Pantography: Copies of the alphabets of the Slavic languages

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On a tip from the reader Kostaber Kolosova came out on an interesting old book. It is called “Pantography; containing exact copies of all known alphabets in the world; together with an English explanation of the specific action or influence of each letter: to which are added the samples of all authentic spoken languages."

This book was written by Edmund Fry (1754-1835), the founder of the English type-founder and published in London in 1799.

Pantography is the art of copying drawings using a pantograph. This is how it looks:

The book contains over two hundred alphabets. At the very beginning of the book, Edmond Free gives a list of the sources he uses. There are a lot of them. How he himself qualifies the languages known in his time:

“If we name different dialects of different peoples inhabiting certain parts of the world, the number of these languages is really great; and it would be futile and useless to try to study them all.

To begin with, we will name the main ones, of which there are only 4. They can be called primary sources or mother languages and it seems that all other languages spoken in Europe originated from them, namely: Latin, Celtic, Gothic and Slavic.

However, I would not like to believe that they were passed on to us without any changes, from the confusion of languages in the building of the Tower of Babel.

We expressed our opinion that there is only one truly original languagefrom which all other languages were formed. The four languages mentioned are only the ancestors of the languages that are now spoken in Europe.

From the Latin language came Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French;

From Celtic - Welsh, Goidel, Irish, Brittany or Armorican (Armorica or Aremorica is a historical region in the north-west of present-day France - approx. Mine) and Waldens (south of France - approx. Mine).

From Gothic - high and low Dutch; English, which is also enriched with borrowings from many other languages; Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic or Runic.

From Slavic - Polish, Lithuanian, Bohemian, Vandal, Croatian, Russian, carnish, Dalmatian, Lusatian, Moldavian and many others.

Currently, in Asia, they mainly speak Turkish, Tartar, Persian and modern Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, modern Indian, Formosan (the language of the aborigines of Taiwan, this is how they looked:

The author of the book cites two varieties of the Indian language available at that time (with 32 varieties of Greek and 18 varieties of Aramaic):

I do not know why it is called Indian. The explanation says that this is the Nubian language (Africa, Nile Valley):

“INDIAN LANGUAGE1 Nubian language. It is believed that these were the original true letters of the Abyssinians, but there is some doubt about this. Duret, p. 383.

Clabart says it was taken from the Griman Library in Venice and brought to Rome during the time of Sixtus IV in 1482."

“Modern travelers (1619) inform us that the East Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc., form their letters on this model, write from top to bottom. Jerome Osorius, 2nd Book of Portuguese History, says that Indians use neither paper nor parchment, but write with a pointed instrument on palm leaves and that they have very ancient books written this way.»

In modern India, 447 different languages are spoken, 2 thousand dialects. But two are official: Hindi and English. This is what Hindi looks like:

The same spelling of letters is used in Sanskrit:

Since I am not a linguist myself, I will refer to the opinion of experts:

"Hindi is the modern version of Sanskrit, just like Old Church Slavonic and Russian."

“Sanskrit is an ancient and sacred language, spiritual texts are written in it. Its difference from modern Hindi can be compared to the attitude of Latin to modern Spanish - the root bases of the words have been preserved, but the phonetics of the languages are different."

The author of the book mentions only 2 Indian languages instead of 447, which are known in our time, and these two languages are in no way similar to the one in which India speaks and writes today.

What conclusions can be drawn from this, I do not yet know.

For the rest, we conclude that the author of the book, as a European, was closer to European languages, despite the abundance of literature he studied. Further in alphabetical order. Armenian language:

“The Armenian language approaches the Chaldean and Syriac languages; many of its parts are similar to other oriental languages, Greek and Gaulish, making pronunciation difficult. It is used not only in Great and Little Armenia, but also in Asia Minor, Syria, Tartaria, Persia and other countries. Duret, p. 725

“This letter was used to decorate gables and book titles; also for public inscriptions, from where the French gave him the name Lapidaire.

But Lapidary lettercalled any inscriptions found on stones and other solid materials from which monuments are erected.

Kerch Lapidarium

“These are the capital letters of their usual writing, taken from their books. Some authors believe that these marks were invented by Saint Chrysostom, who was expelled by the Emperor, from Constantinople to Armenia, where he died.

Modern Armenian alphabet

Zlatoust was born on the territory of Turkey, but at a time when, by all indications, they still lived there. It is unlikely that he began to invent something different from the language in which they wrote and spoke. Although this alphabet is not at all similar to the Slavic one.

