Talk:Gaj's Latin alphabet

Gajica

Apparently the most common English-language name for this variant of the Latin alphabet is simply "Gajica" [1][2]. Its also the local (Serbo-Croatian) name for it. I've found no results for "Gaj-Danicic" or "Gaj-Daničić" or any variation thereof in English-language sources [3]. Are there any objections? -- Director (talk) 09:11, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

If you're going to be using local terms at all, then why not use the clear and unambiguous winner - Latinica. You just have to move the talk show away. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:19, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

The analogous Google Books link is about 1,700 results, many of which are non-English false positives, but still. On page 42, it actually says 412 results. Also, the inherent ambiguity when you say latinica in Croatian meaning simply "Latin" doesn't matter in English. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but "latinica" is simply the Croatian translation of "Latin alphabet" in general. How can you be certain it refers to the subject of this article, i.e. this specific variant of the Latin alphabet? I mean sure, when we Croats say "latinica" we usually mean this variant of the "latinica", but that doesn't mean the term itself is specific. Latinica = Latin alphabet. "Gajica" is the Croatian name for this variant of the "Latinica". -- Director (talk) 10:53, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It's ambiguous in Croatian - when you say latinica, it's implied to include čćšđž, likewise when you say ćirilica you can mean the specific Serbian Cyrillic, but neither necessarily holds if you say "Latin" or "Cyrillic" in English. In other words, the most common names for our script and alphabet are simply the words for script and alphabet - latinica and abeceda. Their Croatian disambiguation isn't necessarily gajica, more often you'd see people tack on the prefix hrvatska (Croatian). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:56, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

To answer your specific question more clearly - in the English encyclopedia, when the reader sees Latinica, the dictionary translation of this foreign word isn't necessarily the primary topic, instead this particular alphabet could well be. I agree that more source analysis might be necessary before actually going there, but at the same time I think that even the vague comparison makes it pretty clear that gajica isn't necessarily the best name. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:29, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I understand all that, I'm just not convinced that "Latinica" is synonymous with "Gajica", i.e. that "Latinica" means "Gaj's Latin Alphabet". I think it is beyond question that "Latinica" is a wider term, and that it simply refers to the Latin alphabet - it could refer to the Croatian Latin alphabet, the Gajica, but it might not. If I were asked on the street "What alphabet do the British use?" ("Koju abecedu koriste Britanci?"), I would respond "Why, the Latin alphabet my good fellow." ("Pa latinicu majmune, koje glupo pitanje.").

In short, this article is about the Croatian Latin alphabet, the Croatian Latinica, which is termed "Gajica". If you would like to contend that this specific variant of the Latin alphabet is referred to in English sources as "Latinica", then I think you need a source of some sort that explicitly states something to that effect (and does not simply translate). Either way, I don't like the confusion it might cause, even if you're right. -- Director (talk) 10:02, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

When I added the term 'Gaj' into that ambiguous search, IOW http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&tbs=lr%3Alang_1en&tbm=bks&q=Gaj+%22Latinica%22+-wikipedia+-LCC&pws=0 , the first results that came out were English-language books that used the term latinica in this fashion:

• Cross currents: Issues 10-11 - University of Michigan. Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan. Center for Russian and East European Studies - 1991
• Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary - Page 381 - Ronelle Alexander - 2006
• Balkanistica: Volumes 1-3 - American Association for South Slavic Studies, American Association for Southeast European Studies - 1974

That alone seems to put the term on par with gajica, and I just looked at the first page. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:53, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Reviewing the sources you've presented, I've noticed only a few that undoubtedly do use "latinica" as the name for a variant of the Latin alphabet (and not the Latin alphabet itself, translated). I think its safe to say that "Gajica" is the more common form of referring to this variant of the Latin alphabet, there are certainly at least a hundred sources that use it (a generous estimate [4]). How would you propose to show that "latinica" is more common in referring specifically to this variant? -- Director (talk) 12:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Come on, DIREKTOR, the very first hit on the link you posted is a false positive - it says "Ms. Gajica", meaning it's referring to a surname. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:20, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

And so are #2, #4 and #9. That's four out of ten on the first page, which says "about 285 results", but when you click through to the last page it's "Page 17 of 162 results". This is a bad result with a lousy metric. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

"Come on, DIREKTOR"? I'm bringin' out the numbers) on ya. 1) the "285" number is the more accurate estimate. 2) Disregarding 60% of the hits as false positives is a very generous estimate on my part. Here's a much more refined search with 216 hits [5]. To say only 100 of those are relevant is very generous indeed.

