User:Surjection/selow

This page aims to document the Finnish Cyrillic alphabet used by the "van Selow catechism", a Finnish catechism printed in Cyrillic in 1644.

The work may have been transcribed from a Latin-script version of the same catechism. In any case, the spelling is haphazard by modern standards, as with most Old Literary Finnish texts:

• the marking of vowels is inconsistent
• long vowels are rarely marked except in initial/stressed syllables
• long/geminated consonants are not consistently spelled as such
• plosives after nasals and liquids are often spelled as voiced (e.g. лд, ld, modern lt)
• words are capitalized quite often even when they wouldn't be in modern Finnish

Certain notes pertaining to the Cyrillic orthography only:

• Certain letters (usually consonants) are marked as superscripts. It is not known why.
• It is possible that a lot of the spelling is written as such to ensure that all syllables are "open", i.e. end in a vowel. The letters ъ and ь appear to be used for this exact reason. In addition, syllable breaks within multiple consecutive consonants are generally marked with an upper diacritic resembling a zigzag, which could be regarded as a superscript equivalent of ъ. Perhaps this is also why superscript consonants are used.
• Certain initial vowels are marked with diacritics (usually psili/zvatel'tse).
• Certain vowels have stress marks (particularly oksia/acute, but varia/grave is also seen). Many of these are long vowels which are otherwise written as short, but not all.

The below table also lists certain digraphs - they should be considered to take higher priority than the corresponding individual letters. When multiple options are given for Latin equivalents, it depends on the word and sometimes even the particular instance of the word. For example, е inconsistently represents either e or ä, while ѧ is primarily ä.

Cyrillic	Latin (OLF)	Latin (now)	Notes
а	a	a
б	b	p	Only used in the digraph мб : mb, modern mp.
в	w	v
г	h, g, gh	h, ∅, g, k	When not representing a modern h, usually corresponds to a non-phoneme in modern Finnish, except in the digraph нг : ng, modern ng or nk.
д	d, dh	d, t
е	e	e, ä, ö	The Cyrillic e used in van Selow is open, resembling the modern Ukrainian ye (є). э is also used, but is best treated as a variant.
з	z, s	s	Intervocalically
и	i	i, y
ї	i, ?ij	i, j	Usually this is used before vowels and и otherwise. The digraphs иї and їи (inconsistently) stand for ij, in modern Finnish generally ii.
к	k, c, q	k
л	l	l
м	m	m
н	n	n
о	o	o
п	p	p
р	r	r
с	s	s	ш shows up in its place rarely.
т	t	t	In the catechism quite often spelled in cursive, either with three legs and a form somewhat resembling a m (ᲅ), other times as ᲄ.
ꙋ	u	u	An independent у shows up in its place rarely.
ф	f	f	Borrowings only.
х	ch	h, k	k only in certain words (e.g. kristillinen)
ѡ	o, oo	o, uo, oo
ц	tz, dz	ts	Usually preceded by т or д, forming a digraph тц : tz or дц : dz, both are modern ts. Sometimes used on its own. Other uses after consonants are harder to explain, generally they stand for modern t.
ф	f	f	Borrowings only.
ъ	—	—	Does not seem to correspond to any letter or phoneme in modern Finnish; see above.
ь	—	—	Does not seem to correspond to any letter or phoneme in modern Finnish; see above.
ѣ	iaͤ, ie, e	jä, ää, ie
ю	iu	ju
ꙗ	ia	ja, ia
ѧ	aͤ, (i)a	ä, (j)a	Used inconsistently both for ä and ia/ja.
ѯ	x	ks
ѱ	ps	ps
ѷ	y	y