Is the Glagolitic alphabet similar? After all, quite recently it was used, but now I personally look at this verb as a complete sheep. I'm used to the Cyrillic alphabet. Although it is very possible that Russians, and not only - did not write tartars in Cyrillic at all? Here it is, an 18th century Slavic Glagolitic alphabet:

“Bulgaria is a province of Turkey; signs for the most part Illyrian(Fourn. Vol. 2, p. 275), but Slavicdialect

The Illyrians were the vast groups of related Indo-European peoples who in ancient times inhabited the northwest of the Balkan Peninsula and partially the southeast of the Apennine Peninsula. Why confuse so much?

Why not say frankly that these were Slavic peoples?

“John the Baptist Palatine states that the Illyrians have two alphabets: the provinces on the east side used the one that most closely resembled Greek, invented by Saint Cyril; in the western provinces - invented by Saint Jerome.

But Aventine in the 4th book of his annals says that at the time of Christ, one man named Methodius, bishop and native of Illyria, invented this alphabet; and translated the scriptures into it, persuading the people to abandon the use of Latin and the ceremonies of the Roman church. See “Croatian language. Duret, p. 741."

Which Christ, or rather which Methodius, does he mean? It is now believed that Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the Slavic alphabet, lived in the 9th century. According to the results of Fomenko and Nosovsky, Jesus Christ lived in 1152-1185 AD.

Those. it is likely that the author of these very Cyril and Methodius had in mind? Or there were two pairs: one lived in the 9th century, the other - 900 years earlier. Currently, the Illyrian language belongs to the Paleo-Balkan language group and the following scheme of its distribution is given:

This Illyrian alphabet of the Indo-European people of the Paleo-Balkan language group in our time is also called the verb (recognized by Cyril and Methodius):

Another example of the Illyrian alphabet, but already more reminiscent of the Cyrillic alphabet or a mixture of Cyrillic and Latin:

“Palatine claims that this alphabet was invented by St. Cyril; it is called " Slavic »And bears great similarity to the Russian alphabet. Duret, p. 738."

The next Slavic language presented in the book is Russian:

"The attached symbols were cut into block letters on Typografskaya Street, from the alphabets Vocabularia totiut erbis Linguarum comparativa, collected and published by order of the late Empress of Russia in 2 volumes."

"SLAVONIAN LANGUAGE (Croatian?) Or Old Russian, taken from the French encyclopedia, volume 10. Was accidentally dropped in its proper place in the book."

The description of the Russian language is taken from the book of Peter Simon Pallas. It was already mentioned in the article "On the ancient ruins of Siberia." This is a German encyclopedic scholar who is in the Russian service (1767-1810).

In addition to research in the field of biology, geography, ethnography, geology and philology, he also compiled "Comparative dictionaries of all languages and dialects, collected by the right hand of the Most High Personality of Empress Catherine II." Which came out first in 2 volumes (St. Petersburg, 1787-1789), and then in 4 volumes under the title "Comparative Dictionary of all languages and dialects, in alphabetical order" in 1790-1791).

The author of the book referred to in this article refers to the 1786 edition, i.e. previously published in St. Petersburg. The entire preface of the Comparative Dictionary is written in Latin, although the further test is in Russian.

It provides a translation of common Russian words into 200 other languages. Of these, 12 are Slavic, 36 are European, then Caucasian, Asian, and about a hundred others - the peoples of Siberia, the Far East and the Far North. If you are interested, you can see for yourself. The book is freely available.

In the book considered here, only ONE sample of the Russian language is given, taken from a book written by a GERMAN … … I don't even know what conclusions to draw here. I have only one thing that suggests itself - this Russian alphabet was not yet very widespread in the 18th century and was it possible that it was used for writing some other?

Other Slavic languages are also presented in the book, but not in the form of alphabets, but in the form of the texts "Our Father", written, however, not in the original language, but in Latin. But even so it is clear that they sound in Russian or almost in Russian, as in the case of the Lusatian language:

From the texts given here, we can conclude that even in the 18th century, Slavic languages were closer to Russian in sound than now. Even in the Polish language I do not see many differences from Russian: "kingdom" instead of "kingdom", "everyday" instead of "daily", "wine" instead of "debts", etc. But these differences relate to the content of the text of the prayer, not the words themselves.

It turns out that they lived on the territory of present-day Moldova. Or at least its inhabitants spoke Russian.

Ukrainian in the book not mentionedbut Vandal is mentioned. Instead of him or not? I will not dare to draw a conclusion. The Vandals are considered an ancient Germanic tribe, close to the Goths who lived in the 5th century AD.

