User:Sloyment/Thoughts about File:Venn diagram gr la ru.svg

Some thoughts about File:Venn diagram gr la ru.svg…

Above diagram only matches glyph shapes, but not how the characters match historically or functionally. To draw a Venn diagram that shows which characters the alphabets have in common, there needs to be an agreement first, which characters match. While it is obvious for certain characters, it is more vague for others.

Matching Cyrillic and Greek characters is pretty straightforward (except for У/Υ – should they match or not?):

With Latin characters added, it becomes more complicated, as there are several ways to match them with Greek and Cyrillic:

Alternatives:


 * ¹) 33 character Russian alphabet; historical and non-Russian cyrillic characters added that match with Greek or Latin
 * ²) 24 character Greek alphabet; historical characters added that match with Cyrillic or Latin
 * ³) 26 character Basic Latin alphabet; re-ordered to match with Greek and Cyrillic

Color coding:


 * Obsolete character (for comparison)
 * Non-Russian cyrillic character (for comparision)
 * False friends, i.e. glyphs are often similar to that of unrelated characters

Latin transliteration systems (for comparision)

Possible Venn diagrams
With V and F treated as separate letters: ┌────────────────────────────────┐    │     Ё Ж Й Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я  │ ┌───┼──────────────────────────┐    │ │   │         ┌────────────────┼─────┼───┐ │   │         │ А Г Д Е З К Л  │     │   │ │  │         │ Α Γ Δ Ε Ζ Κ Λ  │     │   │ │  │         │ A G D E Z K L  │ Б У │   │ │  │ В И Ф Х │                │ B U │   │ │  │ Β Η Φ Χ │  М Н О П Р С Т │     │   │ │  │         │  Μ Ν Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ │     │   │ │  │         │  M N O P R S T │     │   │ │  └─────────┼────────────────┼─────┘   │ │ Θ Ψ Ω       │      Ι Ξ Υ     │         │ │            │      I X Y     │ C F H J │ └─────────────┼────────────────┘ Q V W  │ └──────────────────────────┘

With V and F matched to Greek and Cyrillic letters (functionally but ahistorically): ┌────────────────────────────────┐    │   Ё Ж Й Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я    │ ┌───┼────────────────────────┐      │ │   │     ┌──────────────────┼───────┼───┐ │   │     │ А В Г Д Е З К Л  │       │   │ │  │     │ Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Κ Λ  │       │   │ │  │     │ A V G D E Z K L  │  Б У  │   │ │  │ И Х │                  │  B U  │   │ │  │ Η Χ │  М Н О П Р С Т Ф │       │   │ │  │     │  Μ Ν Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Φ │       │   │ │  │     │  M N O P R S T F │       │   │ │  └─────┼──────────────────┼───────┘   │ │ Θ Ψ Ω   │      Ι Ξ Υ       │           │ │        │      I X Y       │ C H J Q W │ └─────────┼──────────────────┘          │           └──────────────────────────────┘