Ruthenian script

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I think this won’t be a secret to anyone here — Cyrillic script comes from Greek, namely, the Uncial script with Glagolithic and additional ligatures added for missing sounds, but the modern form of many Cyrillic scripts across the world comes from Russians, be it from times of Peter the Great or communism. And Ukrainian alphabet isn’t an exception, in fact, you can safely say, that they and Belarusians were the first ones influenced by Russians and their Amsterdam writing. And this isn’t a thing to be surprised or offended by. Like it or not, Muscovy was a successful and influential state, and this allowed it to influence their neighbours without a codified writing tradition. Rusyns (or Rutheni in Latin) was one of many such neighbours.

But imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical world, similar to our own, where Rusyns (future Ukrainians) have managed to codify their own writing standard, some fifty or hundred years earlier than Muscovites (future Russians). Now imagine, that with the help of Cossack, and later Little Russian, nobility they were able to keep that writing standard and even turn it to print. This is the world of Ruthenian script or “Ukrainian alphabet without Civil script”. This is the world of Keine Zeit



Ruthenian script is a world-building exercise and a speculative constructed script, that was created with a specific task – to create a Cyrillic alphabet without or with minimal influence from Russian Civil script, also known as the Amsterdam alphabet. In it we will mostly focus on calligraphy and orthography, only briefly describing events which lead to it’s forming. Starting from 1600s, we will observe the evolution of this curious alphabet, culminating somewhere in early 1900s, where our fictional Rusyns will create their own state(s).

Though I think previous three paragraphs explain everything quite clear, knowing how Ukrainians tend to react to these sorts of projects, a disclaimer is in order: this is not a serious proposal for reforming Ukrainian orthography. No one will ever force you to write in Ruthenian, I won’t send letters to Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and best case scenario you’ll never see Ruthenian beyond this text (the worst case scenario — you’ll see it in some journal somewhere). No need to worry about it.

But our Ruthenian can’t come from nothing! So before we begin, let’s talk about the history of Cyrillic for a bit...

Ἱдра, or why civil script exists.
Civil script is the primogenitor of every modern Cyrillic script currently in use. From Serbs to Evenks, it’s truly everywhere and even now, every time we type something in Cyrillic on the internet, we’re using a script developed by Soviet Russia based on the script of Peter the Great. Of course, not all Slavic languages (let alone non-Slavic) use the exact same letters as Russians, but their influence (or to be more precise — influence of socialism) can be seen even by an untrained eye. Yet the history of Civil script’s creation is about as complex of a topic, as history of Cyrillic in general and a lot of its details are often misconstrued in anti-Russian propaganda of many people.

So, let’s go back to 1660-1690’s. In that time, Cyrillic world was dominated by two things: half-ustav and various “shorthands” (though strictly speaking “cursive” would be a more accurate term to describe it). Every nation and people had their own handwriting quirks, but the typography of various printers has remained functionally unchanged for the last 200 or so years. As of this time period, Cyrillic has following “problems”:
 * Book scripts and shorthands were distancing themselves more and more with each passing decade, and the were slowly but surely beginning to closely mimic either handwritten Latin (more on that later) or handwritten Greek. In the latter case, all letters were starting to look more and more similar to Greek of those times, with purely Slavic letters being stylized to look like them. This wasn’t a purely stylistic choice, though, as this was also made in order to optimize and simplify Cyrillic script, a need created by the shift from handwritten to printed books.

Even if Civil Script never existed, the need for change was obvious and it’s entirely possible, that the new evolution of Ustav would be a gradual return to the Greek letter form, made only from straight and circular lines.
 * Latin and Western culture overall was quite fashionable back in the day and not only amongst those who constantly had to deal with it, but also among Muscovite intelligentsia as well. Even more the question of Cyrillic vs Latin was a contentious topic between conservatives and intelligentsia of those times, up until Peter the Great created the Civil script as a compromise between the two. That’s right. Civil script is Cyrillic written in a Latin manner, something that its critics like to beat it over the head with.
 * Let’s be honest here, Cyrillic itself was in a dire need of reforms. Legacy of Church Slavonic was beginning to actively hinder language’s development: a situation, where 2-5 letters denoting the same sound were common, a lot of diacritics was either becoming obsolete or was obsolete for a very long time, written purely out of habit, sometimes with mistakes, due to misunderstanding and simplifying or complicating the rules as a result, and that’s not saying about remaining purely Greek letters that were functionally useless safe for writing Cyrillic numbers and Greek loanwords. All of this made Cyrillic highly uncomfortable in comparison to Latin.

