The orthography of the Belarusian language was reformed in 1933 during the Soviet era.
Differences between the old and the new orthography
- The soft sign is no longer written when denoting assimilation of 'softness': , instead of .
- The soft sign is no longer written between double consonants: , instead of .
- The particle and the preposition are written unchanged, independently of pronunciation: , instead of ; and , instead of (compare with English definite article "the").
- Loanword orthography is regulated:
- * Akanye 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 and not soft , as in Russian
- * 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 names is regulated so that vernacular forms are replaced with canonical Orthodox forms, for example: instead of or .
- In morphology, the ending denoting genitive case 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.
See also
References