Belarusian alphabet
| Belarusian alphabet |
|
|---|---|
| Type | |
| Languages | Belarusian |
|
Time period
|
1918 to the present |
|
Parent systems
|
Cyrillic script
|
|
Sister systems
|
Belarusian Latin Belarusian Arabic Russian Ukrainian |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Cyrl, 220 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Cyrillic |
| subset of Cyrillic (U+0400...U+04FF) | |
The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of the Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet has existed in its modern form since 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters. See also Belarusian Latin alphabet and Belarusian Arabic alphabet.
Officially, the letter ⟨г⟩ represents both /ɣ/ and /ɡ/, though the latter is only found in borrowings and mimesis. The letter ⟨ґ⟩ is used by some for the latter sound, but it has never belonged to a standard codification of the Belarusian alphabet.
The combination ⟨д⟩ with letters ⟨ж⟩ or ⟨з⟩ may denote either two distinct respective sounds (e.g., in some prefix-root combinations: пад-земны, ад-жыць), or the Belarusian affricates ⟨дж⟩ and ⟨дз⟩ (e.g., падзея, джала). In some representations of the alphabet, the affricates are included in parentheses after the letter ⟨д⟩, to emphasis their special status, as: ⟨… Дд (ДЖдж ДЗдз) Ее …⟩.
⟨Ў⟩ is not a distinct phoneme, but the neutralization of /v/ and /l/ when there is no following vowel, such as before a consonant or at the end of a word.
Palatalization of consonants is mostly indicated through choice of vowel letter, as illustrated here with /p/ and /pʲ/, both written with the letter ⟨п⟩:
When a consonant is not palatalized, precedes /j/, the apostrophe ⟨’⟩ is used to separate the iotated vowel: ⟨п’я п’е п’і п’ё п’ю⟩ /pja pjɛ pi pjɔ pju/. (⟨І⟩ is the palatalizing version of ⟨ы⟩, and arguably they represent a single phoneme.) The apostrophe is not considered a letter and therefore is not taken into account when alphabetizing. In pre-Second World War printing, the form ⟨‘⟩ was used. In practical computer use, it is frequently substituted with ⟨'⟩.
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