The Old Permic script ( kv, Важ Перым гижӧм, 𐍮𐍐‎𐍕 𐍟‎𐍔‎𐍠𐍨𐍜 𐍒‎𐍣‎𐍕𐍩𐍜‎, ''Važ Perym gužom''), sometimes known by its initial 2 characters as Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic 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 cou ...

once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the

Permic The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550, ...

branch of

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is b ...

languages).

History

The script was introduced by a Russian missionary, Stepan Khrap, also known as Saint

Stephen of Perm Stephen of Perm (Russian: Стефан Пермский, also spelled Stephan, kv, Перымса Степан; 1340–1396) was a fourteenth-century painter and missionary credited with the conversion of the Komi to Christianity and the establi ...

(Степан Храп, св. Стефан Пермский) in 1372. The name ''Abur'' is derived from the names of the first two characters: ''An'' and ''Bur''. The script derived from Cyrillic and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, with Komi "

Tamga A tamga or tamgha (from otk, 𐱃𐰢𐰍𐰀, tamga, lit=stamp, seal; tr, damga; mn, tamga; ; ); an abstract seal or stamp used by Eurasian nomads and by cultures influenced by them. The tamga was normally the emblem of a particular tribe, ...

" signs, the latter being similar in the appearance to

rune Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

s or

siglas poveiras The siglas poveiras (, "signs of Póvoa"; also known as marcas) is a proto-writing system that has been used by the local community of Póvoa de Varzim in Portugal for many generations. The siglas were primarily used as a signature for family c ...

because they were created by incisions rather than by usual writing. The inclusion of the latter aided the script to greater acceptance among the medieval Permic speakers of the time. The script was in use until the 17th century, when it was superseded by the

. Abur was also used as cryptographic writing for the Russian language. April 26, which is the feast day of

, is celebrated as Old Permic Alphabet Day.

Significance

The Abur inscriptions are among the oldest relics of the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

. Only one of them has earlier documents: Hungarian, which had been written using the

Old Hungarian script The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes ( hu, Székely-magyar rovás, 'székely-magyar runiform', or ) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alph ...

first before the Latin script was used after 1000. For comparison, an isolated birch bark letter, found in

Novgorod Veliky Novgorod ( rus, links=no, Великий Новгород, t=Great Newtown, p=vʲɪˈlʲikʲɪj ˈnovɡərət), also known as just Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the o ...

and written in Cyrillic in a Finnic language, has been dated to the beginning of the 13th century and Finnish as a written language appeared only after the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

in 1543.

Characters

Lytkin's 1952 work is often considered the authoritative source of documentation for this script.Лыткин, В. И. 1952. Древнепермский язык: чтение текстов, грамматика, словарь. Москва There are 24 primary characters, along with 10 secondary characters that are subordinate to the primary characters. There are also some combining marks that may have been used for phonological purposes, in addition to some combining letters from Latin and Cyrillic that have been found as well. Spaces, middle dots, and semi-apostrophes have also been seen as punctuation in documents. A Cyrillic combining

titlo Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title" (compare dated English '' tittle' ...

is used to indicate numerals.

Unicode

Old Permic (U+10350–1037F) was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

References

External links

* * {{list of writing systems Permic script, Old 1372 introductions Obsolete writing systems