The Luzhitsy lived on the territory of modern Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Western Ukraine, however, for a very long time - in the 7-4 centuries BC, they spoke the languages of the Celto-Italic group and were the ancestors of the Illyrians, which were already considered above.

There is such a scheme for the spread of the Huns, Goths and Vandals throughout Western Europe:

Directions of tribal invasions into the territory of the Roman Empire. In particular, the direction of movement of the vandals from Germany through Dacia, Gaul, Iberia to North Africa and the subsequent sack of Rome in 455 AD is shown in gray. e.

There is such a nuance: the Roman Empire, which was plundered by the Slavs, is located on the territory previously occupied by the Etruscans, who were also Slavs. So who captured and plundered whom remains a big question.

This book contains three examples of the Etruscan alphabet:

The Etruscans, or Etrurians, as Latin history tells us, were the most ancient people of Italy. Some authors claim that soon after the general flood, Noah founded 12 cities or tribes there, which used the same letters or symbols, entrusted only to the priests who changed them. according to their pleasure, both their order and their meaning or meaning; sometimes writing them down from left to right or vice versa.

There is no doubt that Etruscan and Pelasgic alphabets come from the same source.»

Pelasgi are the people who inhabited ancient Greece, before the Greeks arrived there. The Etruscans lived in Italy before the arrival of the Romans there, and the Pelasgians in Greece before the arrival of the Greeks there, and the language of the Etruscans and Pelasgians had a common origin, because both were Slavs. I wonder how they could identify Etruscan letters in the 18th century, if in the 20th they said that Etruscan could not be read?

“According to Hellanicus (5th century BC Greek writer) Etruscans are an offshoot of the Aegean Pelasgians, and the Pelasgians are the pre-Greek population of Greece and the Aegeis, including the islands of Crete, that is, the very Minoans ruled by King Minos.

Herodotus reports that Hellas was formerly called Pelasgia, the country of the Pelasgians.

Bulgarian academician Vladimir Georgiev proved that the Pelasgian language was Indo-European. The Romans called them Etruscans, the Greeks called the Etruscans "Tyrrhenians", and the Etruscans themselves, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, called themselves "rasena". And in the dictionary of Stephen of Byzantine Etruscans are unconditionally named Slavic tribe.

Academician N. Ya. Marr proved that in the pre-Indo-European era, the Mediterranean was inhabited by Japhetids. He named one of the Pelasgian or Etruscan tribes, which was also called the Rasenes in various versions of this name.

Based on the analysis of the Japhetic languages (Scythian and Etruscan), he restored their direct connection with Slavic and Russian. N. Ya. Marr also wrote: “The races in the north of the Caucasus stratified into two nationalities - the Pelasgians and the Rasens. The Pelasgians settled on the Balkan Peninsula. The Rasens merged into the Apennine Peninsula, where they mixed with the Etruscans, by whose name they were known to their neighbors."

G. S. Grinevich substantiated the scheme: Pelasgi = Etruscans = Slavic tribe (Rasens), that is, the Proto-Slavs.

Only using the ancient Slavic language, the remarkable patriotic scientists F. Volansky, P. P. Oreshkin, G. S. Grinevich, G. A. Levkashin and others managed to read the Cretan, Etruscan, Proto-Indian and other inscriptions that the "Etruscan scholars" could not read before them. " (O. Vinogradov "Ancient Vedic Russia is the basis of existence")

"These characters, which are written from left to right, says Theseus Ambrosius, can be found in many libraries in Italy."

"According to the above authority, we also have this symbol, which is written from right to left."

"These people came from Scythia to Europe, and in the time of Valentinian, in 376 AD, under Attila, great destruction was made in France and Italy; but then, following the example of Pope Leo, they settled in Pannonia, which is now called Hungary from the Huns. This alphabet is copied from Fournier, v. 2.p. 209."

If this is the language of the Huns. Huns are another name for the Slavs:

“In the first book of“Wars with the Goths,”he writes about the Slavs as follows:“Meanwhile, Martin and Valerian arrived, bringing with them one thousand six hundred soldiers. Most of them were Huns, Slavinis and Antes, who live on the other side of the Danube, not far from its banks. Belisarius, greatly delighted at their arrival, considered it necessary to fight the enemy. " (Mavro Orbini "Slavic kingdom", 1601)

Or the Scythians, who are also Slavs:

Many researchers are anthropologists and ethnologists (among them the famous Russian geographer and ethnographer G. E. Grum-Grzhimailo), attributed the Huns to the pale-faced, green-eyed and red-haired sons of Eurasia, about which information has been preserved in the eastern chronicles. The appearance of some Huns restored from the skull allows us to agree with this.