And even if we disregard this whole line of argument, there is still the very real problem of ambiguity. "Latinica" can certainly mean "Latin alphabet" (generally), and not necessarily a specific variant thereof. We would need to disambiguate, and it poses a risk of being rather confusing for the reader. -- Director (talk) 12:32, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

You're not listening. In English, it's not actually ambiguous - it's the Croatian word for their alphabet. Yes, it's also their word for Latin in general, but that's not actually relevant since this isn't wiktionary. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:56, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

No, you're not listening. As I said, only very few sources that use the term "latinica" can be said, with certainty, to be referring to specifically a variant of the Latin alphabet.

As I've demonstrated above by citing the search and the first three results, that is false. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

And not the Latin alphabet in general, by using the local term for it. Do not confuse sources that use the local term for the Latin alphabet in general [6], with sources that use "latinica" to refer to a specific variant (this variant) of the Latin alphabet. And that was just the second part of my post. -- Director (talk) 15:11, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

"False"? Joy, your search includes 28 hits or so, only a few of which can we be certain are using the term to apply to a variant. But even if they were all such (and that's me being generous again), what does it matter? There are at least a hundred sources using "gajica". And I think anyone can see there are probably more. WP:COMMONNAME supports "Gajica". -- Director (talk) 22:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

So what now? Do we need an RM? -- Director (talk) 10:21, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

(Continuing on the previous discussion outdented)

It doesn't seem like we're seeing the same Google search results:

The link https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Gajica%22+-wikipedia+-LCC+-Milan+-ms+-Boja+-Ratko+-Mexico+-wiedergegeben+-Irish&hl=en&lr=lang_en&safe=off&tbs=lr:lang_1en&tbm=bks&ei=iym-T8KWHaPA0QWoy5Fc&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1680&bih=925&cad=h gives me only "about 139 results".

When I reduce the parameters and disable personal web search by adding pws=0, IOW https://www.google.com/search?q="Gajica"+-wikipedia+-LCC+-Milan+-ms+-Boja+-Ratko+-Mexico+-wiedergegeben+-Irish&hl=en&lr=lang_en&tbs=lr:lang_1en&tbm=bks&pws=0 I get "about 143 results".

When I add the word "alphabet" to it, IOW https://www.google.com/search?q="Gajica"+alphabet+-wikipedia+-LCC+-Milan+-ms+-Boja+-Ratko+-Mexico+-wiedergegeben+-Irish&hl=en&lr=lang_en&tbs=lr:lang_1en&tbm=bks&pws=0 I get "about 54 results"

OTOH, when I use that with "Latinica", IOW https://www.google.com/search?q="Latinica"+alphabet+-wikipedia+-LCC+-Milan+-ms+-Boja+-Ratko+-Mexico+-wiedergegeben+-Irish&hl=en&lr=lang_en&tbs=lr:lang_1en&tbm=bks&pws=0 I get "about 340 results".

Even when I generously assume the bulk of those 340 are false positives, it's still a number comparable to 54. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:54, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Right, you convinced me. Feel free to request a move. -- Director (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This is uncontroversial move which does not require RM per wikipedia rules. Only if somebody objects to it RM will be necessary.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 00:02, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

"Serbian" alphabet?

I have a book which states that Serbian alphabet includes following accented letters: ćńóŕźčěřšžłś ḿ ẃ b́. What could that actually be? 178.49.18.203 (talk) 07:48, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

What's the book? Most of those accented letters are generally used in Slavic languages, but not here. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

@178.49.18.203 You are likely making that up. Serbian accented letters are (with letter names in parentheses): Čč (če), Ćć (će), Đđ (đe), Šš (eš) and Žž (že). If you are not, the book is written by an idiot. What book even is it? 2A00:23C7:5882:8201:1080:FA39:8F4B:D5B2 (talk) 17:46, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

The letters appear to be those used in the alphabets used for the Lusatian Sorbian languages.