Which is why Peter the Great and then the Imperial Academy of Sciences afterwards have not only created new letter forms, but also have standardized Cyrillic: they removed most of the diacritics, along with all Greek letters, made the previously common handwritten forms of several letters to be official, like: Ѧ/Ꙗ (Я), Ꙋ/Ѵ (У), S/З/Ꙁ (З), Є/Э (Э), replaced Cyrillic numerals (АВГ) with Arabic ones (123), etc.

But, though Russians will probably disagree with me here, civil script received a cold welcome from everyone. And especially it wasn’t kindly received by other Cyrillic nations, who continued to merrily use their half-ustavs up until 19-20 century. And what happens in 19-20 century?

That’s right! Pan-Slavism and Socialism.

The period of “reconciliation” with the civil script in various countries surprisingly coincides with the time Russia/USSR was asserting its dominance over them, when pan-slavists or communists successfully forced their own versions of civil script to replace by that time even morally obsolete half-ustav.

Those, who managed to do so in 19 century got out easy, though, as they had more freedom to modify it, that’s how Bulgarian language saved its Yuses and Serbs with Macedonians got their J.

Those, who made their versions in the 20th century, weren’t so lucky, as those changes were not only reinforced by fire and blood of dissenters but also by logic, as having a script that can be read by everyone was simply practical, if your dream was to create a Union of Socialist Republics.

So, in conclusion: though many people these days don’t like the Civil Script and for a good reason, it was a needed compromise in times, where there were either no better alternatives available, or those that were weren’t as popular.

However, it’s important to remember, that Civil script also harmed Cyrillic in a substantial manner, as it broke its genetic link with Greek, instead making Cyrillic typography to closely resemble that of Latin, skipping all of that Renaissance period of standardization. This is the reason many a Cyrillic scholar these days demands a reform of the script, as two typographies are so close to each-other, that it’s only a matter of time, until all Slavs will romanize, losing their culture in the process.

Grand Hetmanate or Ruthenian humble beginnings.
In Ukrainian historiography, the death of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1657 and the events following are commonly referred to as “The Ruin”, a period characterized not only by the downfall of Cossack statehood, but also by starting the unofficial divide of Ukrainian territory into Right and Left-bank Ukraine, named after their position to river Dnieper, an echo of which is felt even to this day. However, in this world, though The Ruin did occur, it didn’t end in Hetmanates defeat. Somehow, it not only managed to stay alive, but also haven't become dependent on either of the three warring factions.

It’s unimportant how they’ve managed to do that, all that matters to us, is that when Ivan Mazepa was elected as hetman (1678), the Hetmanate is still independent and has most of its territories intact.

Here is where the history of Ruthenian script begins.

As we’ve said previously, the Cyrillic world was dominated by half-ustav and various shorthands/cursives. The Hetmanate wasn’t an exception to this, having its own style of handwriting, which we today call the Cossack cursive. In our world it didn’t catch up with the general populace, remaining a mere element of Zaporozhian Hosts chanceries, but in a world of Ruthenia, where Zaporozhian Host rules over their land, this style of handwriting starts to be learned in schools, replacing the old half-ustav in general correspondence.

With time, various handwriting styles (Kiev, Lutsk, Chyhyryn, etc.) will slowly merge into one universal style that would ease readability. For reference sake, we will call this universal style of handwriting, the Zaporhozian cursive. This cursive will not only combine various peculiarities of writing, but also various cultural quirks, thanks to the influence of the Kievan Orthodox Metropolis, Cossack nobility from Poland or Muscovy/Don, as well as (surprisingly) Crimean Tatar Arabic script.

With time it will grow and evolve. Zaporhozian cursive stops being a purely military tool and is now used by the educated townsfolk and poets, that coined a name for it: the Rus writing, rusynivka or, as we will call it, rutenivka or ruthenian.

