Slavic nasal vowels
The Slavic nasal vowels are the original Slavonic phonemes * ę and * ǫ and their continuations in today's Slavic languages or the letters of the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabet that represent them .
The sounds * ę and * ǫ
Ur-Slavic
The original Slavic sounds, which are transcribed as * ę and * ǫ , have to be imagined as the nasal vowels [ ɛ̃ ] and [ ɔ̃ ] (similar to the French bass in or mout on ). They arose from Indo-European connections with n and m , namely * ę from syllable -m̥- and -n̥- as well as -em- and -en- , * ǫ from -am- , -an- , -om- and - on- , in each case when these were between consonants .
Examples:
- ursl. * pa-mętь 'memory' is formed from idg. * mn̥tis , to which the Latin mens (genitive mentis ) 'spirit, understanding' goes back.
- ursl. * zǫbъ 'tooth' is derived from the idg. * g̑ombhos , which in German has become Kamm .
- In * pętь 'five' there is usually * penkti , from which German five , Latin quinque and Greek πέντε / pente have developed.
Further development
In the vast majority of Slavic languages , the original Slavonic nasal vowels have been de-nasalized, i.e. they have become oral vowels. Only in Polish and Kashubian are they largely preserved as nasal vowels.
| Ur-Slavic | * ę | * pętь | * ǫ | * zǫbъ | |
| west slav. | Polish | ię, ią | pięć | ę, ą | ząb |
| Czech | ě, a, yes, í | pět | u, i | zub | |
| ostslaw. | Russian | 'a | пять (pjat ') | зуб (zub) | |
| south slav. | Serbo-Croatian | e | pet | zub | |
| Slovenian | pet | O | zob | ||
| Bulgarian | пет (pet) | ă | зъб (zăb) | ||
Polish
In Old Polish , the two ancient Slavonic nasal vowels coincide (perhaps to [ ɑ̃ ] as in French ch an ce). It was no longer possible to distinguish between etymological * ę and * ǫ based on the pronunciation of the nasal vowel, but only because * ę, in contrast to * ǫ, palatalized the preceding consonant . (In today's Polish orthography, this palatalization is denoted by a silent i behind the consonant, e.g. ząb 'tooth' < * zǫbъ vs. ziąb 'cold' < * zębъ .)
This Old Polish nasal vowel could be long or short. (Of course, regardless of whether he made the long nasal vowel: in the 15th century, a qualitative development of this quantitative distinction again ę * and * ǫ was created) is since then as o -Nasal [ ɔ spoken] (that is quite similar to the earlier ancient Slavonic * ǫ ) and the short as e- nasal [ ɛ̃ ] (like * ę ). In the meantime there are no longer any differences in length in Polish, so that the two vowels only distinguish the quality.
In today's Polish orthography, the e- nasal is written as ę , i.e. e with Ogonek , but for historical reasons the o -nasal is written with the letter ą , which was used for the uniform nasal vowel at the time , i.e. a with Ogonek. (It is by no means spoken as a- nasal [ ɑ̃ ]!)
For details on the pronunciation of nasal vowels in today's Polish, see Pronunciation of Polish .
Kashubian
The Kashubian has two nasal vowels, namely the rear nasal vowel ± and the front nasal vowel ã . The ą is always pronounced [ ɔ̃ ], the ã [ ɑ̃ ].
The Jus letters
When the Slavic scripts were invented, the ancient Slavonic nasal vowels were obviously still spoken as such in Old Church Slavonic , because both the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic alphabet have their own letters to reproduce these sounds.
Glagolitic
In the Glagolitic alphabet originally created by Konstantin-Kyrill there were probably only two nasal vowel letters : 
for ę and 
for ǫ (or perhaps originally * ǫ̈ ). However, this “Urglagolica” has not been passed down as such. Perhaps it was reformed by Kliment von Ohrid and thus brought into the 'classical' state. The traditional in the manuscripts state contains four Nasalvokalbuchstaben for ę and ǫ and präjotierten variants depending and jǫ , and only for ę * is obtained while the other three letters as digraph ligatures are formed when the second part seems to indicate only the nasality: 
for ję with (e) , for ǫ with (o) and even for jǫ with the old nasal vowel , which is no longer used alone.
