The Metelko alphabet () was a Slovene writing system developed by

Franc Serafin Metelko Franc Serafin Metelko, also known as Fran Metelko (14 July 1789 – 27 December 1860) was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest, author, and philologist, best known for his proposal of a new script for the Slovene called the Metelko alphabet, whic ...

. It was used by a small group of authors from 1825 to 1833 but it was never generally accepted. Mihael Dezman tombstone

History

Metelko introduced his alphabet in the book (Textbook of the Slovene Language of the

Kingdom of Illyria The Kingdom of Illyria was a crown land of the Austrian Empire from 1816 to 1849, the successor state of the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces, which were reconquered by Austria in the War of the Sixth Coalition. It was established according to th ...

and Neighboring Provinces, 1825). He invented his alphabet to replace the

Bohorič alphabet The Bohorič alphabet () was an orthography used for Slovene between the 16th and 19th centuries. Origins Its name is derived from Adam Bohorič, who codified the alphabet in his book ''Articae Horulae Succisivae''. It was printed in 1583 and ...

(), which was considered problematic in certain situations. Metelko was influenced by the ideas of

Jernej Kopitar Jernej Kopitar, also known as Bartholomeus Kopitar (21 August 1780 – 11 August 1844), was a Slovene linguist and philologist working in Vienna. He also worked as the Imperial censor for Slovene literature in Vienna. He is perhaps best known ...

, a well-known linguist who also participated in the development of the modern

Serbian alphabet The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (, ), also known as the Serbian script, (, ), is a standardized variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language. It originated in medieval Serbia and was significantly reformed in the 19th ce ...

(created by

Vuk Karadžić Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the moder ...

, following Kopitar's ideas).

Alphabet

Metelko's alphabet has 32 letters in the following order: Special letters are explained in the following table (other letters have the same meaning as in modern Slovene): Metelko wanted to solve the problem of the formerly used digraphs ZH (for ), SH (for and ), LJ and NJ by replacing them with the special letters Unicode 0x0427

, , and , based on the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

letters Ч, Ш, Ж. The difference between glottal and velar Unicode_0x0048

(, ) is in fact not relevant to Slovene phonology, and therefore the letter was omitted by some authors. In the Bohorič alphabet, certain words with different pronunciations had the same spelling. Metelko wanted to solve this problem by splitting ''E'' into three variants and ''O'' into two variants. Metelko's letters Unicode_0x0045

and

represent the vowels , , and , which were formerly written with ''E''. Metelko's letters Unicode_0x004F

and represent the vowels and , which were formerly written with ''O''.

Impact

The main problem of Metelko's alphabet was its graphic design. Metelko's letters appeared strange to the average Slovene writer and the alphabet itself was soon nicknamed ''krevljica'' 'the twisted alphabet'. Some letters were in fact difficult to write by hand. In addition to Metelko being strongly influenced by his own dialect, certain solutions were not accepted by speakers of other dialects. Soon strong opposition arose against Metelko's alphabet. After the "Slovene alphabet war" Metelko's alphabet was forbidden in 1833. A few years later Slovenes accepted

Gaj's Latin alphabet Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sr-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sr-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing all ...

(Slovene: ''gajica''), which is easier to write. In this alphabet, the various

mid vowel A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately midway between an open vowel and a close vowel. Other n ...

s are written using diacritics (''é'', ''ê'', ''è'', ''ó'', ''ô'', ''ò''), but only in cases when it is necessary to distinguish two words (e.g. ''klóp'' ' bench' vs. ''klôp'' '

tick Ticks are parasitic arachnids of the order Ixodida. They are part of the mite superorder Parasitiformes. Adult ticks are approximately 3 to 5 mm in length depending on age, sex, and species, but can become larger when engorged. Ticks a ...

'). The

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code that is used to identify human languages on the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the subtags ...

s have assigned the variant to Slovene in the Metelko alphabet.

References

Sources

*Toporišič, Jože. 1993. "Metelčica." ''Enciklopedija Slovenije'', vol. 7, pp. 103–104. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.

External links

{{commonscat, Metelko alphabet
Metelčica
text example
Unicode proposalProposal to Encode Slovene Metelko Alphabet 2022
Slovene alphabet Writing systems introduced in 1825