As so, by the time Ivan Mazepa is granted the honorary title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichsfürst) in 1707, Ruthenian has the following looks, rules and can boast its heritage, coming from the old ustav script of later 15 century, meaning that Cossacks and Rusyns under their control now have an official, personal script, independent of Peter the Great and his Amsterdam alphabet.

Let’s take a closer look on early 18 century Ruthenian:

As we can see, unlike Muscovy-Russian alphabet, Ruthenian haven’t lost its signature Greek and Old Slavic elements. Typical diacritics remains intact, alongside positioning rules for several letters with the same sound value, requirement to use stresses and Greek letters. Typical Cyrillic letter forms were also saved, with some changes due to Polish influence, as well as a new letter case appeared, called “decorum”.

Let’s explain most unusual looking letters:
 * Form of letter Б comes from the way it’s traditionally written in half-ustav, simplified to the smallest number of hand strokes possible: 6. Lower case 6 is written in a triangular manner, common to several Cossack cursive forms.
 * Form of letter В is a combination of several forms of Cossack cursive, resulting in a triangular look of the upper semicircle. Lower case was transferred from half-ustav with little changes.
 * In our timeline, the form of letter Ґ comes from cursive gamma (γ), but in Ruthenian it comes from Polish letter gie (G), and serves the same function. With time, the form of G was simplified to the lowest number of hand strokes: 9. Lower case of this letter comes from right-bank cossacks and cossacified szlachta tradition, influenced by Cossack Baroque and local handwriting quirks, where 9 was mirrored, connecting the lower tail of the letter with the upper part in a circle.
 * Form of letter E comes from the traditional way of writing this letter: Є, εсть. Rules for writing this letter varied depending on who printed it and when, but without Russian influence and a clear division between Е/Э, the upper and lower cases of this letter will remain traditional Є/ε.
 * Form of letter Ж comes from simplifying the traditional form. Just like with time Ѧ turned into Я, so will Ж lose one of its tails, using only one, connecting Ж with the next letter.
 * Form of letter З comes from an older, ustav way of writing this letter: Ꙁ, that itself comes from Greek zeta (Ζ ζ). Under the influence of Zaporhozian cursive, the tail of Ꙁ became this letters main body, leaving the rest of Z as a rudimentary upper part. Lower case comes from one of Cossack cursive styles, where “з” was written like n/η with an exaggerated tail.
 * Letter dzilo (S) traditionally had the phonetic value of soft /dz/ or /z/, but with time, the differentiation was lost and by 17 century it was used more out of tradition and/or according to etymology. It was the Polish Cossacks and nobility that reintroduced this letter into Ruthenian as a way of transcribing Polish digraph dz and in some way Romanians as well, who by that time were still using “S” for sound /dz/.
 * Form of letter I comes from Cossack script and diacritical peculiarities of Early Cyrillic (more on that later).
 * Form of letter H is especially peculiar, as the official way of writing it isn’t all that popular and is considered to be “uncomfortable” by simple folk and because of that several cursives write it in one or two hand strokes.
 * Form of letters П, Р, С, У, Х, Ц come from Cossack scripts.
 * Forms of letters Т, Ш and Щ have common ancestry, mainly the tradition of writing its lower case (m). Letter Ш is an upside down variation of “m” with an underlining (m is overlined). Щ is an adaptation of ustav ligature “ШТ”.
 * Other letters (yer’s, yotted letters, Greek letters) for the most part are written according to Old Slavic traditions and rules. These letters are the only ones that don’t have a specialized decorum.
 * And speaking of decorum. Decorum is a type of decorative upper-	case letters, typically used, at the start of a section of text. This is an amalgamation of Cossack-Slavic traditions of writing upper-case letters differently at the start of sections, similarly to Latin, as well as borrowing some elements from Arabic abjads, where letter forms change depending on their position in words. Since this tradition has only started to manifest, Ruthenian of this time will have countless types of decorum: some will accurately draw letters according to ustav norms, some will follow Polish orthography rules and modify symbols to look more like Latin, some will even start combining Arabic and Cyrillic writing into a shorthand, creating weird, simplified symbols.

