Letter Names
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Until approximately 1900, mnemonic names inherited from Church Slavonic were used for the letters. They are given here in the pre-1918 orthography of the post-1708 civil alphabet.
The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin wrote: "The letters constituting the Slavonic alphabet do not produce any sense. Аз, буки, веди, глаголь, добро etc. are separate words, chosen just for their initial sound". But since the names of the first letters of the Slavonic alphabet seem to form text, attempts were made to compose sensible text from all letters of the alphabet.
Here is one such attempt to "decode" the message:
| аз буки веди | I know letters |
| глаголь добро есть | "To speak is a beneficence" or "The word is property" |
| живете зело, земля, и иже и како люди | "Live, while working heartily, people of the Earth, in the manner people should obey" |
| мыслете наш он покой | "try to understand the Universe (the world that is around)" |
| рцы слово твердо | "carry the knowledge ("word" here refers to "knowledge") firmly" |
| ук ферт хер | "The knowledge is fertilized by the Creator, knowledge is the gift of God" |
| цы червь ша ер ять ю | "Try harder, to understand the Light of the Creator" |
In this attempt words only in two first lines somewhat correspond to real meanings of the letters' names, while "translations" in other lines seem to be fabrications or fantasies. For example, "покой" ("rest" or "apartment") doesn't mean "the Universe", and "ферт" doesn't have any meaning in Russian or other Slavonic languages (there are no words of Slavonic origin beginning with "f" at all). The last line contains only one translatable word – "червь" ("worm"), which, however, was not included in the "translation".
Another version of "the message", incorporating the letters phased out by mid-1750s, reads:
| Verse | Transliteration | Translation |
| "А(в)се буквы ведая глаголить – добро есть. Живет зло (на) земле вечно и каждому людину мыслить надо о покаянии, речью (и) словом твердить учение веры Христовой (в) Царствие Божие, чаще шептать, щтоб (все буквы) (вз)ятием этим усвоить и по законам божьим стремиться писать слова и жить" | A(v)sye bukvy vyedaya glagolit' – dobro yest'. Zhivyet zlo (na) zyemlye vyechno i kazhdomu lyudinu myslit' nado o pokayaniyi, ryech'yu (i) slovom tverdit' uchyeniye vyery Khristovoy (v) Tsarstviye Bozhiye, chashchye sheptat', shchtob (vsye bukvy) (vz)yatiyem etim usvoyit' i po zakonam bozh'im stremit'sya pisat' slova i zhit') | "Knowing all these letters renders speech a virtue. Evil lives on Earth eternally, and each person must think of repentance, with speech and word making firm in their mind the faith in Christ and the Kingdom of God. Whisper frequently to make them yours by this repetition in order to write and live according to laws of God". |
Read more about this topic: Russian Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the words letter and/or names:
“Your letter is come; it came indeed twelve lines ago, but I
could not stop to acknowledge it before, & I am glad it did not
arrive till I had completed my first sentence, because the
sentence had been made since yesterday, & I think forms a very
good beginning.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
““Well then, it’s Granny speaking: ‘I dunnow!
Mebbe I’m wrong to take it as I do.
There ain’t no names quite like the old ones, though,
Nor never will be to my way of thinking.
One mustn’t bear too hard on the newcomers,
But there’s a dite too many of them for comfort....’””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)