Cyrillic and Latin Scripts in Belarusian
The choice of the alphabet has often had religious roots though it is also associated with ideology, politics and culture. Latin letters are preferred in the majority of Catholic countries and the Cyrillic script is used in the majority of Orthodox ones.
Belarus is situated at the crossroads of two major civilizations, the East and the West, Catholic and Orthodox, that is why both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts have developed here since the Middle Ages. Belarus has generally used Cyrillic, but it also had considerable Polish influence. Let’s have a look at the history of Cyrillic and Latin Scripts in the Belarusian language.
THE Cyrillic alphabet comes from the time when the Kievan Rus and other Slavs were baptized by the Orthodox Church. It is said to have been created by two monks to be used by the Slavic peoples who had much in common- history and language, culture and religion, customs and traditions- to read the Greek gospel.
At that time Europe was divided into Roman Catholic countries and Greek Orthodox countries. One of the differences between them was the language used during church services. The Roman Catholic Church used the Latin language and the Greek Church employed native languages.
The Cyrillic script spread very fast among Slavic peoples. It became the foundation for alphabets used in different languages. According to Wikipedia, about 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. The Belarusian alphabet is a version of the Cyrillic script. It was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language. Belarusian had also been written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet or Lacinka which had some features of the Polish and Czech alphabets.
Belarusians equally used Lacinka and the Cyrillic script until 1921 when Belarus was divided between Poland and the USSR. Each of the alphabets had its own character which reflected the originality of the Belarusian language. But Lacinka was not favoured by the authorities as it meant opposition, freedom-loving and free-thinking and soon it disappeared. At the beginning of the 20th century Cyrillic became the only official alphabet in Belarusian. In the 1920s some attempts were made in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic to use the Latin script. Unfortunately, they were not successful.
Belarusian is an official language in Belarus alongside with Russian. It is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many common features with Russian and Ukrainian. Therefore these languages belonging to the same group are mutually understandable.
After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 some of the former Soviet republics officially changed from Cyrillic to Latin. Belarus also displayed an interest in Lacinka when the country made a move to return to the policy of national identification. However, it didn’t win recognition as people were/are accustomed to using the Cyrillic script.
Many Belarusians declare that Belarusian is their "mother tongue" though they don’t speak it. Belarusian children learn the Belarusian language and literature at school so they understand the language in general, but don't use it. Therefore, first and foremost, the Belarusian language itself should be prevented from the threat of becoming extinct. More and more intellectual people today support the idea of opening schools with Belarusian as the language of instruction and more and more young people become nationally conscious and choose Europe as their direction guide.
Victor Glodev
