D  - the fifth letter of the Russian alphabet and the fourth in almost all European languages \u200b\u200bwith Latin alphabets. Why such a discrepancy?

Well, what about? Indeed, it was here, at the very beginning of the ABC, that our ancestors had to, so to speak, somewhat “shred” the ancient Greek letters in order to insert the necessary Slavs between the “beta” and the “gamma” IN... One letter count and lost ...

In eighth place, the letter D  stands in the Arabic alphabet; at the Turks, until Kemal Pasha translated them into Latin alphabet, D  was even the tenth letter. It is said that in the writing of the Ethiopians it is the twelfth.

You already know well: the sign that expressed the sound “ d"Among the ancient Phoenicians, it was called" Dalet. " The Greeks did not know any other meaning than the purely alphabetical “delta”, but this name of the letter turned into a new word, healed its life, and its biography was far from being completed yet. The Slavs attached their letter in ancient times D  the name is good.

We now call this letter simply “de”. Many European languages \u200b\u200bknow her under the same name. The British, as usual, hold on to the specimen: they have it “di”, as, however, among Italians. The English have the advantage that they even indicate in their dictionaries that “di” - the name of the fourth letter of the alphabet — also has the plural - d "s. We cannot put" de "in the plural. We can simply say:" Three , seven, one hundred de "... But we have no right to express ourselves:" These dy, "" those day ... "

However, this does not apply to all letters and not to all languages. It is quite possible for us to have a plural number (and all forms of declension) of those names of letters, ours and foreign ones, which have the appearance of the nouns "yat", "izhitsa", "az", "X", "igrek", "z".

Letter D  in various languages, naturally, expresses not quite identical sounds. The French, Germans, Italians, its pronunciation is more or less the same. The Englishman is the same sound expressed by them Dpronounces at a slightly different position of the tip of the tongue. We press it to the teeth, the Englishman to the alveoli, a little closer to the palate.

However, to blame: this is phonetics, but we are engaged in graphics of written speech.

And yet it’s curious that even in Russian the letter D expresses not one sound, but several different ones. The foreigner rightly does not understand how the first sound of the word “house” is similar to the first sound of the word “ding-ding” and why? In both cases there is the same letter. It is not easy for him, a stranger, to grasp the common in this pair of sounds " d"And" q”, Because in his language consonants, as a rule, do not act as such pairs.

“Everything is stranger and stranger!” - the non-Russian person will say the words of Alice from the delightful tale of Lewis Carroll, seeing the same letter D  in a few words, like "greed" and "greedy." In the first case, he agrees: "Yes," de. In the second, he will spread his arms: “What are you ?! “Tae!”

What is there non-Russian! Each of us can recall in his life such a “non-Russian spelling strip” when he received “cola” for the word “bear” written through T, and for D Dso so. "

The situation of foreigners and first-graders in this case does not differ much, because our spelling, although it takes into account the laws of Russian phonetics, is by no means entirely focused on it, but limits its submission to it and historical and morphological principles. That is why the letters in it are not at all obliged to exactly correspond to “their” sounds.

Listen closely to the phrases: "our cat is fatter than yours" and "our cat is fat." In both cases, you will not hear “ tj», « tk"But rather clear" j», « dz».

Everything that I have told you so far, from our point of view, seemed to lie within the limits of the “expected”. No wonder that D  may sometimes sound like " t"Sometimes like" q».

But you will probably find it a strange quirk of Hungarian spelling artists, when they depict their sound “q” in, say, the very common Hungarian name “Gyor” with letters G  and Y... Yes, yes, like this: GY! D  and G  - what is common between them ?!

Nothing like nothing, but I remember a little Muscovite, whose name was Andryushka. He pronounced his name as " Andryushta"And all TO  pronounced as " t", and all G  - as " d».

What are you, Andreika, sitting at the very water? - asked him, the five-year-old, the nannies and mothers in the Crimea, in Yevpatoriya.

I’ll go to the horizon! - the big-headed little boy answered seriously, without even turning to the questioner ...

However, I again delved into the field of phonetics, the realm of sounds; meanwhile, they should interest us only indirectly ...

In math, a lowercase letter dturned into a word. In geometry, this letter has long been used to designate an angle of 90 degrees, "straight". Why? Precisely because it is “direct,” and in French droit for short, “ d". But maybe this is still not a word, but the usual abbreviation, initial? Not at all, and direct evidence can be given to this. In math textbooks you can easily find the expressions “two d”, “angle smaller than d” and the like. Think about it, because they are no different from expressions like “two pounds,” “growth less than a meter,” and so on. "Pood", "meter" - nouns. But then it’s clear that the noun and “ de».

The emergence of letter writing is the greatest information revolution in the history of mankind. This revolution created a new axial time of Western civilization and a new man, many times increasing the amount of information transmitted and accumulated.

There is no doubt that the beginning of the modern information era was laid by the discovery of the letter, and the mechanism of the emergence of the letter is of most interest in this connection. We are inclined to believe that the letter graphically displays some features of articulation of the sound of speech. More precisely: we are sure that the proto-letter arose as a drawing, as a kind of hieroglyph, but not of an object or scene from life, but of an articulation of sound, an articulating figure that is formed from the organs of speech at the moment of pronouncing the sound (let's call this quite tangible, visible articulating configuration of the articulate sound, remembering that she also has a mental copy, i.e. an image in the human mind.

So, it has become obvious to us that the newly arisen ancient letter is nothing more than a schematic graphic representation of articulation, i.e., the juxtaposition of speech organs when pronouncing a particular eukotype. And this situation has been preserved to a certain extent to this day, that is, even now in the graphic form of the letter we can find a schematic drawing of the articulate, that is, the configuration of the organs of speech, which is necessary so that when the air stream is blown through this articulate, a sound is produced. If we turn to the letter (o) in almost any of the European alphabets, then just looking at the mirror is enough to make sure that this letter accurately draws the position of the lips from the full-face position. In other words, this letter schematically depicts a rounded labial opening, which is isomorphic to the letter itself in its graphic representation. Greek omega, which also schematically outlines the rounded position of the lips, which is clearly visible in the full-face position, is no exception.

From what has been said, it follows that if the sound was pronounced approximately the same in different languages, then the drawing of the articulating figure in the form of a letter should turn out to be approximately the same in different alphabets - this is precisely the reason for the similarity of letters of various alphabets, including the oldest glagolitsa, which was created as a frontal articulation drawing , i.e., the author of the alphabet painted a kind of hieroglyph of the face in the projection of the full face, more precisely the parts of the face and visible organs of speech (lips, tongue, nose). The Greek alphabet was built on the basis of a different principle - this is a profile picture, which was more promising, since the resulting letter-like pattern was more diverse and informative.

So, it becomes clear that languages \u200b\u200bthat have approximately the same sounds could develop completely isolated graphics from one another to the same extent depicting the articulating figures (articulations) of sounds in the form of letters. So it becomes clear - let’s repeat once more - the phenomenon of complete or partial coincidence of letters in the graphs of different languages \u200b\u200bthat didn’t have or interrupted family ties long before the writing. And in this regard, the question arises of what created in 863 A.D. Constantine in Moravia - Cyrillic or Glagolitic, and which of the graph was primary in relation to the other.

This question may seem strange: what else could Cyril create except Cyrillic (otherwise this alphabet would not be called that)? Nevertheless, no matter how absurd it may seem, this question is discussed, moreover, the prevailing in modern paleography is the opinion that Cyril created the Glagolitic, and the Cyrillic alphabet was so called by mistake. The discussion on this topic has been going on for centuries, and we will not retell its vicissitudes. Let us immediately outline our position: we will adhere to the point of view that before the arrival of the Solun brothers in Moravia, the Slavs already had a written language, and this writing was a Glagolitic alphabet. Consider the arguments supporting this theory, as well as the counterarguments cited by scientists who believe that the Solun brothers or their students created a verb.

