)
(For Aleksandr’s and Yuri’s comments, see PART II, section 3.)
|In the manuscript tradition, including the scribal tradition used in the Slavonic Bible translated by Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod in 1499, there were six “illustrative” or “pictograph” variations of the letter On. (These were undoubtedly the whimsical inventions of bored scribes who needed to have an occasional amusing moment to relieve the tedium of their task.) Some of the earliest printed editions of the Gospels and Epistles, as well as the Lenten Triodion and the life of St. Stephen of Perm, included these pictographs, but for some unexplained reason they were not retained. Their usage is specific for a single word, including its grammatical case endings. (Their inclusion in the Unicode Standard is perhaps a bit extravagant, as they could have been implemented as Variation Sequences.)|
|Ꙩ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOCULAR O||ꙩ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOCULAR O||?||This “monocular” form is used only in the singular form of the word око (eye) as the initial letter; grammatical case endings are also used, but only in the singular number.
|Ꙫ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BINOCULAR O||ꙫ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BINOCULAR O||?||Like the previous character, this “binocular” form is used for the dual очеса ([twain] eyes), with grammatical case endings. (See also the following character.)
|Ꙭ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O||ꙭ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O||?||Like the previous character, this “double monocular” form is also used for the dual очеса ([twain] eyes), with grammatical case endings.
(It is more common to see this letter form than the previous form.)
|A66E||ꙮ||CYRIILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O||?||This “multiocular” form is used only in the adjective of the phrase многоочитїе серафїмы (many-eyed seraphim). Because of its size and usage, it has no upper case
|Ꚙ||CYRILLIC LETTER DOUBLE O||ꚙ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE O||?||This “twinned” letter form appears in two different words: the initial letter of the word обо (both), and in the word двое (two), with case endings included; it also is used in the compound words for the number 12: обанадесять and двоюнадесять. It is proposed for inclusion
in Unicode 6.2. See proposal.
|Ꚛ||CYRILLIC LETTER CROSSED O||ꚛ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CROSSED O||?||This “crossed” form is used only in the preposition окрест, which means “around, round-about, in the vicinity of, approximately”. It is
proposed for inclusion in Unicode 6.2. See proposal.
|П||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PE||п||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE||покой||Пп||Пп||Пп||Пп||Пп|
|Ҁ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KOPPA||ҁ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KOPPA||коппа||NIKITA: The KOPPA is derived from the ancient Greek Ϙ and is the forefather of the Latin letter Q. It is found in the Ustav era only. Oddly, this character did not survive in Greek or Slavonic as a letter, but only as a number (90). Because the letter was so foreign to the Slavs, scribes in the Ustav era gradually began to replace it with a similar looking letter: the original (old style) form of the letter CHERV (CHE); the modern form of the letter CHE was subsequently used as the Ustav script evolved into the Poluustav script.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: In the earlier Ustav period this character was borrowed from Greek to indicate the numeral 90 (later replaced with the letter ч), and as such, it could never appear as a capital letter. (It has never had a linguistic use in Slavonic, and has been obsolete in the Greek language since classical times.) The upper case form of this letter is completely undocumented.
|Р||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ER||р||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER||рцы||Рр||Рр||Рр||Рр||Рр|
|С||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES||с||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES||слово||Сс||Сс||Сс||Сс||Сс|
|Т||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER TE||т||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TE||твердо||Тт||Тт||Тт||Тт||Тт|
|У||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER U||у||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U||(у)|| In modern Slavic languages this y-shaped character is the standard letter form representing the CYRILLIC LETTER U. However, in traditional Slavonic orthography of all eras, this same vowel uses different letter forms and is called “UK” (see below); the y-shaped character was usually part of a composite letter form, which derived its orthographical rules from Greek and takes both a monograph and digraph form (see below).
UPPER CASE: As a “solo character”, the upper case CYRILLIC U theoretically does not exist. It is, however, used occasionally in forming the COMPOSITE UK for titling (see number 3 below).
LOWER CASE: As a “solo character”, the lower case form of CYRILLIC U was used almost exclusively for writing the number 400. [There are some rare manuscripts that use the “solo” y-form heavily instead of the letter UK (following), but this is an anomaly and may be considered improper.] The lower case y-form is also used together with the NARROW O (not yet included in the Unicode Standard) for constructing the COMPOSITE UK (see number 3 below). (Unicode recommends using the standard round O, but this is incorrect, as one can conclude after viewing a wide variety of printed sources; the use of NARROW O is technically correct in this context.)
