Kempgen , Sebastian Springfield Tomelleri , Vittorio Slavic Alphabets and Identities (review)

Abstract

Slavonic and East European Review, 99, 3, 2021 Reviews Kempgen, Sebastian and Springfield Tomelleri, Vittorio (eds). Slavic Alphabets and Identities. Bamberger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 19. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg, 2019. xiii + 297 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. Bibliographies. Notes. €24.50 (paperback); open access e-book. ThiscollectionofarticlesfollowsafirstvolumethatdealtwithSlavicalphabets in contact, which was reviewed by this author in 2017 (SEER, vol. 95, no. 2, pp. 341–44). As the editors write, the topic of this second volume continues their previous work and focuses on the ideological connection between the choice of writing system and linguistics as well as ethnic identity among Slavs and their neighbours (p. vii). Consisting of eleven articles written in German, English and Russian by German, Austrian, Swedish and Belarusian authors, the present collection looks into the ‘multifarious alphabetic world of the Slavs’, concentrating on both concrete cases and socio-linguistic aspects of the use of Slavic alphabets by primarily the South and West Slavs. Although arranged in alphabetical order by author, the articles tend to fall into two groups, one covering both historical and sociolinguistic aspects of Slavic alphabets, the second discussing individual cases of their use in multiethnic Slavic societies. The volume opens with Per Ambrosiani exploring Slavic alphabets and languages in publications by the Propaganda Fide during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies(pp.1–27).AmbrosianidiscussestheGlagolitic,Cyrillicand Latin orthographies of the Slavic books prepared by the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith in Rome. Ambrosiani compares eight versions of the Slavic text of the Apostles’ Creed, three (Glagolitic-, Cyrillic- and Latin-based) editions of Robert Bellarmine’s Nauk karstjanski kratak, as well as parallel Glagolitic and Cyrillic texts of Matej Karaman’s Bukvar (1753). He concludes that these publications, prepared in both Cyrillic and Glagolitic, demonstrate in their orthographies a clear development from Central South Slavonic features to the admixture of East Slavic orthographic models. Peter Bunčić, author of the well-known sociolinguistic typology of writing systems, explores the use of scripts in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the help of different scenarios of biscriptality discerned at three levels: scripts, glyphic variations and orthographies (pp. 29–53). For centuries, while using varieties of Serbo-Croatian, Bosnia and Hercegovina has been situated in the spheres of Slavia Orthodoxa, Slavia Romana, Slavia Islamica and Slavia Iudaica. Bunčić examines the interconnection of religions and the use of four scripts, Glagolitic, Cyrillic, Arabic and Latin, and three variants of Cyrillic script (commonly called Eastern Cyrillic, hrvatska ćirilica, and Begovica) (p. 35). Of interest in this respect is the gradual replacement of Cyrillic, originally used as the traditional Bosnian script, with the Latin script (p. 50). REVIEWS 545 Roland Marti discusses the so-called ‘non-linguistic’ aspects of Slavic scripts (pp. 95–127) which, according to him, convey also symbolic information. Marti argues that symbolism is inherent in the shape of Glagolitic letters, allegedly modelled on Christian symbols (pp. 97–103), the choice or creation of particular alphabets instead of Latin and Greek, as well as the forms of writing like Church Slavonic Cyrillic vs. civil script (Russian graždanskij šrift) (pp. 104–112). In his comprehensive survey of Cyrillic orthographies, Marti, however, omits the case of Ukrainian; he also maintains that the use of Latin by the Slavs did not have any symbolic function which clearly contradicts the practice of script switching among the Ruthenians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even later under the pressure of Catholic culture. Anna-Maria Meyer looks into the creation of orthographies for Romani with the help of Slavic alphabets (pp. 129–60). While speaking about Romani culture as intrinsically an oral one, she mentions ten attempts at creating such orthographies in Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Poland. All the attempts show the trend for a regional rather than ‘pan-Romani’ approach toward the creation of a script and orthography for Romani (p. 156). The history of biscriptality within the ‘Carpatho-Rusyn speech community’ is the focus of Achim Rabus’s study (pp. 161–93). Based on Bunčić’s typology, Rabus considers different historical and sociolinguistic factors of the use of Rusyn scripts, glyphic variants and orthographies, such as the Cyrillic script and Church Slavonic...