Bohorič alphabet
Bohorič alphabet (slovene bohoričica) was slovene writing system used in years 1550-1850.
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This alphabet was first used by Primož Trubar author of first books printed in slovenian language - Katekizem (1550). However Trubar didn't follow strict rules and often used different spelling for same words. Slovene orthographical rules were set by Adam Bohorič in his book Articae horulae succisivae (1584) and therefore the alphabet is called Bohorič alphabet.
This alphabet consisted of 25 letters (among them 3 digraphs) in following order:
a b d e f g h i j k l m n o p r ſ ſh s sh t u v z zh
Bohorič alphabet differs from modern slovenian alphabet in following letters:
| majuscule | minuscule | IPA | modern slovene |
|---|---|---|---|
| Z | z | /ts/ | c |
| ZH | zh | /tʃ/ | č |
| S | ſ | /s/ | s |
| SH | ſh | /ʃ/ | š |
| S | s | /z/ | z |
| SH | sh | /ʒ/ | ž |
In original Bohorič alphabet some letters had equal majuscule forms (in that time it was normal in all Europe):
- i and j had equal majuscule form I
- u and v had equal majuscule form V
- s and ſ had equal majuscule form S
- sh and ſh had equal majuscule form SH
Later (in all Europe) people began distinguishing majuscule I - J and U - V. In that time majuscule ſ and ſh got a diacritical sign: Ş, ŞH (/s/, /ʃ/) to be distinguished from S, SH (/z/, /ʒ/).
Bohorič alphabet was quite a successful writing system for slovene language, but it had two serious problems:
- The alphabet has only 5 vowel-letters (a, e, i, o, u), but in fact slovene pronunciation knows much more variants. Slovene language knows 8 main vowels (/a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ə/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/) most of them can be pronounced long accented, short accented and not accented.
- Words where s-h should be pronounced separately (as in English word grasshopper) are quite often in slovene language, so one can have serious problems wheather SH should be read as digraph or as two separate letters.
These two problems led to the end of Bohorič alphabet. After two short lasting experiments with Metelko alphabet and Dajnko alphabet Slovenes began using Gaj's Latin alphabet around 1850.
See also
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