Citation needed for Usage for Slovene

Under the heading "Usage for Slovene" there is a claim that "Slovene orthography is comparatively less phonetic than Serbo-Croatian." Unless supported supported by a reference this should be deleted. The reason is that there is no Serbo-Croatian orthography. Each language has its own orthographical rules. For example, the word "salt" is spelled "so" in Serbian, and "sol" in both Croatian and Slovenian. When it comes to voicing assimilation, the situation is different in Serbian and Croatian: compare the Croatian "metci","Meci" (bullets, Mecca (locative case)) to the Serbian "meci","Meci". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.15.171 (talk) 06:09, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

pronunciation of missing letters

The pronounciation kve is indeed used for "q", it was actually easy for me to find a reference - a recent paper published by the Croatian Philological Society (Zagreb) or an older paper published by the University of Osijek. But on second thought, that whole thing veers off-topic here. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

My reaction was a bit knee-jerk, I admit. However, I must admit that I've never heard kve (and I've been in a [limited] contact with technical Croatian). OTOH, ku is a quite common pronunciation, I believe in Croatia as well, that it shouldn't be replaced with a quite obscure one (and only borderline on topic). No such user (talk) 11:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

It's actually fairly common IME. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Gaj's alphabet

This is not Gaj's Latin alphabet, Gaj's alphabet does not look like that. It is wrong to say that Serbo-Croatian language today is written on Gaj's alphabet.

Modern Croatian/Serbo-Croatian alphabet: Aa, Bb, Cc, Čč, Ćć, Dd, Dždž, Đđ, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Ljlj, Mm, Nn, Njnj, Oo, Pp, Rr, Ss, Šš, Tt, Uu, Vv, Zz, Žž.

Original Gaj's alphabet from Kratka osnova: Aa, Bb, Cc, Čč, Dd, Ďď, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Ľľ, Mm, Nn, Ňň, Oo, Pp, Rr, Ss, Šš, Tt, Ťť, Uu, Vv, Zz, Žž.

Compromised Gaj's alphabet from Pravopis: Aa, Bb, Cc, Čč, Ćć, Dd, Ee, Ěě, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, Rr, Ss, Šš, Tt, Uu, Vv, Zz, Žž. + digraphs dj, lj, nj, tj. (but not considered part of alphabet)

Ljudevit Gaj had an effect of formatting Croatian writing, but all of this was change by Serbo-Croatian unity. So modern Serbo-Croatian language or writing has nothing to do with Ljudevit Gaj. But has to do with Karadžić and Daničić.

The modern Latin Serbo-Croatian alphabet is fail attempt of unifying phonetic alphabet for Vukopis, which would correspond with Cyrillic alphabet.

Failed phonetic Serbo-Croatian alphabet: Aa, Bb, Cc, Čč, Ćć, Dd, Đđ, Ee, Ff, Gg, Ǵǵ, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Ļļ, Mm, Nn, Ńń, Oo, Pp, Rr, Ss, Šš, Tt, Uu, Vv, Zz, Žž.

Example of final Gaj's alphabet against modern Serbo-Croatian alphabet and spelling:

Gaj's alphabet: - U vertu raste prělěpo červeno cvětje.
Modern Serbo-Croatian alphabet: - U vrtu raste prelijepo crveno cvijeće.
English: - In the garden grows beautiful red flowers.

So this entire article is wrong. 46.229.249.253 (talk) 22:40, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

No it's not. He was the one who also edited it. That's only the first version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.180.106.198 (talk) 15:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Serbian Latin predates Croatian in the use of characteristic Dj, Lj and Nj?