The picture above only shows the most typical forms of decorum, as only they could be used as individual markers in a standardized script.

As of diacritics, Slavic diacritics come directly from Greek and thus shares many similarities with it. In our time, it was almost fully removed by Peter the Great, but Ruthenian have not only managed to save it, but also added more functionality to them.

But since I doubt an average reader knows the history of diacritics or understands its meaning, better I explain what diacritics even is...

On diacritics
First, we have to understand, that by themselves, Greek and Ustav letters don’t have all of those dots and lines we’re so used to. That means: there’s no і, there’s ı. There’s no й, there’s и. These lines and dots are collectively called diacritics (from Greek διακριτικος — "distinguishing") and each of them has a specific role. - The most common and the simplest diacritic in Greek alphabet is stress. It’s placed over a stressed letter to emphasize it. Due to tonality of Ancient Greek, up until 1978, the Greek language had three distinct types of stress, that lingered on as a rudimentary feature and were eventually abolished. But Old Slavic languages used these stresses in Greek loanwords, as well as their own. It’s placed on stressed syllables in Modern Greek and on syllables with a high pitch in Ancient Greek. In diphthongs, it’s placed over a second vowel, even if only the first one is stressed. It marks a low pitch accent, that can only be found when the stressed vowel ends the word. Slavs also used grave to stress their last syllables. Ancient Greek circumflex didn’t look like that. There it looked like a mix of acute and grave, which is why it looks like this: â, in all Latin-based alphabets. Since Cyrillic was created from a later form of Greek, they borrowed circumflex used in those times, a form, that to most Latin alphabet users is known as tilde.
 * “Basic” stress is called acute: á
 * “Heavy” or “low” stress is called grave or gravis: à
 * A long, high and then falling pitch, usually seen in long vowels is called circumflex or varia: ã

If a word consists of only one syllable, then you only stress it, if it’s a varia or when the word has a homonym. This practice can be seen even in modern languages, for example, Bulgarians have words “и” and “ѝ”, which reads the same, but denotes different things. Greeks also have similar stuff.

Ruthenian discards stress diacritics much earlier than Greek, using only acute to mark all forms of stress. Yet circumflex will still be in use, albeit its function will change. At first, varia will mark only long vowels, but with time it’ll be used to mark any long sound (so, Ukrainian words like “злочинний” in Ruthenian is written as “злочин̃ий”) - Diphthongs is when you read two vowels as one syllable, like ai or aw (high/cow).

In Greek, diphthongs are formed with letters ı and v (iota and upsilon), when they’re placed after a vowel. That vowel is voiced, while iota and upsilon are short/non-syllabic, hence the pronunciation: /haj/ and /kaw/. And this is why diphthongs "ав" and "ев" that come from Greek were written as av, ev in pre-Petrin Cyrillic. “Оу” was also a diphthong (Оукра́ина), but in the Middle Ages it started to sound like У.

With time, other diphthongs also changed their phonetic value:


 * aı became /E/
 * eı became /i/
 * ov became /u/
 * oı at first became /у/ (like German ü), and then turned into /і/

But all Greek loanwords had to be written as they were. For purely Slavic diphthongs, Slavs have adapted another symbol: kratka or breve: ˘. It was placed above letter И, when it was a diphthong element: ай, ей, оуй, ой, etc.

Meanwhile, according to Slavonic rules in purely Slavic words, iota (ı) could only be written before vowels, where if it didn’t have a modifying diacritic above it, it read the same as Й (IPA: /j/). This is where famous Slavic iotated vowels come from: ІА, ІЄ, ІОу

To make it even more obvious, people additionally connected them together: Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю.

But there were also cases, when iota near a vowel is read separately, like I (/i/). In that case, a special symbol is placed above it: diaeresis or trema. With it, І/ı looks like Ї/ї.

Initially it was used in Greek diphthongs, where aї reads as two different sounds, like a-i or even a-y

This is why IA is read like Я (IPA: /ja/), but ЇА is read like IA, AI is read like E, while АЇ — as AI or even АЙ (/aj/). Similarly, diaeresis can also be placed above upsilon (izhitsa). Then, it will look like this: Ѷ and is pronounced like I.

