Elbasan alphabet

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Elbasan alphabet
Script type
Period
18th century
LanguagesAlbanian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Elba (226), ​Elbasan
Unicode
Unicode alias
Elbasan
U+10500 – U+1052F[1]
This article contains Elbasan characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see very small fonts or other symbols instead of the intended characters.

The Elbasan alphabet is a mid 18th-century alphabetic script created for the Albanian language Elbasan Gospel Manuscript,[2]: 3  also known as the Anonimi i Elbasanit ("the Anonymous of Elbasan"), which is the only document written in it.[2]: 3  The document was created at St. Jovan Vladimir's Church in central Albania, but is preserved today at the National Archives of Albania in Tirana. The alphabet, like the manuscript, is named after the city of Elbasan, where it was invented, and although the manuscript isn't the oldest document written in Albanian,[3] Elbasan is the oldest out of seven[2]: 4  known original alphabets created for Albanian.[2]: 3  Its 59 pages contain Biblical content written in a script of 40 letters,[2]: 3  of which 35 frequently re-occur and 5 are rare.

Letters

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Elbasan
Letters[4] Latin alphabet Pronunciation
𐔀 a [a Ι‘ Ι’]
𐔁 b [b]
𐔂 c [ts]
𐔃 Γ§, xh [tΚƒ], [dΚ’][5]
𐔄 d [d]
𐔅 nd [nd]
𐔆 dh [Γ°]
𐔇 e [e Ι›][5]
π”ˆ Γ« [Ι™][5]
𐔉 f [f]
π”Š g [Ι‘]
𐔋 gj [ɟ]
π”Œ h [h]
𐔍 i [i]
π”Ž j [j]
𐔏 k [k]
𐔐 l [l]
𐔑 ll [Ι«]
𐔒 m [m]
𐔓 n [n]
𐔔 n (before g and gj) [n][5]
𐔕 nj [Ι²]
𐔖 o [o Ι”]
𐔗 p [p]
π”˜ q [c]
𐔙 r [ΙΎ]
π”š rr [r]
𐔛 s [s]
π”œ sh [Κƒ]
𐔝 t [t]
π”ž th [ΞΈ]
π”Ÿ u [u]
𐔠 v [v]
𐔑 x [dz]
𐔒 y [y]
𐔣 z [z]
𐔀 zh [Κ’]
π”₯ gh [Ι£] (Greek loanwords)
𐔦 gh [Ι£] (Greek loanwords)
𐔧 kh [x] (Greek loanwords)

Sample, from page 8, lines 10–14 of the manuscript:

Elbasan script Transliteration

π”—π”ˆπ”™π”‹π”‡π”‹π”‡π”π”ˆ π”§π”™π”π”œπ”π” 𐔇 𐔍 π”žπ”€:
𐔖 𐔇 π”„π”€π”œπ”Ÿπ”“π”€ 𐔒𐔀𐔒𐔀 𐔍𐔒𐔇, π”π”ˆπ”Žπ”– π”ˆ
π”œπ”π”ˆ π”π”ˆ π”„π”€π”œπ”Ÿπ”“π”π” 𐔇 𐔗𐔙𐔍𐔓𐔄𐔍𐔝 𐔍𐔒,
π”π”ˆ 𐔠𐔄𐔇𐔛 π”Ÿ, 𐔇 𐔝𐔍 π”π”ˆ π”Žπ”‡π”ƒ 𐔇 𐔝𐔀 π”„π”π”œ
𐔇𐔓𐔄𐔇 𐔝𐔍 π”π”ˆ π”§π”‡π”π”Ÿπ”“π”π” 𐔝𐔇𐔒.‎

pΓ«rgjegjetΓ« Hrishti e i tha:
o e dashuna mama ime, kΓ«jo Γ«
shtΓ« tΓ« dashunit e prindit im,
të vdes u, e ti të jeç e ta dish
ende ti tΓ« hekunit tem.

Creation

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The Elbasan Gospel Manuscript

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Main article: Elbasan Gospel Manuscript

The Elbasan Gospel Manuscript comes from the Orthodox Christian monastery of St. Jovan Vladimir's Church in the village of Shijon, west of Elbasan.[2]: 6  With the exception of a short 15th century Easter Gospel transcript, it was the oldest work of Albanian Orthodox literature, and the oldest Orthodox Bible translation into Albanian.[2] The authorship of the document is a matter of speculation, see the main article on this topic for details.