The first who claimed that the Slavs had a distinctive letter — the Glagolitic even in the pre-Christian period — were the Czech scholars Lingardt and Anton (Anton, 1789), who believed that the Glagolitic originated in the 5–6 centuries. among the western Slavs. Similar views were held by P. Ya. Chernykh (Chernykh, 1950 and others), N. A. Konstantinov, E. M. Epstein and some other scientists. P. Ya. Chernykh wrote: “One can speak of a continuous (from prehistoric times) written tradition on the territory of Ancient Russia” (Chernykh 1950, p. 18). We also accept this point of view, being deeply convinced that the glagolitic originated in pre-Christian times not only among the Westerners, but among all Slavs, including the Eastern ones, in a very ancient time.

In the mid-19th century, the Czech linguist J. Dobrovolsky suggested that Cyril created the Cyrillic alphabet, but later his students converted the Cyrillic alphabet into a Glagolitic alphabet to avoid persecution by the Catholic clergy. This hypothesis was also developed by I. I. Sreznevsky, A. I. Sobolevsky, E. F. Karsky.

At the end of the 19th century V.F. Miller and P.V. Golubovsky put forward a hypothesis that Konstantin and Methodius created a verb in Moravia, this point of view was supported by the Bulgarian academician E. Georgiev (Georgiev 1952). V. A. Istrin, also a supporter of this hypothesis, cites the following as an argument: “The Cyrillic alphabet undoubtedly comes from the Byzantine statutory letter and could easily develop from it in a purely evolutionary way, through graphic modifications or ligature combinations of Byzantine letters, as well as by borrowing two three missing letters from the Jewish alphabet. But the glagolitic cannot be completely withdrawn from any other writing system and most of all resembles an artificially created system ”(Istrin, 1988. p. 78; this book also contains other arguments in favor of the hypothesis that Konstantin created the verb: see pages 145–149). These indisputably true facts should be interpreted exactly the opposite: the Glagolitic alphabet as a unique, ancient and distinctive alphabet independently developed from the protoglagolic writing that was formed in the ancient Slavs in the pre-Christian era by evolutionary means.

In the works of I. A. Figurovsky we find a description of the protoglagolic alphabet, restored on the basis of inscriptions on eggplant from the Novocherkassk Museum and on the stones and walls of the Mayatsky fortification on the Don. In addition, there is an inscription reproduced by the Arab traveler Ibn al-Nedim, as well as an inscription on a clay vessel of the 10th century (discovered by V. A. Gorodtsov in 1897 in an excavation near the village of Aleksanovo near Ryazan). According to V.A. Istrin, the signs on pots from the former Tver Museum, as well as on copper plates from Tver mounds of the 11th century, are similar in form to the Aleksan inscriptions (Istrin 1988, p. 125). B. A. Rybakov believes that some of these signs are similar to the verb letters (Rybakov 1940). To the listed examples, we should add the signs found on lead fillings of the 10-14th centuries on the Western Bug near the village of Drogichina: on one side of such a seal a Cyrillic letter is visible, on the back - presumably - protoglagolic letter (Istrin 1988, p. 126).

Glagolitic

The opinion that the Slavs before Cyril had a letter is documented. It was about this that the Chernorizets Brave wrote, saying that the Slavs had a letter in the pre-Christian era ("features and cuts"). In addition, Konstantin himself says about this: "I am glad to go there, if only they have letters for their language." In other words, he would not agree to go to Moravia if there weren’t written language on this earth that could be taken as a basis for creating the Slavic alphabet. In addition, even before traveling to Moravia, Konstantin already read and spoke Russian and was familiar with the oldest Russian alphabet - it is very likely that it was a Glagolitic. He got acquainted with Russian writing and language, having stayed for almost a whole year in Chersonese on the way to the famous Khazar dispute with Jewish and Muslim preachers, which is described in all the lists of Cyril’s Life (without exception) (Goshev, 1962).

Cyrillic

The alphabet of the Cyrillic alphabet: Novgorod birch bark letter No. 591 (1025-1050) and its depiction

Consider the arguments given by V. A. Istrin, in support of the fact that Cyril created the Cyrillic alphabet.