ALEKSANDR & YURI: This is the decomposed second element of the diagraph ѹ. It is generally only used as a numeral (with a titlo above it, meaning 400), but in some early modern Russian editions it was sometimes used instead of the digraph form. (This usage can also be found in a few early Slavonic manuscripts, but it is an atypical usage.) The capital form was rarely used, and only in titling.
|CYRILLIC LETTER UK (traditionally called “IK” in the North Slavic literary tradition, probably it is derived from the Greek letter YPSILON, which has the more modern I sound, not the more ancient U sound), is a problematic character. It can have three possible forms or constructions:|
|Ꙋ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK||ꙋ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK||икъ (укъ)||1) MONOGRAPH UK, which is a single character: A64A and A64B (Ꙋ and ꙋ).
The character is completely unambiguous and free of problems. It has been used in all eras of Slavonic writing and printing (although it was slightly less prevalent in the Ustav era, in favour of the digraph form). Linguistically speaking, it is derived from the Greek, albeit in an altered form; we can clearly see that the digraph Greek letters representing the vowel U (ου) were stacked vertically and combined into a single character (ꙋ). (Conveniently, this caligraphic variation was likewise used in Byzantine Greek manuscripts, which exerted considerable influence on the Slavic writing system.) This was not only more space-saving for scribes, but less confusing for readers.
|Ѹ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UK (DIGRAPH UK, ONIK)||ѹ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK (DIGRAPH UK, ONIK)||оникъ||2) DIGRAPH UK (ONIK), which appears to consist of two separate characters, but is actually two characters set closely together and are not subject to canonical decomposition (like CYRILLIC YERU, Ы ы); 0478 and 0479 (Ѹ and ѹ). It is for this reason that Russian Synodal era primers called this character “ONIK”, as a combination of the letters ON and IK/UK. [Unfortunately, many font designers have actually implemented this character as the monograph form below, but this is technically incorrect.]
At the time that this character was accepted into the Unicode Standard, it was presented with a definition or description that has now been found to be incompatible with most eras of Slavonic orthography. Due to further research, Unicode has decided to deprecate (or officially stop supporting the validity of) this character; instead, it suggests using the combination of the CYRILLIC LETTER O (о)* and CYRILLIC LETTER U (у). The only reason it continues to exist in Unicode is to provide compatibility and support for texts which already contain it, but Unicode recommends that its further use be discontinued. (ThePonomar Project likewise supports the deprecation of this character, especially since it does not allow “color separation” for initial lettering in printed texts.)
* Under no circumstances, even in Synodal Era typography, should the standard round O be used to construct the DIGRAPH or COMPOSITE UK, even when designing fonts; only the use of the NARROW O is historically correct.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: This codepoint should be considered deprecated. Instead, this character should be entered as 041E + 0443 and 043E + 0443, respectively. The substitution of the typical On to the Narrow variant should be handle via contextual glyph substitution. If the substitution needs to be avoided, ZWNJ should be used. See the section below on ligatures (Roadmap, Part III, section 4).
|(041E + 0443)
(<043E> + 0443)
|3) COMPOSITE UK, which is made up of two separate characters: the preferred character sequences are 041E 0443 and <043E>* 0443 (Оу and оу). [*See note above.]
While this sequencing can be confusing for typesetters and possibly cause difficulties in sorting for the compilation of dictionaries, it has a number of practical advantages. It is especially conventient for use with two-color printing, where the two elements need to be printed with different colors. This would generally only happen in the upper case, in titling or “drop-cap” initials (especially where “color separation” is required in modern typography using computers). For example: ОУ or Оу.
|Ф||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EF||ф||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EF||фертъ||Фф||Фф||Фф||Фф||Фф|
|Х||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HA||х||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HA||хѣръ||Хх||Хх||Хх||Хх||Хх|
|Ц||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER TSE||ц||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TSE||цы||Цц||Цц||Цц||Цц||Цц|
|Ꙡ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED TSE||ꙡ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED TSE||(?)||NIKITA: The characters REVERSED DZE, REVERSED TSE and REVERSED YU (Ustav era variants) should not have been included in the Unicode standard, since they are discretionary alternate historical forms (mere calligraphic variations). However, in the earlier days of Unicode, before the Unicode Consortium became extremely conservative in the inclusion of new characters, these variations were unfortunately accepted for inclusion.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: According to Cleminson and Everson (2009), this character appears in “documents produced in Novgorod and its environs from the 11th to the 15th centuries. In the language of this area the distinction between ц and ч had been eliminated, and [the character] replaces both these characters in the documents. It cannot be considered equivalent to either of them, and therefore neither can replace it in transcription.
