Łacinka alphabet

The Belarusian Latin alphabet or Łacinka ([laˈt͡sinka], from Belarusian: лацінка (BGN/PCGN: latsinka) for the Latin script in general) is the common name of the several historical alphabets to render the Belarusian (Cyrillic) text in Latin script. It is similar to the Sorbian alphabet, incorporating features of the Polish and Czech alphabets.

Łacinka was occasionally used in the Belarusian area mainly in the 19th century and first years of the 20th century. Belarusian was officially written only in the Latin script between 1941 and 1944, in the Nazi German-occupied Belarusian territories.

It is used occasionally in its current form by certain authors, groups and promoters in the Nasha Niva weekly, the ARCHE journal, and some of the Belarusian diaspora press on the Internet.

It is not, as such, the Romanisation system, as it imposes knowing certain accompanying orthographic conventions. For instance, the Łacinka equivalent to Cyrillic е is either e, ie or je, depending on the pronunciation and on the preceding sound. Also, there is no soft sign in Łacinka, palatalisation instead being represented by a diacritic on the preceding consonant.

The official Belarusian Romanisation 2007 system is similar to Łacinka, but differs in transliterating the Cyrillic л: л = ł (Łacinka) = l (official), ль = l (Łacinka) = ĺ (official), ля = la (Łacinka) = lia (official).

In Medieval times (16th century), the first examples of the Latin renderings of the Belarusian (Cyrillic) text are known to occur, coming from the need to include the Old Belarusian quotes in the Polish and Latin texts. Those renderings were un-codified and, seemingly, were done by applying the Polish orthography to the Old Belarusian sounds.

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