Re: How did I miss this one?

On 4/05/2024 1:46 a.m., ulf_kutzner wrote:

Ross Clark wrote:
 

April 26, which is the feast day of Stephen of Perm, is celebrated as Old Permic Alphabet Day.

 

Not mentioned by Crystal. A passing reference by Geoffrey Sampson, in a LinguistList review of a book on Uralic languages, led me to it.

 

It was invented in 1372 by the said Saint, in order to write (Old) Komi (aka Old Zyrian), a Permic (Uralic) language (making it one of the earliest scripts used in that family). It is a rather radical re-shaping

 

of Cyrillic, with some elements from other sources. Its use continued for about three centuries, after which it was replaced by more normal Cyrillic.

 

All this and more at:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Permic_script

 

We've already mentioned Hangul Day, celebrated in Korea. Any other holidays dedicated to particular scripts?

 What about this one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Slavonic_Alphabet,_Bulgarian_Enlightenment_and_Culture   Regards, ULF

Yes, thank you! And it's May 24, the feast day of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, 9th-century Byzantine brothers from Thessalonica, who invented this alphabet and took the Gospel to the Slavs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_and_Methodius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sv_Kiril_Metodij_Zahari_Zograf_Trojanski_mon_1848.jpg
"In 1980, the first Slav pope, Pope John Paul II declared them co-patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia."
There was a Serbian restaurant at one time in Auckland (though Croatians are much more numerous here), and the one time we ate there, I remember seeing, pinned to the wall, a little poem about "Наша Кириллица" (Our (dear?) Cyrillic alphabet). Googling that phrase brings up a lot of Russian sites with similar sentiments.
Looking further into it will show that while the above is basically true, it is a lot more complicated.
(i) They have several different feast days depending on which church you ask.
(ii) They invented two quite different alphabets -- Glagolitic, which looks a bit like Elvish; and Cyrillic, which is simpler and more obviously based on Greek, and has lasted longer.
(iii) And maybe they didn't invent them just like that...but such is the way of writing systems.