|Ч||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE||ч||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CHE||червь||This character has a slightly different (oldstyle) form in the Ustav era, similar to a cup on a pedestal.||Чч||Чч||Чч||Чч||Чч|
|Ш||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHA||ш||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHA||ша||Шш||Шш||Шш||Шш||Шш|
|Щ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHCHA||щ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHCHA||ща||Щщ||Щщ||Щщ||Щщ||Щщ|
|Ъ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HARD SIGN||ъ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HARD SIGN||еръ||In Paleoslavonic this was a semi-vowel.||Ъъ||Ъъ||Ъъ||Ъъ||Ъъ|
|Ы||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU||ы||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU||еры||This letter is improperly named in the Unicode standard as “yeru”.||Ыы||Ыы||Ыы||Ыы||Ыы|
|Ꙑ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER||ꙑ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER||(?)||This character was used only in the earliest Ustav tradition of Paleoslavonic. This is a variant form that is used only in the manuscript tradition. As orthographic rules became standardized in Slavonic and all of the secular Slavic languages, this combination (and all other variants with the “hard sign”) was abandoned in favour of the “soft sign” (ь + dotless і) combination. (The Unicode name is bizarre.)||Ꙑꙑ||—||—||—||—|
|Ь||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT SIGN||ь||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT SIGN||ерь||In Paleoslavonic this was a semi-vowel.||Ьь||Ьь||Ьь||Ьь||Ьь|
|Ꙏ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER NEUTRAL YER||ꙏ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER NEUTRAL YER||(?)||This “undifferentiated” character is used in modern editions to reproduce Paleoslavonic texts where it is completely ambiguous which letter to use: the hard or soft “yer”. It seems to be a modern invention to accomodate for not being able to clearly read faded manuscripts.||Ꙏꙏ||—||—||—||—|
|Ѣ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YAT||ѣ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YAT||ять||The letter YAT is required for pre-1917 Russian, pre-1945 Rusyn and early Bulgarian. (Should not be used for CYRILLIC LETTER BARRED O used in Kazakh, Tuvan and Mongolian.)||Ѣѣ||Ѣѣ||Ѣѣ||Ѣѣ||Ѣѣ|
|Ꙓ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED YAT||ꙓ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED YAT||ять йотированный||This “iotified yat” is an ambiguous character, and in most of the documentation it is not clear that this really is an iotified character, but merely an orthographic variation of the standard “Yat”. In the Poluustav font, this is certainly the case, as there is no evidence of an iotified version of this character existing in any of the printed books.||Ꙓꙓ||—||—||—||—|
|Ѥ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED E||ѥ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED E||есть йотированный||Ustav era only.||Ѥѥ||—||—||—||—|
|Э||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER E||э||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER E||—|| In the Ustav period,
this character was a rare form (a reverse variant) of the letter “Yest” which was probably a calligraphic variation, but it most certainly
cannot be treated as a separate letter of the alphabet. In the Poluustav period it shows up in only one usage: it
was used in musical manuscripts as a “neutral vowel sound” (in practice: just like the modern “eh”) to begin hymns and subsections of lengthy hymns (usually in conjunction with the switching of antiphonal choirs), for example, in the Photagogica and in Demestvenny polyphony. It reappears in Russian
during the reforms of Peter I.
The two characters “Э” and “Я” do not exist in Church Slavonic. These codepoints should not be used to encode CYRILLIC LETTER YAT, CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED A, or any other substitute characters; they should ideally remain blank in most Slavonic fonts. On the other hand, most typographers will want to have access to stylized adaptations of both of these modern letters (for use in modern publishing and design), so font designers may wish to include them in the complete character set. We wish to point out, however, that this is an anachronism.