1. The history of writing, according to V. A. Istrin, shows that the spread of almost any religion was accompanied by the simultaneous spread of the writing system associated with this religion. “Thus, Western Christianity has always been introduced among various peoples along with Latin script; Islam - along with Arabic script; Buddhism in the middle Vzotok - together with Indian writing systems (Brahmi, Devanagari, etc.), and in the Far East - together with the Chinese character; the religion of Zoroaster — along with the alphabet of the Avesta ”(Istrin 1988, p. 149). The Eastern Orthodox Church, which carried the word of God along with Greek alphabet, was no exception. Recall at the same time that Konstantin would not agree to go to Moravia if there had already not been an original letter there as the basis for alphabetical creation.

It follows that Konstantin took the original verb as the basis and created on the basis of it and the Greek alphabet a kind of synthetic script, later called Cyrillic, in which the Greek letters were adapted to convey Slavic sounds, but some of the letters were simply borrowed from the Glagolitic alphabet, which we show below.

2. About the creation of the alphabet by Konstantin according to the Greek model, while preserving a number of ancient Slavic letters, the Chernorizets Khrabr directly writes: “Before that, the Slovene didn’t have books, but with rubble and cuts, a prayer and a gataah of trash were. Having been baptized with Roman and Greek letters, I need to write Slovenian speech without arrangement, but how can I write good to Greek letters? Bor belly or green or church or tea or latitude or venom or rail or youth or language and, in other words, be familiar with it for many years. Then blyubyubets  guard everything and I will not leave hlcha  kind of bezoum razum but the whole ka razoumou bringing and pardon pardon the clan Slovenian sent to them stgoConstantine the philosopher accused Cyril husband is righteous and true and do it l  the writers and the axis of the oba are ubo according to the rank of the Grych letters of the ova according to the word of speech From the same beginnings according to the Grizhskoye they are ooo o alpha and start the basics from the beginning ...   StoyKiril align  the first (first) writing is az but how and the first is the writing of az and Ba  Danow Rodow of Slovenian to open ost ... ”(Istrin 1988, pp. 153–154, words under the title are underlined).

It’s quite clear that the Chernorizets Khrabr says here that Konstantin took part of the letters in Greek alphabet (according to the order of Greek letters), and took part of the letters in Slavic - “ova \u200b\u200baccording to the word of speech”, but Konstantin began the alphabet with the letter az, as in Greek Moreover, in the list of the text of Chernorizets Khrabr “The Legend of the Letters”, stored in the Moscow Spiritual Academy (15th century list), there is simply an unambiguous entry: “heralds a, b, c, e, yus-big, these are the essence of cd by the Greek script . The essence of si. A, c, d, d, e, s, and, i-des., K, l, m, n, o, p, p, s, t, oh, f, x, omega, and ... by Slovenian language. " Here we are talking about how to pronounce the letters of the new alphabet.

3. According to the testimony of all the lists of “The Life of Cyril,” Constantine, while traveling to the Khazars in Chersonesos, discovered the Gospel and the Psalter written in Russian letters. Here is how it is narrated in the “Pannonian Life”: “you will find that gospel and psalter written in Russian, and you will gain a person who speaks that conversation, and you will have a conversation with him and the power of speech, but different writing, vowel and consensus, and Creating a prayer for God, soon to begin the honor and tale, and pay him a damn .. "(Istrin 1988, p. 111). It is difficult to interpret this evidence in two ways. Here we are talking about the fact that Konstantin discovered sacred books in Russian in Chersonesos, found a person who spoke that conversation (speaking that language), compared various letters - vowels and consonants - of his own and Russian, and soon learned to read and speak in - Russian, which many were surprised. It also follows from the above that the Russians adopted Christianity and translated Greek books before 988, - there is also evidence of this from an Arab source.

4. In 907, the first contract was concluded with Byzantium, as evidenced by a contractual deed that did not reach us, but was preserved in the retelling of The Tale of Bygone Years. The first contract was followed by others. It is clear that the contractual instrument was drawn up in Greek, on the one hand, and in Old Russian, on the other. It is quite clear that for this, the Russian alphabet was used, which in this period could only be a Glagolitic alphabet.

