User:Yupik/To Do/Khanty alphabet

The Khanty alphabet is a writing system used for the Khanty language. It can refer to any of the Cyrillic- and Latin-based orthographies that have been used over the years to write Khanty.

The first Latin period
One of the first publications in Khanty was a religious pamphlet published in 1868 in London that contained Vologodski's translation of the Gospel of Matthew in a mixture of the Beryozovsky-Obdorian dialect. This edition was written using Latin letters.

The first Cyrillic period
The same pamphlet was published again, in 1880, albeit using the Cyrillic alphabet this time. Cyrillic with the additional letter of ҥ was also used for publishing other books. These books however, were not невостребованными by the Khanty themselves.

The second Latin period


After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet language policy stated, as a part of the so-called Korenizatsiya policy, that all minority languages in the Soviet Union should have their own written languages, that the minorities should be taught to read and write them, and that they should receive education in their own tongue. So in 1931, the previously Cyrillic alphabet was exchanged for the Latin alphabet. In 1936, this new orthography was abandoned and a decision was made to revert back to using the Cyrillic alphabet for writing Khanty.

The second Cyrillic period
In 1937, the first textbooks written in Cyrillic were published. Since Khanty is divided up into 5 main dialects (Vakh, Kazym, Obdorian, Surgut and Shuryshkar), each dialect except for Obdorian was given its own orthography). The primer that was published in 1937 in the Kazym dialect used the standard Cyrillic alphabet with the additional letters of ёо, л', нг, оо and уу.

In 1952, a decision was made to bring the writing system more in line with the way Khanty was actually spoken. In order to do so, additional letters that were different for the various dialects were introduced. From 1958, the complete Khanty alphabet for the 4 dialects was officially approved:

This alphabet, however, is only used to publish textbooks and the newspaper "Ленин пант хуват" still uses the alphabet approved in 1937. The newspaper "Ханты ясанг" also used the same alphabet up until 2004.

The third Cyrillic period
In 2000, a decision was made once again to revise the Khanty alphabet and the following graphemes were introduced:
 * Kazym dialect: ă ә ӛ ӆ ӊ ў є є̈ ю̆ я̆
 * Surgut dialect: ä ă қ(ӄ) ӆ ӊ(ӈ) ө ӫ ӧ ӱ ў ҳ ҷ ә
 * Shuryshkar dialect: ԓ ӈ

Since 2004, the newspaper Ханты ясанг and all of the literature published in the autonomous okrugs of Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets has used the latest orthography.

The Unified Khanty Alphabet as of 2000: