It’s in regards to the graphic look of the 2 standard alphabets – Latin and Cyrillic. And for the sharpness of 1 is the softness of the opposite.
Latin right this moment is the most well-liked graphic system on the planet. All of Western Europe and a part of Japanese is written on it, North and South America, Australia, a big a part of Africa are written in Latin, and it’s a duplicate system in a big a part of Asia. In observe, the Latin alphabet has now unfold everywhere in the globe. It is a custom that started two thousand years in the past, throughout the time of the Roman Empire, when the Latin alphabet unfold all through the Mediterranean and past.
This success of hers is repeated right this moment, as we are able to see on a worldwide scale, and the explanations for this are a number of. The primary is that the Latin alphabet is to the utmost a pure alphabet – with its 24 fundamental letters and the looks of a number of extra characters in numerous native alphabets, however based mostly on these similar letters.
The second motive I’ve seen eludes researchers and interpreters is the purely graphic dimension of this alphabet. It’s a a lot sharper and, on this sense, extra aggressive writing, graphically, in comparison with our Cyrillic alphabet, for instance. And that is even supposing the 2 programs are fairly related.
Let’s give an instance with the Latin signal V and W, which in Cyrillic is В.
We see on this case the angularity and sharpness of the Latin signal and the roundness, i.e. the softness of the Cyrillic character.
One other instance is with the Latin I, which is an I in Cyrillic, which signal is devoid of that one-wayness, egoism and individuality, I’d say, of the Latin signal. In our older spelling and in Outdated Slavonic, there may be the signal I – the so-called iota, however right this moment it has been misplaced (as, for instance, it’s in Ukrainian). We even have better sharpness with the signal L, which is Л in Bulgarian. Although the 2 characters viz. Latin L and Cyrillic L have the identical origin, within the so-called Phoenician alphabet. However the totally different fonts, as might be seen in the intervening time, permit softness in our L.
If we proceed the evaluate with the signal Z, which is respectively З within the Cyrillic alphabet, we see that right here issues are much like the indicators V and B. The signal З, respectively Z is way more widespread than it appears to us, so like V and B it’s key. Everybody could make an extra comparability and evaluate of the 2 writing programs on this sense.
Years in the past, I had an Englishman visiting me who didn’t know a single phrase of Bulgarian, and accordingly not a single signal of the Cyrillic alphabet, however sooner or later I noticed him standing and on the lookout for about twenty minutes at a ebook written within the Cyrillic alphabet. He mentioned he likes it so much, he simply enjoys it. Nonetheless, I knew what impressed him and happy him. It was exactly this softness that emanates from the Cyrillic alphabet in comparison with the Latin alphabet that he had grown up with and used every day.
It was within the Latin language, with Latin letters, two millennia in the past that the poet Virgil wrote the phrase – Possunt quia posse videntur – They’ll as a result of they know (suppose) they will. And likewise the phrase – They’ll conquer (anybody who believes they will) – within the Aeneid.
Such was the spirit of Rome and the traditional Romans, who used, respectively, what we name the Latin graphic system.
This warlike spirit has to a big extent been carried over amongst right this moment’s peoples utilizing the Latin alphabet. There’s something actually belligerent, pragmatic and even aggressive about it, once more, in purely graphic phrases.
To the traditional Romans and to the fashionable Romans belongs the Latin alphabet. We should hold our softer and beloved Cyrillic, within the technique of the advancing globalization.
PP. I ought to add that I wrote this textual content in 2020, i.e. earlier than the hostilities in Ukraine. They solely confirmed and proved what was written above when the Russian military started to jot down the letters V and Z on their army automobiles.
Andrei Kiryakov, svobodnoslovo.eu
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