5. The digital system of the glagolitic is sequential: the first letter \u003d 1, the second letter \u003d 2, etc., which indicates that it was the original counting system. As for the Cyrillic alphabet, everything is mixed up in it and the sequence of letters does not correspond to the natural number sequence, there are letters that are used only as numbers. This state of affairs in the Cyrillic alphabet arose because it synthesizes the Greek alphabet and verb, i.e., it includes letters from different alphabets.

Greek letters psi  and xi  almost always used as numbers, very rarely they could be found in their own names AleHandr, HserH (Xerxes), sometimes in words like psalm  (with the first letter psi).

6. The Southern Slavs have a legend telling that they had a letter from ancient times.

7. V. A. Istrin and P. Ya. Chernykh also give such arguments: if we assume that the Slavs did not exist a letter long before they adopted Christianity, then the unexpectedly high flowering of Bulgarian literature at the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th ., as well as later Old Russian literature (“The Word of Igor’s Regiment”, as well as “The Prayer of Daniel the Sharpener”, “Russian Pravda” are written in Old Russian, and not Old Slavonic), the wide distribution of writing in everyday life of the Eastern Slavs will not be clear 11th c., And the high craftsmanship that has reached on Wuxi has a 11 in. the art of writing and book design (an example is the “Ostromir Gospel”) (Istrin 1988, p. 104).

So, the most consistent and documented version of the emergence of the Cyrillic alphabet is the version of the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet by replacing most of the letters of the most ancient Glagolitic alphabet with Greek. However, some of the letters that denoted sounds that are absent in the Greek language, went to the Cyrillic alphabet from the Glagolitic alphabet.

Let us consider in more detail which letters of the Glagolitic alphabet have been eliminated and which, with some changing and fitting to the Greek canon, have been preserved. So, Brave say that Cyril created " l  letters and eight ”, that is, 30 and 8 \u003d 38 letters. Of these, 24 letters go back to the Greek alphabet (az, lead, verb, good, eat, earth, others, and, like, people, think, ours, he, peace, rtsi, word, firmly, firth, ha, omega, psi , xi, fita, izhitsa), while xi  and psi  did not exist previously in the Glagolitic.

However, it should be noted that of the 24 letters listed above, there is a group of letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that look similar to both Glagolitic letters and Greek letters, therefore such letters can be said to have a double motivation in external form: these are letters good  and delta, there is epsilon, people and lambda, think and mi, rts and ro (rts - inverted ro), firmly and tau, fert and fi, o and omega, o and o-micron.  Thus, out of 38 letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, in fact, only 14 letters can be recognized as Greek in origin: az, lead, verb, zelo  (from the Greek digamma) like, kako, our, peace, word, ha, omega, - plus to this izhitsa, psi, xi,the last two of which were practically not used as letters (Izhitsa had a conception (s) or (y) with umlaut and was used contradictory and inconsistent) .

A significant part of the Cyrillic alphabet actually borrows letters from the most ancient Glagolitic alphabet, however, Konstantin fitted these letters to the general style of the Greek alphabet, removing some ornate. Nevertheless, it is clear to anyone who is not even initiated into the mysteries of grapemics that the verbal letters tsy, worm, sha, shta, er, yer, yu, just switched to the Cyrillic alphabet from the Glagolitic alphabet with minimal external change. Glagolic letters jus-large and jus- small, as well as the same usa  iotated ones when moving to the Cyrillic alphabet were simply rotated 90 degrees and put “on their feet” from the “side” - this was done by Konstantin to give them a convenient look for cursive writing.

As for the letter to ya, it should be recognized that it arose with an increase in ep (b) and giving it a feature in the upper part. Obviously, this letter was simply invented by Konstantin, who decided not to use the verb to ya  because of its graphic complexity (a triangle with an internal separation by three lines) - and did it right, since it also pursued a purely technological goal - the alphabet that allows you to write quickly on cursive writing, which was necessary for the speedy distribution of Christian books and Orthodoxy in Slavic lands. This giant ep (b) was used by Konstantin for another letter he invented, which replaced the glagolic letter the dir  and was like Cyrillic to ya, but this “corrupted poison” did not have a bottom line - it is characteristic that this letter does not correspond either in the Greek alphabet or in the Glagolitic alphabet, which leads to the conclusion that Constantine invented this letter himself.