|Ю||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YU||ю||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU||ю||(In the typographic tradition, the NARROW O is used in forming this letter, not the default ROUND O.)||Юю||Юю||Юю||Юю||Юю|
|Ꙕ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED YU||ꙕ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED YU||(?)||The characters REVERSED DZE, REVERSED TSE and REVERSED YU (Ustav era variants) should not have been included in the Unicode standard, since they are discretionary alternate historical forms (mere calligraphic variations). However, in the earlier days of Unicode, before the Unicode Consortium became extremely conservative in the inclusion of new characters, these variations were unfortunately accepted for inclusion.||Ꙕꙕ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙗ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED A||ꙗ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED A||я||Ꙗꙗ||Ꙗꙗ||Ꙗꙗ||Ꙗꙗ||Ꙗꙗ|
|Я||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YA||я||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA||—||The two characters “Э” and “Я” do not exist in Church Slavonic. The only practical use for this modern character in Slavonic fonts is for decorative book titles, etc.||—||—||[Яя]||[Яя]||[Яя]|
|Ѡ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA||ѡ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OMEGA||0 (омега)||From the Greek letter Ω ω.||Ѡѡ||Ѡѡ||Ѡѡ||Ѡѡ||Ѡѡ|
|Ꙍ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BROAD OMEGA||ꙍ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BROAD OMEGA||(омега широкая)||This glyph does not occur in Synodal texts as a standalone character, although the lower case form is used in Poluustav typography for proper names derived from Hebrew.
In Synodal typography, this character occurs only as the base in writing the exclamation, “Oh!”. (See CYRILLIC LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO below).
|Ѽ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO
A64C 0486 0487
|ѽ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO
0461 0486 0487
|(омега прекрасная?)||Sometimes call “beautiful omega”, this 3-part composite character is used as the exclamation “Oh!” Despite its current character name, this letter does not have a titlo, but is it composed of the BROAD OMEGA plus COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI PNEUMATA and the COMBINING CYRILLIC POKRYTIE. (In all practicality, it should be decomposed into three separate characters and deprecated from the Unicode Standard.)
The name of this character is erroneous and it should be renamed to CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD OH (or something like this). Moreover, the default diacritics presently composited with this character are inaccurate and earnestly need to be corrected.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: The inclusion of this character, which is not a character at all, but an ideograph for the word “Oh!”, is most unfortunate. The name of the ideograph is incorrect, since it does not contain a titlo at all, but rather a “great apostrophe”. Thus, it is decomposeable as the base form, wide omega, and the combining characters Combining Inverted Breve (0311) and Psili Pneumata (0486) – see below, in the section on Diacritical Marks. Conformant processes should implement it as such. In addition, the Unicode note “beautiful omega” should refer to A64C, not to this character.
|Ѿ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OT
|ѿ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OT
|отъ||Like the previous character, this digraph character should likewise be decomposited and deprecated from the Unicode Standard.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: This character is equivalent to the combination Capital (or, Small) Omega + Combining Cyrillic Letter Te (2DEE), and thus should be implemented in conformant fonts as a ligature of 0460 + 2DEE and 0461 + 2DEE, respectively.
|Ѧ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LITTLE YUS||ѧ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LITTLE YUS||юсъ малый||Used in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets; its usage in Poluustav and Synodal eras of Slavonic has been retained, but it evolved from a nasal vowel to a “ya” sound.||Ѧѧ||Ѧѧ||Ѧѧ||Ѧѧ||Ѧѧ|
|Ѩ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED LITTLE YUS||ѩ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED LITTLE YUS||юсъ малый йотированный||Used in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. This letter does not appear in Poluustav typography. It exists only in the manuscript tradition, particularlty in the South Slavic recension.||Ѩѩ||—||—||—||—|
|Ѫ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BIG YUS||ѫ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BIG YUS||юсъ большой||This letter was used in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets, and for pre-1945 Bulgarian. Although this archaic nasal vowel was used in a few of the earliest printed Poluustav books, (such as the Vilnius Gospels of 1575, which use it regularly), it was soon abandoned by the time the second editions were issued. While it is currently obsolete in Church Slavonic, it should, however, be included in all eras of fonts because this letter is used as a symbol in mathematical and calendrical charts for calculating the Paschalion cycle.||Ѫѫ||Ѫѫ||Ѫѫ||Ѫѫ||Ѫѫ|
