«Аlphabetic» polemic in Ukraine in the 19th ‒ early 21st century
Authors: Savchenko Irina Stepanovna ,   Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy
Published: December 2022

After numerous discussions, the 2019 «Ukrainian Orthographic Norms» took effect. The innovations proposed in it necessitated turning the pages of the history of Ukrainian graphics and spelling for understanding why «alphabetic wars» in Ukraine continue today and the consequences of such scholarly battles. The purpose of the paper is to give a brief overview of the «spelling wars» in Ukraine in the 19th ‒ early 21st centuries, to expose the causes and consequences of the lingering struggle for the affirmation of specific language norms. In the first half of the 19th century the struggle between the phonetic and etymological traditions of writing was evidenced by O. Pavlovsky’s orthography of the Ukrainian language grammar (1818), the works of M. Maksymovych (1827), and the almanac Rusalka Dnistrova (The Mermaid of the Dniester) in 1837. In the second half of the 19th century new orthographic norms appeared: «kulishivka», «drahomanivka», «zhelekhivka», etc. The early 20th century was crowned by the appearance of «grinchenkivka», the academic publication «The principal rules of the Ukrainian spelling» in 1920, and the «skrypnykivka» spelling in 1928. The reasons of the tragic fate of «skrypnykivka» and the appearance of the Ukrainian spelling systems of the Soviet period in Ukraine in 1933, 1946, and 1960 were found. The attempts to restore the lost national features of the Ukrainian graphics and spelling after the proclamation of Ukraine as an independent state (Orthographic norms of 1989, the drafts of its new editions of 1999 and 2003) proved to be unsuccessful. In the conditions of constant disputes and confrontations the current orthographic code was approved only with some surface changes. There is not a single country in the world with a spelling system the «fate» of which would literally be shot, whose development would be blocked, which would experience political intrusions, and suffer the extermination of national language features. The author of the paper emphasizes that for a long historical period these «alphabetic wars» involved Ukrainians in a negative program of the perception and understanding of spelling rules: one aggression gave rise to a number of others and the internal revolt (primarily – with the introduction of certain features of «skrypnykivka»). According to the author of the article, the norms in the «Ukrainian Orthographic Norms» of 2019 are far from the real life, some formulations are too complicated for an average speaker. 1. We would recommend reducing the number of capitalization rules by listing the concepts that should be written in capital letters. We propose to set some capitalization rules (see §§ 45–48) along with the material on the punctuation of sentences with quotations, remarks, appeals, rubrics, etc. 2. In the media we would like to hear more information about the evolution of language norms and the history of their appearance. Only the wide popularization of the history of spelling and the peaceful solution of spelling problems will help to return to the Ukrainians the distinctive features of orthography. 3. In the search for new grammatical forms, it is important not to push the content into the background. To prevent this from happening, the Ukrainians must learn to think differently, make decisions without fuss, avoid any manifestations of aggression and negative involvement in problems, and seek compromises. In the following scientific investigations, we plan to analyze the punctuation rules of the mother tongue, presented in the current orthographic norms of 2019.