Thus, digraphs remain, i.e. double letters formed by the merger of two letters. These include the letter in Cyrillic yer  (s) iotated small and large yus,as well as the letter i  (iotized az), iotirovanaya (e). All of the listed digraphs were formed from the merger of the corresponding letters with decimal and.

Double letter oU (uk), denoting the sound (y) in the Cyrillic alphabet, very likely appeared as a change of the glagolic letter “uk”, which it looks like - note that in the Greek alphabet there was no corresponding letter, but in the glagolitic .

Now we turn to the most important thing, that is, to the question of whether certain moments of articulation (articulatum) are found in the letters of the Glagolitic alphabet, and also if they do not pass into the Cyrillic alphabet “by inheritance”?

Again, with the naked eye, it can be seen that when nasal sounds are indicated in the verb letter, it has two adjacent small circles, similar to the nostril symbol, or one circle, apparently with the same symbolization of the nose. This is exactly the kind of glagolic letters thinking  (transmits sound (m), our  (sound (n) yus-small  (transmits e-nasal sound) yus big  (sound o-nasal). This circle or two circles are not stored in the Cyrillic alphabet, since they would greatly interfere with cursive writing.

Another hieroglyph of the speech organs in the glagolitic letter is firth, however, the Greek letter is also hieroglyphic fi, also having the function of transmitting sound (f), it is even more similar to a rounded mouth opening with a jumper from the lips in the middle, that is, it more accurately depicts the articulate of sound (f). In the modern letter (f) we can still observe a well-reflected schematic drawing of the position of the lips full face when pronouncing the sound (f): in the external appearance of the letter there are two oblong holes with a jumper between them.

About the shape of the letter about  in many alphabets we have already said above, the glagolitic is not an exception in this respect, although the letter about  it is less hieroglyphic than in Greek alphabet. As for the other letters of the Glagolitic in terms of the similarity of their form with the articulatory figure, we will devote our future work to this problem, in this article we will touch on the hieroglyphic characters of Cyril letters in the future, remembering that the subject itself is not depicted, but the articulation figure (articulate ) sound.

Thus, in the second half of the IX century BC. e. (in 863) Konstantin the Philosopher improved and adapted a number of letters of the Greek alphabet to convey Slavic sounds, as well as modified a number of letters of the most ancient Glagolitic alphabet, thus creating an alternative letter to the Glagolitic alphabet, and these two alphabets coexisted for some time on Slavic lands. We emphasize once again that Konstantin did not invent a fundamentally new alphabet in the strict sense of the word, he took as a basis two existing alphabets and synthesized them, i.e., he synthesized the Glagolitic and Greek letters and received the alphabet that conveys Slavic sounds well. In other words, Konstantin only improved the most ancient glagolitic, changing part of its letters to the Greek mode and introducing part of the Greek letters instead of the verb ones, adapting the resulting alphabet to transmit Slavic sounds. This was the ABC for the missionary purposes of the Christianization of the Gentiles, who had used the verb for many centuries. However, there was a period when both alphabets coexist and both are used to rewrite liturgical books, but the proximity of the Cyrillic alphabet to the Greek primary sources leads to the gradual spread of the Cyrillic alphabet and crowding out the ancient glagolitic alphabet.

Proof of this is the inscription on the stone of the church of the Bulgarian king Simeon (circa 893), the ritual part of which is made on the Glagolitic alphabet as more ancient writing, and the inscription "the church of St. John was made (a) by Pauch Christofoulaz", as more modern, is made in Cyrillic . Another argument in favor of the existence before the Cyrillic alphabet of another Slavic script leads V.A. Istrin. So, he writes: “The extremely short period that Konstantin needed, according to his“ Life ”, to develop an ordered Slavic alphabet also testifies to the existence of a Protokirill script among the Slavs. Such a short period was possible only under the condition that Cyril had some source materials ”(Istrin, 1988. P. 105). Such a pre-Cyrillic Slavic letter was the Glagolitic alphabet, which seems to us more than likely, and another proof of this is the so-called Palimpsest, i.e., Cyrillic spelling in a washed out Glagolic text (it is clear which text is more ancient).