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic alphabet of the Old Church Slavonic language monuments also contains the four nasal vowel letters ѧ for ę , ѫ for ǫ , ѩ for ję and ѭ for jǫ . Here, ѫ emerged from the Glagolitic by turning it 90 ° , while ѧ was originally just an angular variant of the same. The two prejoted letters were created as a ligature with i as the first component.
In the further development of the Cyrillic script, the prejoted nasal vowel letters were soon abandoned. In Russian - Church Slavonic, ist has been preserved to this day as a sign for yes (the phonetic development of * ę , see above ) next to the prejoted a . In the alphabet reform of Peter the Great in 1708 was the latter letter from the bourgeois writing away, while a cursive form of Nasalbuchstabens ѧ following the Latin R to Я was.
The letter ѫ for the back nasal vowel, which coincided with u in East Slavonic , was soon abandoned there. In the Bulgarian alphabet, however ѫ has a letter for until 1946 [ ɐ ] survived that there * ǫ arose. Only after the Second World War was ѫ given up in favor of the ъ standing for the same sound . This also resulted in words that begin with ъ (old ѫгълumm with silent ending ъ → today ъгъл 'angle' and terms derived from it).
Names
Only Russian and Bulgarian юс (jus) are used as names for all four nasal vowels . Presumably the nasal vowel letters all originally had names formed in this way, i.e. * ęsъ (ѧ), * ǫsъ (ѫ), * jęsъ (ѩ) and * jǫsъ (ѭ). Actually, only capital Jus (e.g. Russian юс большой (jus bolšoj) , Bulgarian голям юс (goljam jus) ) for ѫ and small Jus (e.g. Russian юс малый (jus malyj) , Bulgarian малък ) are actually documented in texts юс (malăk jus) ) for ѧ. In contrast to most other Cyrillic letters, the nasal vowels do not seem to have any 'speaking' names . There are no old names used for ѩ and ѭ; In science, the names jotierter small jus or jotosed big jus (e.g. Russian юс малый йотированный (jus malyj jotirovannyj) , юс большой йотированный (jus bolšoj) jotirovanny) ).
In Bulgaria, where the letter ѫ was not abolished until 1946, the designation голѣмъ юсъ (golěm jus) 'great jus' was in everyday use until then. In addition, the letter was also called широко ѫ (široko ă) 'broad ă' (as opposed to the 'narrow' letter ъ (ă) with the same sound value) or (голѣма) носовка '(large) nasal', although the letter to was no longer pronounced nasally in the standard language at this point in time.
Numerical value
Since the Cyrillic number system goes back to the Greek , nasal vowels that have no equivalent in the Greek alphabet have no numerical values. However, in the earliest texts the e- nasal ѧ was used for the very similar looking Greek sampi (ϡ), which stood for 900 . In more recent texts this function is ц .
The Glagolitic numbers are based on the order of the Glagolitic alphabet, regardless of Greek equivalents, and also contain thousands characters. It therefore seems plausible to assume that the nasal vowel letters were also included here in some form and had numerical values. However, there is only one dubious evidence as a sign for 9000 , the other nasal vowels are not used as numerals at all.
Web links
- Употрѣба на Ѫ - List of Bulgarian words that were spelled with Ѫ (goljam Jus) before the 1945 spelling reform (in Bulgarian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Nicolina Trunte: Πρὸς τὸ σαφέστερον. On reforms in the Glagolitic script . In: Marija-Ana Dürrigl u. a. (Ed.): Glagoljica i hrvatski glagolizam. Zagreb / Krk 2004, pp. 419-434.
- ↑ but cf. Bulgarian pronunciation map