For the most part, Ruthenian leaves this as is. Words like “автохтона” would be written as “avmoxmoна”. Currently, iotated vowels are used sporadically with yuses, but while Russian orthography fully abandons them, replacing with Я, Є, Ю, Ruthenian just uses then less and less often, placing I before a vowel to depict yotation and Й as a diphthong element. “Педїатр”, but “дıакую”. - There are also breathing diacritics. Greek language lost its polytonic specifics long ago, but it was placed in words up until 1978. Breathing can be rough (dasia) and smooth (psili).

Dasia, or rough breathing: Ἁἁ, Ἑἑ, Ἡἡ, Ἱἱ, Ὁὁ, Ῥῥ, Ὑὑ, Ὡὡ.

It’s read as a voiceless glottal fricative /h/ and is placed on the first letter in a word, if that letter is a vowel or rho (Pρ). This is why in Latin, Greek loanwords can start with letter H: hagia, hydra, rhotor. In Greek its ἁgia, ὑδρα, ῥótor and once upon a time it was read the same way it was transliterated into Latin.

Psili, or smooth breathing: Ἀἀ, Ἐἐ, Ἠἠ, Ἰἰ, Ὀὀ, ῤ, ὐ, Ὠὠ.

It’s also placed on the initial letter, as long as it’s a vowel or rho, only in denotes a glottal stop instead of a voiceless glottal fricative. German words with initial vowels start similarly.

Eventually the glottal stop disappeared and psili began to mean that the word has no aspiration. Soon after, the voiceless glottal fricative disappeared as well, but dasia and psili was kept as a tradition.

Just as stress diacritics, dasia and psili can also be combined with each other and stress diacritics, if the initial vowel is also accented. Each of these combinations had its own name and rules: acute + psili = iso, psili + dasia = apostrophe, etc. Unlike diphthongs, Old Ruthenian have discarded psili and its combinations, safe for liturgical texts, where writers remembered what they meant. Dasia, however, continued to denote a voiceless glottal fricative with the help Kyivan script and is written when it need to be. Therefore, modern word “гідра” (hydra) will be written as “ἱдра”, “діарея” (diarrhoea) - “дїаῥеıа”, etc. - Before Slavs started to denote palatalization with Ь, palatalization was marked with an inverted breve above a consonant: ̑. This diacritic also stems from Ancient Greek, but it was Eastern Slavs adapted it for palatalization. Ruthenian continued this tradition, but not in all words, which is why “гетман” (hetman) is still written and pronounced like that. - And finally, titlo. Titlo is placed above abbreviations (when you write only the initial and last letter of a word), when the word can be understood contextually, as well as above Cyrillic numerals, that were written with Cyrillic letters.

So, instead of “господь” we write г҃ъ, but above the entire abbreviation, not just the last letter, like in modern Church Slavonic.

Ruthenian saved this, as well as Cyrillic numerals, because in this timeline, Peter the Great couldn't enforce his Arabic numerals upon them.

So, to summarize:
Diacritics in both Old Slavic and Ruthenian are full-fledged symbols. The main ones are:
 * Stress. Placed on the stressed syllable.
 * Varia. Places on a long sound.
 * Breve. Placed on И, when it’s a part of a digraph.
 * Diaeresis. Placed on І or Ѵ, if there’s a vowel near them, but they aren’t part of a digraph.
 * Breathing. Placed on initial vowels and P. Rough breathing is placed, where there’s a clearly heard voiceless glottal fricative or if the same word in Latin has H as the first letter. Smooth breathing is placed elsewhere.
 * Inverted breve. Is placed above a palatalized consonant.
 * Titlo. Is placed above abbreviations and Cyrillic numerals.

Nineteen century Ruthenian or printers, Braille and the Ю-wars.
With the help of Kyiv and Petersburg brotherhoods and art collectives, Ruthenian has not only managed to survive, but also gained an unofficial letter case for printers, sponsored by rich benefactors. Of course, Russians will probably ban it and will try their best to destroy it, but that’s why we have immigrants and academics, that will not only safeguard it, but add new stuff as well.