|Ѭ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED BIG YUS||ѭ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED BIG YUS||юсъ большой йотированный||Used in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. This letter does not appear in Poluustav typography. It exists only in the manuscript tradition, particularlty in the South Slavic recension.||Ѭѭ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙙ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED LITTLE YUS||ꙙ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CLOSED LITTLE YUS||(?)||Used in the Ustav era. It exists only in the manuscript tradition, particularlty in the South Slavic recension.||Ꙙꙙ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙝ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSED LITTLE YUS||ꙝ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSED LITTLE YUS||(?)||Used in the Ustav era. It exists only in the manuscript tradition, particularlty in the South Slavic recension.||Ꙝꙝ||—||—||—||—|
|Ꙛ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BLENDED YUS||ꙛ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BLENDED YUS||(?)||Used in the Ustav era; this modern “academic” character is used when transcribing manuscripts when it cannot be determined whether the big or the small YUS is intended.||Ꙛꙛ||—||—||—||—|
|Ѯ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KSI||ѯ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KSI||кси||From the Greek letter Ξ ξ.||Ѯѯ||Ѯѯ||Ѯѯ||Ѯѯ||Ѯѯ|
|Ѱ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PSI||ѱ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PSI||пси||From the Greek letter Ψ ψ.||Ѱѱ||Ѱѱ||Ѱѱ||Ѱѱ||Ѱѱ|
|Ѳ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER FITA||ѳ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER FITA||фита||From the Greek letter Θ θ.||Ѳѳ||Ѳѳ||Ѳѳ||Ѳѳ||Ѳѳ|
|Ѵ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IZHITSA||ѵ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IZHITSA||ижица|| From the Greek letter Υ υ. Required for pre-1917 Russian. For the most part, this character follows traditional Greek orthographic and pronunciation rules:
By itself, this letter is a vowel having the sound “ee” in keep, equivalent to the vowel “И” in modern Russian. (It is present in English – and many other modern languages which have borrowed Greek words and roots – in the vowel “Y”; some European languages, however, pronounce this vowel like the German ü.) By itself, this letter does not function as a consonant. Furthermore, as a vowel, it MUST have some form of diacritical mark to either indicate stress (ACUTE ACCENT or INVERTED BREVE/KAMORA), initial position (the PSILI PNEUMATA or ACUTE OXIA, see below), or lack of stress (see the following character).
When this letter follows another vowel, it has two possible pronunciations. When it follows the vowels A and E, it is pronounced as AV and EV. When it follows O, it combined with it to form the pure vowel U (not a diphthong, as one might expect). [It is linguistically very closely related to CYRILLIC LETTER U, У у, 0423 and 0443; see also the letter UK above.]
|Ѷ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IZHITSA WITH DOUBLE GRAVE ACCENT
|ѷ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IZHITSA WITH DOUBLE GRAVE ACCENT
|(ижица съ кендемой?)|| There are a number of serious problems with this character as it was initially proposed and included in the Unicode Standard:
1) When this character was identified and proposed for inclusion in Unicode, the two marks over the character were incorrectly identified as a DOUBLE GRAVE ACCENT. (If this were an accurate identification, it would have been more accurate to call them “DOUBLE GRAVE”, not the ambiguous “DOUBLE GRAVE ACCENT”, since grave and accent lean in opposite directions.) The main problem with considering this as a DOUBLE GRAVE is that the DOUBLE GRAVE has only been positively identified in manuscripts and a few early printed sources as a stress marker for nouns in the dual number, particularly the words for “two” and “both”, and for the aorist verb “бѣ”. The fact that this is only used with the letter IZHITSA when it occurs as an unstressed vowel leads us to logically conclude that it is not a stress diacritic at all, but a marker for some other function or value.
2) While we are fortunate that the two hatch marks have not been identified as a DIERESIS (two round dots, as the South Slavic scholars choose to identify these diacritics), it is unfortunate that most Slavic scholars have not considered that these marks are the I TITLO. We can hypothesise that the reason the I TITLO is placed above the IZHITSA is to clearly indicate the pronunciation of the letter as “I”, instead of its alternate pronunciation as the consonant “V” (since this character is derived from Greek and follows similar orthographic and lingustic rules). (While this hypothesis is not entirely logical, it has a lot more credibility than the DOUBLE GRAVE ACCENT.)
3) Since both the DOUBLE GRAVE (U+030F) and the I TITLO (U+A675) are now securely encoded in the Unicode Standard, it defies the fundamental principles and logic of the Unicode Consortium to retain this composite character, and thus we suggest that this character be deprecated in favor of using separate characters (base character and diacritic).
4) If this composite character should be retained in the Unicode Standard, its erroneous name should be corrected to read: “CYRILLIC LETTER IZHITSA WITH I TITLO”. We also encourage typographers to avoid using this compsite character entirely, in favour of using the separate elements.