Per this document from 1841 it seems that Serbian Latin predates Croatian in the use of the very characteristic Dj, Lj, Nj found in the Gaj´s Latin. This would mean that the entire concept of this being a "Croatian alphabet" (as it is mentioned on several occasions in the article right now) goes down the hill, and would mean that both, Croatian and Serbian languages, share the alphabet, at least, and Serbian even used earlier a number of specificities of "Gaj´s alphabet" such as ones mentioned. Any thoughts? FkpCascais (talk) 04:36, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Ljudevit Gaj introduced dj, nj, lj, tj, gj, ě in year 1836 in article Pravopis in his magazine Danicza horvatzka, slavonzka y dalmatinzka. Both Croats and Serbs started to use his proposed letters and spelling, since his proposition was to unify all "Illyrians" (Yugoslavs). This document is from 1841, the rest speaks for it self (Serbian Latin did not existed before Ljudevit Gaj). 46.229.244.203 (talk) 01:16, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Of course. My point was just that by this table it seems that Serbian started using Gaj´s Latin before Croatian. FkpCascais (talk) 20:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

This table first appeared in 1841 in the book Српске народне пјесме (Serbian folk songs) https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_m5cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA474&dq=Srpske+narodne+pjesme&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit3ry4p7HQAhXDUZQKHXyUAyoQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q&f=false by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, who was known for claiming that all the štokavian speaking South Slavs (including Croats and Macedonians) are Serbs. That accounts for his claim that “Serbs” are writing in a Latin alphabet. The alphabet described as “Serb. Lat.” was the one and the same as used by Croats in Slavonia, before Ljudevit Gaj’s 1835 orthographical reforms. The Slavonian orthography for the Croatian language was developed in the 18th century, and recognised for use in schools in 1779 (see Uputjenje k'slavonskomu pravopisanju za potrebu narodnieh ucsionicah u kraljestvu Slavonie 1779 - http://hrcak.srce.hr/12782). The alphabet described as “Croat.” was the one and the same as used by Croats in Croatia proper (the counties of Zagreb, Varaždin and Bjelovar-Križevci), before Ljudevit Gaj’s 1835 orthographical reforms. So, the table is incorrect in at least 4 counts: (1) It labels Croatians using the old Slavonian orthography as “Serb. Lat.” (2) It is not up to date (1841) because it does not show Ljudevit Gaj’s 1835 orthographical reforms which were adopted by all Croatians. (3) It does not show the then-current Serbian alphabet which was used by Serbs before the official adoption of Karadžić’s Cyrillic alphabet in 1868. (4) The claim that Serbs write in a Latin alphabet is not supported by Karadžić’s work itself – the 1841 book Српске народне пјесме is written entirely in Cyrillic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.15.171 (talk) 03:21, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

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Cyrillic alphabet as the origin?

He could follow only one reformed alphabet and that was Czech, making one letter for each sound. The order is completely different and he introduced too much new letters that Serbian cyrillic never had. --Sheldonium (talk) 15:05, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• gajica | Hrvatska enciklopedija
• Ljudevit Gaj i hrvatski pravopis
• gajica | Proleksis enciklopedija
• Hrvatska abeceda (gajica)

• Secondary source authored by scholar have advantage over tertirary sources and blogs.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 18:22, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

One source of an quasi-scholar is not enough. These four sources are secondary sources written by scholars on a real encyclopedia. No quasi-scholar can say something he doesn't understand. And if you're interested in sources, there are secondary sources authored by scholars which say that Serbs are liers and that Nikola Tesla is a Croat, do you believe them??? --Sheldonium (talk) 22:33, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Your comment that Bernard Comrie is a quasi-scholar is violation of wp:blp and wp:commonsense.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:35, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't follow this discussion at all. The contentious sentence is His alphabet mapped completely on Serbian Cyrillic which had been standardized by Vuk Karadžić a few years before. As far as I know, and our article clearly states, Gaj originally modeled his alphabet after Czech indeed, but he or his associates subsequently revised it to map to Karadžić's reformed Cyrillic – indeed, it does not feature ⟨dj⟩, ⟨tj⟩, ⟨gj⟩ and ⟨ě⟩ anymore. The Hrvatska enciklopedija only hints at that (Uz neznatne promjene Hrvati se njime služe i danas) but does not expound when exactly that convergence happened (and I don't know offhand). Thus, the statement about mapping to Cyrillic needs clarification and dating, not complete removal. No such user (talk) 11:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Comrie's statement that "His alphabet mapped completely on Serbian Cyrillic which had been standardized by Vuk Karadžić a few years before" makes no sense for the following reasons:

- Gaj revised his alphabet several times, from the first version in "Kratka osnova" in 1830, through his work in Danica from 1835 onwards. For more details refer to Vončina's "Temelji i putovi Gajeve grafijske reforme" (Foundations and ways of Gaj's Ortographic Reform") http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=255474. One only needs to refer to anything that was printed in Gaj's publishing house, to see that he used the dj, tj, gj and ě until the 1850s or 1860s. These digraphs and letters do not "map" on to anything by Karadžić.

- Similarly, Karadžić revised his alphabet several times. In his 1818 edition of Folk Songs he used the cyrillic "i" for "j", and in 1842, he was using the Yer (as is evident from the alphabet table on this talk page).

- Gaj never used đ, Instead using dj or gj in accordance with the Croatian "Illyrian" orthography.

So, if Karadžić and Gaj both revised and changed their respective alphabets, what is Comrie talking about? I can only surmise that he is comparing the Croatian latin and Serbian cyrillic alphabets at the time of writing (2003), when it could be said that both had 30 "letters" (in fact 3 of these "letters" are actually digraphs in the Croatian alphabet) and these letters stand for same or similar sounds in both languages.

But what is the point of this "mapping"? The only practical application I can think of is that you can pick up a crossword puzzle and solve it in whatever alphabet you wish to choose - whether it be Croatian Latin or Serbian cyrillic. But even this would not help with Croatian vs Serbian spelling differences (eg. cvijet v. cvet) or vocabulary differences (eg. vlak v. voz) or grammatical differences (eg. bit ću v. biću). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.192.136 (talk • contribs)

True. And I must add that quasi-scholars like Bernard Comrie don't know anything about Croatian culture and language. His statement is completely unreliable and unsourced because there is no proof that Gaj used Karadžić older alphabet. The same quasi-scholar could say that he is a descendant of Jesus, and some would definitely wrote that in his article referring to his statement no matter how stupid is. --Sheldonium (talk) 21:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)])

"The letters do not have names"

The naming section implies that the longer forms ("be", "ce") are used only when clarity is needed, when, in fact, they're the prevailing form in initialisms. The "followed by a schwa" thing applies only in an initialism including a letter for which the name is obscure and rarely used.

Saying they don't have names is plainly wrong (from the Hrvatski pravopis by the Croatian Institute for Language and Linguistics):

"Nazivi su slova hrvatske latinice ("The names of the letters of the Croatian Latin alphabet are"): a, be, ce, če, će, de, dže, đe, e, ef, ge, ha, i, je, ka, el, elj, em, en, enj, o, pe, er, es, eš, te, u, ve, ze, že."

The article lists them correctly, but it incorrectly makes them seem as somehow unofficial and rarely used. Hahonja (talk) 15:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hahonja Feel free to amend the article, but be aware that the names for "extended Latin" letters (če, će, dže, ..., elj, enj, eš, že) are never used in Serbian and (as far as I know) Bosnian either. In fact, I must say they sound downright alien. Are they really used in Croatian practice? In Serbian, other letters are indeed pronounced in initialisms as you say (but since most initialisms do not contain the extended letters they are not missed). No such user (talk) 20:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

No such user No, they aren't used in practice (although that's more of a detriment of the educational system, this should be done in first-second grade, and is done never). But the article is incorrect in stating they don't have official names. Hahonja (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

References

mjenjačnica

Regarding this change, the original contributor probably chose mjenjačnica because there are many common and authentic examples of it written vertically in various public places in Croatia (e.g., here and here)—and it also contains a divided mj sequence for useful contrast. It is doubtful that there are any common examples of zemlja written vertically. (If the IP contributor opining "a better example" is simply looking for a short word, then nje, nju, and ulj are available). Doremo (talk) 18:57, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Let’s try "nju". 2601:C6:D281:6710:6D80:FAE8:920:A7A8 (talk) 17:02, 31 March 2023 (UTC)