By mid-19 century, printed Ruthenian looks like this:\

As we can see, some letters have changed:
 * Decorum was standartized, losing its Arabic feel and getting the Neo-Ustav inspirations instead (more on that later), in many ways thanks to Greek Catholics and Latin. We can see this influence in forms of decorum H and И.
 * Decorum case of letters У, Ш and Щ were created out of stylistic reasons, rather than practical. Similarities between Щ and Ψ are accidental, which isn’t considered to be an issue, as Ψ is barely used outside of its numeral function.
 * Lower case of letter Є (ε) was simplified to a form similar to the upper case: є.
 * Forms of letters П, Н, У, Ц, Ш та Щ are simplified forms of original Ruthenian. H being an especially peculiar case, as when Rusyns write H, they start with two horizontal strokes and only after do they connect the them and the following letter with a vertical stroke. This peculiarity remained in printed form Ruthenian as well, where H is always connected with the following letter.
 * Due to traditions, И and Ы remain their etymological orthography, while having the same phonetic value. This means that we place Ы, where you know it’s the correct letter to place Ы (сын) and use И otherwise.
 * Ъ and Ь have predominantly lost all of their sound values and used mainly due to tradition. In some regions it may develop into something more special, but for the most part these letters are rudimentary.
 * Similarly, yotation is marked traditionally: I+letter (ІА, Ю). In print, such letters (Ы included) tend to be united into one glyph. Jat (Ѣ) is used instead of modern Ji (Ї), since linguistic “New Jat” has already begun and the letter started to have that exact sound value. There will be a language conflict in regards to Ю and what phonetic value should it have, but more on that later.
 * Greek letters have mostly lost any value and are barely used outside of numerals and in religious-academic texts (which are predominantly printed in neo-ustav). Because of this, their forms were gradually simplified: Ksi (Ѯ) is now written as З, omega became thinner. Psi and Izhitsa are now similar to Щ and У’s decorum cases, but these are mostly unintentional and serve as an additional reminder of how rarely used are these letters.

But what language would it be without conflicts and clashes of differing traditions! In our world, this role was fulfilled by various orthographies and grammar books, but in the world of Ruthenian, just one letter was enough to throw linguists into heated debates, we today call “The Ruthenian Ju conflict” or “Ю wars”. Whether is was the crypto-romanists, who proposed such idea first or the folk phoneticians is unimportant. One way or the other, it will be fashionable among Rusyns to write words the same way you pronounce them, not according to tradition or etymology, “returning life to the language” so to say (hence the “folk” part).

Iotation and digraphs.
 * The first ones to cover the topic and perhaps the most radical were the so-called “modernists”. They wanted to discard tradition entirely and write with either unique graphemes per each iotated letter (an idea that never gained any sort of traction even among them) or I+letter. Traditions-schmaditions, a person has to understand that “iy is to be written as іу, not іо” (Hence why it’s also called “Ю wars”).
 * Their opponents were the conservatives. Their position was simple: “Don’t butcher our language”. This position was represented by slavists, Orthodox Church and other peculiar individuals.
 * And “adaptivists” were the third side in this discussion. Named so due to most of their projects being attempts to adapt something already existing, they are a minority, supported only by a few private individuals at best, some are merely lone projects or a parts of a more radical reform of Ruthenian script. Since there’s no point in me making up names for them all, I’ll just call them Ad1, Ad2, etc.
 * Ad1 was the first adaptive script, that coined the term. It wanted to return yuses as iotation graphemes. They also proposed to write new “yuses” (adapted glaglolithic letters) for nasal vowels, but that’s neither here or there.
 * Ad2 is probably the closest Ruthenian had to “Iazychie”. It was created by Russophiles/Church Slavicists and they wanted to return traditional decorative orthography (Е/Є), while marking iotation and palatalization as I+decorative case. Their texts had a large amount of Russian and Church Slavic loanwords.
 * Ad3 was called Decorative. They wanted to use decorum case on iotated letters as well., saying that this would make the language more aesthetically pleasing and understandable. Had stolen letter E from Ad2.
 * Ad4 was the Classical. Wanted to restore the usage of Greek letters.
 * Ad5 is a...weird little experiment, Gatsuks orthography being probably the closest similar thing we had in the real world. The person wanted to abolish all capital letters and write them only in decorum case, when needed. In his orthography, everything except the initial letter was written in lower case and iotation was marked with a decorum I+ lower case letter. If you needed to write, say, “Йогурт”, decorum serves as a capital letter and “o” would be an ascender. In lower case, decorum would be on the same level as other letters, the decorum part serving as a descender.
 * Ad6 was part of a romanization project, added as an addendum. It used trema diacritics to only mark iotated vowels. His argument was, that why going through all the trouble of inventing new letters, if iotated vowels could be marked, with already existing elements of the script, just as we use inverted breve for palatalization. He was also the first to propose a specialized letter for the sound /d͡ʒ/.

