The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

of the

Belarusian language Belarusian ( be, беларуская мова, biełaruskaja mova, link=no, ) is an East Slavic language. It is the native language of many Belarusians and one of the two official state languages in Belarus. Additionally, it is spoken in some p ...

was reformed in 1933 during the

Soviet era The history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR) reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. Though the terms "Soviet Russia" and "Soviet Union" often are synonymous in everyday speech (either acknowledging the dominance ...

Differences between the old and the new orthography

# The

soft sign The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the b ...

is no longer written when denoting assimilation of 'softness': , instead of . # The soft sign is no longer written between double

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s: , instead of . # The

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...

and the

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

are written unchanged, independently of

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

: , instead of ; and , instead of (compare with English definite article "the"). #

Loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

orthography is regulated: #*

Akanye Akanye or akanje ( be, аканне, russian: а́канье, ), literally "''a''-ing", is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes or are realized as more or less close to . It is a case of vowel reduction. The most familiar ...

is preserved in all cases except ten words (such as instead of ; these exceptions were abolished in 1959) #* Central-European '' L'' is transmitted as

hard Hard may refer to: * Hardness, resistance of physical materials to deformation or fracture * Hard water, water with high mineral content Arts and entertainment * ''Hard'' (TV series), a French TV series * Hard (band), a Hungarian hard rock supe ...

and not soft , as in

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

#* The variants of writing the sound of with letters are removed #* The endings are replaced with , for example: , instead of #* The endings are used where appropriate, for example: instead of . # The orthography of

personal name A personal name, or full name, in onomastic terminology also known as prosoponym (from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον / ''prósōpon'' - person, and ὄνομα / ''onoma'' - name), is the set of names by which an individual person is known ...

s is regulated so that

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

forms are replaced with canonical

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...

forms, for example: instead of or . # In

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

, the ending denoting

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

is regulated as , as in Russian, and not as , as in certain modern dialects. Also unified is the spelling of names in dative and

prepositional case In grammar, the prepositional case (abbreviated ) and the postpositional case (abbreviated ) - generalised as ''adpositional cases'' - are grammatical cases that respectively mark the object of a preposition and a postposition. This term can be us ...

References

''Two Standard Languages within Belarusian: a Case of Bi-cultural Conflict'' by Ihar Klimaŭ (Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts)
- École normale supérieure, 25 March 2006 {{DEFAULTSORT:Belarusian Orthography Reform Of 1933 Belarusian language Orthography reform 1933 in the Soviet Union 1933 in Belarus Reform in the Soviet Union Russification Belarusian orthography

Differences between the old and the new orthography

See also

References