Dajnko alphabet

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The Dajnko alphabet (Slovene: dajnčica) was a Slovene alphabet invented by Peter Dajnko. It was used from 1824 to 1839 mostly in Styria (in what is now eastern Slovenia).

A poem by Dajnko in the Dajnko alphabet

History

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Dajnko introduced his alphabet in 1824 in his book Lehrbuch der windischen Sprache (Slovene Textbook).[1] He decided to replace the older Bohorič alphabet with his own new writing system because of the problems with the writing of sibilants.[2] In 1825, Franc Serafin Metelko came up with a similar proposal, complicating the issue. The Dajnko alphabet, which was introduced to schools in 1831, was fiercely opposed by Anton Murko and Anton Martin Slomšek.[3] After 1834 it gradually came out of use with the adoption of a slightly modified version of Gaj's Latin alphabet as the new Slovene script and was in 1839 officially abolished.[4]

Letters

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He represented the phonemes /ts/, /s/, /z/ with the letters C, S, Z (as in the modern Slovene alphabet) and the phonemes /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ with special characters (see table below). In addition, he invented two extra symbols, which were omitted after 1829 (see table below):

Dajnčica
Upper case Lower case IPA Modern Slovene
C c /t͡s/ c
Ч ɥ /t͡ʃ/ č
S s /s/ s
Ȣ ȣ /ʃ/ š
Z z /z/ z
X x /ʒ/ ž
Ŋ ŋ /n̪ʲ/ nj
Y y /y/ ü (in eastern dialects only)

Dajnko's alphabetical order was as follows:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N Ŋ O P R S Ȣ Z X T U Y V Ч

The IETF language tags have assigned the variant sl-dajnko to Slovene in the Dajnko alphabet.[5]

References

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  1. ^ "Dajnkova slovnica" [The Grammar of Dajnko]. Kamra (in Slovenian). 8 October 2012. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  2. ^ Prilasnig, Fabian (2011). "Dajnčica". Die Entwicklung des slawischen Schrifttums [The Development of the Slavic Literatures] (in German). GRIN Verlag. p. 17. ISBN 9783656051015.
  3. ^ Mugerli, Anja. "Dajnčica". In Ahačič, Kozma (ed.). Slovenski črkopisi [Slovene Alphabets] (PDF) (in Slovenian). pp. 26–28.
  4. ^ Prilasnig, Fabian (2011). "Dajnčica". Die Entwicklung des slawischen Schrifttums (in German). GRIN Verlag. p. 17. ISBN 9783656051015.
  5. ^ "IETF language subtag registry". IANA. 2021-08-06. Retrieved 10 September 2021.