The manuscript was purchased a little before or around World War II by the politician Lef Nosi, who possessed a remarkable personal library and was a notable collector. It was confiscated from him by the communist regime in 1945. It is now preserved in the National Archives of Albania.[6] The albanologist and translator Injac Zamputi (1910–1998) transcribed the manuscript, after which the Elbasan Gospel was published in standard Albanian for the first time.[6]

Authorship

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The author of the alphabet remains unknown, though several hypotheses have been brought forward. The most accepted proposal comes from Mahir Domi in 1965, claiming the Moschopole typographer Gregory of DurrΓ«s to be the author of the alphabet. Domi bases his claim on several factors, the main one being a note by Georgios Zaviras (bg; el; hu; ru) (1744–1804) which states "Gregory of DurrΓ«s translated the Old and New Testament on a script he invented himself".[7] Domi's hypothesis was later supported by Robert Elsie.

The name "Papa Totasi" (father Totasi) is written on the cover's verso, thus sometimes the alphabet is attributed to him.[8][9][10] Recent studies seem to point out a certain Cosmas of DurrΓ«s (1643-1702) as the author of at least the alphabet, if not the text itself.[11]

Historical analysis

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Robert Elsie notes the author's desire to avoid foreign influences. The Latin, Greek and Arabic scripts had already been in use for Albanian, and the Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts were also available. But the author chose to devise a new script specific to Albanian, reflecting what Elsie called "the wish of Albanian intellectuals" for a distinct writing system of their own.[2]: 2–3  Furthermore, a surprisingly low number of loanwords appear in the manuscript: only three Latin loans, seven Turkish loans, and twenty-one loans from Biblical Greek (the language the manuscript was translated from).[2]: 12–13  Elsie argues that the author's determination to root out loanwords becomes clear with the marked crossing out of the Turkish loan sheher "city" and its replacement with qytet, which was apparently not recognized as a loan from Latin cΔ«vitāt(em).[2]: 12 

Properties

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The Elbasan alphabet exhibited a nearly one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, with only three exceptions, of which two were restricted to Greek loanwords.[2]: 4  The modern Albanian alphabet, based on the Latin script, is phonemically regular for the standard pronunciation but it is not one-to-one because of the use of ten consonant digraphs.

Dots are used on three characters as inherent features to indicate varied pronunciation found in Albanian: single r represents the alveolar tap ΙΎ but with a dot it becomes an alveolar trill [r], whereas a dotted l becomes velarized and a dotted d becomes prenasalized into nd.[2]: 4  (Today this nd has become a sequence of two separate phonemes; Modern Greek has undergone somewhat similar development.) Elsie says that the alphabet generally uses Greek letters with a line on top as numerals. While some of the letters appear to have been inspired by Greek or Glagolitic forms, he considers the majority to be unique for this alphabet,[2]: 3  whereas Shuteriqi[12] and Domi[13] see a strong influence of Old Church Slavonic language due to the jurisdiction, until 1767, of the Archbishopric of Ohrid.

Unicode

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Main article: Elbasan (Unicode block)

Elbasan (U+10500–U+1052F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

Elbasan[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1050x 𐔀‎ 𐔁‎ 𐔂‎ 𐔃‎ 𐔄‎ 𐔅‎ 𐔆‎ 𐔇‎ 𐔈‎ 𐔉‎ 𐔊‎ 𐔋‎ 𐔌‎ 𐔍‎ 𐔎‎ 𐔏‎
U+1051x 𐔐‎ 𐔑‎ 𐔒‎ 𐔓‎ 𐔔‎ 𐔕‎ 𐔖‎ 𐔗‎ 𐔘‎ 𐔙‎ 𐔚‎ 𐔛‎ 𐔜‎ 𐔝‎ 𐔞‎ 𐔟‎
U+1052x 𐔠‎ 𐔡‎ 𐔢‎ 𐔣‎ 𐔤‎ 𐔥‎ 𐔦‎ 𐔧‎
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 17.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

See also

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Sources

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  1. ^ Final Accepted Script Proposal
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  3. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  4. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  5. ^ a b c d Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  6. ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  7. ^ Mahir Domi (1965). Rreth autorit dhe kohΓ«s sΓ« dorΓ«shkrimit elbasanas me shqipΓ«rim copash tΓ« ungjillit. In: β€œKonferenca e parΓ« e Studimeve Albanologjike,” TiranΓ«, 15-21 nΓ«ndor 1962. TiranΓ«, p. 170–177
  8. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  9. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  10. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  11. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  12. ^ Shuteriqi, DhimitΓ«r (1949). Anonimi i Elbasanit. Shkrimi shqip nΓ« Elbasan nΓ« shekujt XVIII-XIX dhe Dhaskal Todhri. TiranΓ«: Buletin i Institutit tΓ« Shkencavet, 1949. Pages 33-54. Page 38
  13. ^ Domi, Mahir (1965). Rreth autorit dhe kohΓ«s sΓ« dorΓ«shkrimit elbasanas me shqipΓ«rim copash tΓ« ungjillit. In the First Conference of Albanologic Studies: TiranΓ«, 1965. Pages 270-277
  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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