Details

Officially, the letter <г> represents both /ɣ/ and /ɡ/, though the latter is only found in borrowings and mimesis. The letter <ґ

Ge with upturn

Ge with upturn is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Ukrainian, Urum and Rusyn, this letter is called "Ge", and the letter ⟨Г⟩ is called "He"...

> is used by some for the latter sound, but it has never belonged to a standard codification of the Belarusian alphabet.

The combination <д> with letters <ж> or <з> may denote either two distinct respective sounds (e.g., in some prefix-root combinations: <пад-земны>, <ад-жыць>), or the Belarusian affricates

Affricate consonant

Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...

 <дж> and <дз> (e.g., <падзея>, <джала>). In some representations of the alphabet, the affricates are included in parentheses after the letter <д>, to emphasis their special status, as: <… Дд (ДЖдж ДЗдз) Ее …>.

<Ў> is not a distinct phoneme, but the neutralization of /v/ and /l/ when there is no following vowel, such as before a consonant or at the end of a word.

Palatalization

Palatalization

In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

 of consonants is mostly indicated through choice of vowel letter, as illustrated here with /p/ and /pʲ/, both written with the letter <п>:

{| class=wikitable

| palatalization || /p/ || /pʲ/
|-
| final || п || пь
|-
| before /a/ || па || пя
|-
| before /e/ || пэ || пе
|-
| before /i/ || пы || пі
|-
| before /o/ || по || пё
|-
| before /u/ || пу || пю
|}

When a consonant is not palatalized, precedes /j/, the apostrophe <’> is used to separate the iotated vowel: <п’я п’е п’і п’ё п’ю> /pja pje pi pjo pju/. (<І> is the palatalizing version of <ы>, and arguably represent the a single phoneme.) The apostrophe is not considered a letter and therefore is not taken into account when alphabetizing. (In pre-Second World War printing, the form <‘> was used. In practical computer use, it is frequently substituted with <'>.)

History

The alphabet of the Medieval Cyrillics (11th century) included forty-three letters. During the evolution of the Belarusian Alphabet, fifteen letters were dropped, the last four of them going after the introduction of the first official Belarusian grammar in 1918, and four new letters were added, thus producing the modern layout of thirty-two letters.

The new letters were:

• Letter <э> ((CYRILLIC) EH) appeared in the Belarusian texts about the end of the 15th century.
• Letter <й> ((CYRILLIC) SHORT I) evolved from <и> ((CYRILLIC) I) combined with diacritical sign by the end of the 16th century (compare: in Russian alphabet since 1735).
• Letter <ё> ((CYRILLIC) IO) was adopted from Russian alphabet by the half of the 19th century (compare: in Russian alphabet since 1797).
• Letter <ў> ((CYRILLIC) SHORT U) was proposed by Russian linguist Pyotr Bezsonov
  Pyotr Bezsonov
  Petr Alexeyevich Bessonov was a Russian student of folklore. He was born in Moscow, and graduated at Moscow University in 1851. After five years of graduate work in ancient and modern languages, he earned the government printing commission. From 1864 to 1867 he was supervisor of the Vilna...
  
   in 1870.

The Belarusian alphabet, in its modern form has formally existed since the adoption of the Branislaw Tarashkyevich

Branislaw Tarashkyevich

Branisłaŭ Adamovič Taraškievič was a Belarusian public figure, politician, and linguist.He was the creator of the first standardization of the modern Belarusian language in the early 20th century. The standard was later Russified by the Soviet authorities...

's Belarusian grammar

Belarusian grammar

The norms of the modern Belarusian grammar were adopted in 1959. Belarusian Grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic. Belarusian orthography is constructed on the phonetic principle and is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of the Minsk-Vilnius region, such as they were at the...

 for the use in the Soviet state school system in 1918 Before that, several slightly different versions of the alphabet were used informally.

In the 1920s and, notably, at the Belarusian Academical Conference (1926), miscellaneous changes of the Belarusian alphabet were being proposed. Notably, replacing <й> with <ј> ((CYRILLIC) JE), and/or replacing <е>, <ё>, <ю>, <я> with <је> (or else with <јє>), <јо>, <ју>, <ја>, respectively, and/or replacing <ы> with <и>, and/or introducing <ґ> (see also Ge with upturn

Ge with upturn

Ge with upturn is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Ukrainian, Urum and Rusyn, this letter is called "Ge", and the letter ⟨Г⟩ is called "He"...

), and/or introducing special graphemes/ligatures for affricates <дж>, <дз> etc. etc. Even the introducing of the Latin script was contemplated at one moment (e.g., proposal of Zhylunovich at the Belarusian Academical Conference (1926)). None of this was implemented, though.

Notable Belarusian linguist Yan Stankyevich in his later works suggested completely different layout of the alphabet. (see also Belarusian Latin alphabet

Belarusian Latin alphabet

The Belarusian Latin alphabet or Łacinka is the common name of the several historical alphabets to render the Belarusian text in Latin script.-Use:...

, Ge with upturn

Ge with upturn

Ge with upturn is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Ukrainian, Urum and Rusyn, this letter is called "Ge", and the letter ⟨Г⟩ is called "He"...

):

Layout of the Belarusian alphabet
(Stankyevich, 1962)

Оо	Аа	Ээ	Бб	Ґґ	Гг	Хх	Дд	Ее	Ёё
Яя	ДЗдз	ДЖдж	Зз	Жж	Іі	Йй	Кк	Лл	Мм
Нн	Пп	Рр	Сс	Шш	Тт	Вв	Уу	Ўў	Фф
Ьь	Цц	Чч	Ыы	Юю

Note: proper names and places' names are rendered in BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian

BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian

The BGN/PCGN romanization system for Belarusian is a method for romanization of Cyrillic Belarusian texts, that is, their transliteration into the Latin alphabet....

.

External links

• Introduction to Belarusian Alphabet
• Introduction to Belarusian Latin Script
• Belarusian language using Arabic script
• Letter Frequency in Belarusian and Russian
• Беларускі альфабэт