ALEKSANDR & YURI: The inclusion of this character is also quite unfortunate. It is not a standalone character at all, but rather an Izhitsa with a Kendema (see section below on combining marks, ROADMAP, Part III, section 4). The codepoint should not be used but rather the character should be decomposed as 0474 + 030F (Combining Double Grave Accent). The present codepoints should be deprecated.
|Ꙟ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YN||ꙟ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YN||ынъ||The Romanian letter Yn is the only case of a non-Slavonic letter to be included in the standard. In the early days of printing in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted for liturgical use (including this unique character), but later the books were transliterated into the Latin alphabet. There is no genuine need to include this character in Synodal Era fonts, as it would be anachronistic, but it should be included in Poluustav fonts. (It is pronounced as a nasal version of the letter “I”.)||—||—||Ꙟꙟ||[Ꙟꙟ]||Ꙟꙟ|
|Ѐ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IE WITH GRAVE||ѐ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE WITH GRAVE||—||Used in Macedonian to represent a stressed Е. Not considered a separate letter, but merely the letter Е with a grave accent.||—||—||—||[Ѐѐ]||—|
|Ё||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IO||ё||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IO||—||Used in Russian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Mongolian, and others. Considered a separate letter, after the letter Е, but not collated separately from Е in Russian.||—||—||—||[Ёё]||—|
|Ђ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DJE||ђ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DJE||—||Used in Serbian and Montenegrin.
Invented as a new letter, placed between Д and Е. (The Macedonian cognate is CYRILLIC LETTER GJE, below.)
NOTE: This is not the same as the CYRILLIC LETTER DJERV (A648, A649, see above), which was used in the Ustav era. This is a completely modern letter, despite its similar appearance (although it is quite likely that this was derived or adapted from DJERV).
|Ѓ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GJE||ѓ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GJE||—||Used in Macedonian. Considered as a new letter, placed between Д and Е. (The Serbian and Montenegrin cognate is CYRILLIC LETTER DJE, above.)||—||—||—||[Ѓѓ]||—|
|Ј||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER JE||ј||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER JE||—||Used in Serbian, Macedonian, Azerbaijani, Altay, and Kildin Sami. Borrowed from Latin to replace the many iotated letters in Cyrillic. Placed before К.||—||—||—||[Јј]||—|
|Љ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LJE||љ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LJE||—||Used in Serbian and Macedonian. Ligature of Л and the Russian ь. Considered a separate letter, placed after Л.||—||—||—||[Љљ]||—|
|Њ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER NJE||њ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER NJE||—||Used in Serbian and Macedonian. Ligature of Н and the Russian ь. Considered a separate letter, placed after Н.||—||—||—||[Њњ]||—|
|Ћ||CYRLLIC CAPITAL LETTER TSHE||ћ||CYRLLIC SMALL LETTER TSHE||—||Used in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.
Invented as a new letter, placed between Т and У. In pronunciation and in linguistic value, it is somewhat equivalent to CYRILLIC LETTER CHE (Чч), which exists in the north Slavic writing systems but not in the south Slavic scripts.
NOTE: This is not the same as the CYRILLIC LETTER DJERV (A648, A649, see above), which was used in the Ustav era. This is a completely modern letter, despite its almost identical apppearance (although it is likely that this was derived or adapted from DJERV).
|Ќ||CYRLLIC CAPITAL LETTER KJE||ќ||CYRLLIC SMALL LETTER KJE||—||Used in Macedonian. Considered as a new letter, placed between Т and У.||—||—||—||[Ќќ]||—|
|Ѝ||CYRLLIC CAPITAL LETTER I WITH GRAVE||ѝ||CYRLLIC SMALL LETTER I WITH GRAVE||—||Used mostly in Bulgarian and Macedonian. Not considered a separate letter, but merely the letter И with a grave accent.||—||—||—||[Ѝѝ]||—|
|Ў||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT U||ў||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT U||—||Used in Belarusian, Dungan, Uzbek, and Siberian Yupik.||—||—||—||[Ўў]||—|
|Џ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DZHE||џ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DZHE||—||This letter first occurs in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet and is now used in modern Serbian, Macedonian, and Abkhaz. In Serbian and Macedonian, it is considered a separate letter, placed between Ч and Ш. In Abkhaz, it acts like the Serbian/Macedonian Ђ, placed near the end of the Abkhaz alphabet. (It has never been used in the Russian recensions.)||—||—||—||[Џџ]||—|
|Ґ||CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN||ґ||CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN||—||Used in Belarusian, Rusyn, Ukrainian.||—||—||—||[Ґґ]||—|
Compiled by Nikita Simmons, Aleksandr Andreev and Yuri Shardt, 2011, revised 2012.