Besides that, the Ruthenian intelligentsia tried to show the world their independence by incorporating various linguistic ideas of that time into Ruthenian. Rusyns got their own Braille and Morse adaptations thanks to Kharkiv and Kyiv linguists, that either learned or taught students in France, as well as various scientific loanwords like “ракун” (racoon).

Modern Ruthenian and the world around them.
In the early 20th century, Ruthenian script becomes the bonfire of “rusyn nationalism”, no matter how hard Russians and Polish try to stomp it out. Having survived through reforms, language conflicts and bans against it, the latest version of Ruthenian will look like this: Unlike previous versions of Ruthenian, made by lone individuals or “folk”, this one is the final revised version made by the National Academy of Sciences and represents the official, codified version of the script. И and I now have different sound values, and the Ju Wars ended up in a compromise: though demands of modernists were fulfilled, they now had to share rooms with extensive use of diaeresis, as traditionalists wanted, while various adaptive ideas were included into decorum case. Ӂ is now used to mark /d͡ʒ/.

In addition to that, an official calligraphy was developed ad taught at schools:

Impact on other languages

 * Neo-Ustav: While Ruthenian Brotherhoods were popularizing Ruthenian, there were also others, who tried to “modernize” Cyrillic in accordance to their own ideas of modernization. One such project was neo-ustav, created by Galician Pan-Slavists based on Half-Ustav, Greek writing of those times and elements of shorthand's from other Central European Slavs.

Neo-Ustav represents the most radical return to Cyrillic's origins, almost fully copying Greek stylistic, while modifying remaining Slavic letters and digraphs with the same intention. Though initially, this script was only used in Church Slavonic, a few peoples and regions have adopted it.


 * Russian: Like in our world, Russian orthography shall be reformed by Peter the Great, but with Ruthenian around, Russian Cyrillic will not only gain an opponent, but Russian linguists will have an example of a successful Cyrillic reform. Because of that, the Amsterdam Alphabet of this world will look quite differently from ours.


 * Kryvian: Out of all neighbouring languages, the evolution of Belarusian is probably the hardest to predict, as Belarusians will be influenced by Russian/Muscovy culture for a very long while, absorbing their writing system and quirks in the process. Adding Ruthenian script with local ideas and reforms may lead to a very peculiar hybrid of Civil and Ruthenian scripts, and just as likely to favour only one way of writing over another.


 * Crimean Tatars: Like in our world, Crimean Arabic will remain unchanged for a very long time, but whether or not it will modernize or even be replaced will depend not only on their neighbours, but also on what other Tatar people will do. Without USSR, there will be no pressure on Tatars to change their script to Cyrillic, but mayhap, they will replace it for romanized script similar to Yanalif of Azerbaijan or will simplify and standardize their existing Arabic, similarly to Tatarstan’s yaña imlâ. Of course, writing it in Ruthenian is also possible, but highly unlikely.


 * Romanian: Before 1860, Romanian orthography was Cyrillic. They’ve changed it for the most part due to nationalist sentiments, which in turn makes any possible change difficult, as modern Romania can’t exist without Latin alphabet. But having said that, Romanian Cyrillic doesn’t have to die, as Bessarabia exists, where Cyrillic was sporadically used up until 1920’s. In this world, where Cyrillic isn’t represented by two-three variants, a scenario where Bessarabia doesn’t want to join United Principalities is possible, creating it’s own independent state as a result.