The culture of the Huns is very similar to the Scythian one: the same “animal style”, the same burial mounds with log chambers placed underground … In one of the Noinuli burial grounds (mound no. 25), under a thick layer of earth and a log run-up of a grave block, an embroidery portrait of a person similar to … Stalin, who had lain here for almost 2000 years, was discovered. (S. I. Rudenko, “The culture of the Huns and the Noinuli kurgans”.)

As well as the Alans:

In those parts of the field, the fields are always abundant in grass and fruits, so wherever their path goes, they do not lack either forage or food. All this gives rise to fertile land, washed by many rivers.

All who are of no use stick to the baggage and do the work they can, as well as simple and light assignments; young people learn to ride, because, according to their ideas, walking is worthy of contempt, and they are all the most skillful warriors.

Almost all of them are large-built, have beautiful facial features, light brown hair and a very quick and slightly frightening look. In everything they are similar to the Huns, but more cultured than those in food and clothing. Hunting, they reach the Meotian bog, the Cimmerian Strait, Armenia and Media. (Mavro Orbini "Slavic kingdom", 1601)

The language of the Huns is the language of the Scythians. And it is similar to the Etruscan language. I do not know if the identification of the Etruscan and Hunnic alphabets was taken from the ceiling, or in the 18th century, the Etruscan language was quite a READABLE language.

The Prussian language is mentioned in the book, but the appearance of its alphabet for some reason is not given (perhaps the reason is that it, like Lusatian, is Slavic?) Only three different readings of the "Our Father", written in Latin letters (but I don’t know in what language, definitely not German):

Here is what Mavro Orbini writes about the Prusians:

“After defeating them in battle, it was first introduced in PrussiaChristianity together with the German language, the language of the Slavs of the Prussians was soon suppressed »

Slavs lived in Europe (like Turkey) in the recent past. The "Romans" and "Greeks" came to these territories later, displacing the Slavs from them, and attributing their stay in this territory to ancient times. Turning the facts inside out: the conquerors were declared defenders, and the defenders were conquerors. However, this is not the only case, but rather a widespread phenomenon in our "history".

Several variants of the Tartar language are presented in the book:

The Tartar alphabet mainly uses Arabic letters. The attached sample is the Lord's prayer.

The Arabic language was quite used in Tartary. Many sources speak about this. But this does not mean at all that the tartars were Arabs.

Samples of the Tartar language 2-4 are the texts of the Our Father prayer written in Latin letters: literary prayer reading, prayer in the Tartar-Ostyak language and in the Chinese style - Tartar Chinese? I don't know Chinese, and I'm not a linguist at all, so it's hard for me to judge the content:

But it doesn't sound Chinese at all. Although, perhaps, the reason is that in the 18th century in Europe they did not yet know what language the Chinese spoke? The Chinese alphabet is also not shown in the book. I don’t want to conclude that both the Chinese language and the Chinese alphabet were invented later?

“Manchu tartars use the same alphabet or symbols as Great Mughals, and write from top to bottom, in the manner of the Chinese. The appended is an example of initial letters. French Encyclopedia, Ch. XXIII."

“A sample of the middle letters of the Manchu tartar alphabet. French Encyclopedia, Ch. XXIII."

“Sample of final letters of the Manchu tartar alphabet. French Encyclopedia, Ch. XXIII."

The Great Mughals are geographically linked to India. Another proof in the piggy bank that the language of Tartar, like the Scythians, and perhaps all the Slavs before Cyril and Methodius, was Sanskrit. Similar?

More about Tartar, Scythian and Sanskrit in the article "Petroglyphs and ancient writing of Siberia." It turned out that the Georgian language is also related to the Tartar language.

“This alphabet is formed from the Greek language, according to Postel, who says that Georgians use this language in their prayers, but in other cases they use Tartar and Armenian letters.

This specimen is almost Greek, both in name and in image, and was taken from an ancient book of travels to the Holy Land by a monk named Nichol Huz, 1487. Duret, p. 749. Fourn. v. 2.p. 221"

“This and two subsequent alphabets, according to the French encyclopedia, are used among Georgians and are written from left to right; but Fournier says that this name is taken from the name of the martyr Saint George, whom the Iberians chose as their patron and consider their Apostle.

The alphabets in which these are only capital letters are called sacred because of their use in deciphering the Holy Books."

"Georgian language 4. This is the usual italic type used today (18th century)"

In my opinion, has something in common with the verb?

Modern Georgian language:

Another language, in my opinion, which has similarities with Slavic:

“The alphabet of these primitive letters contains 16 root symbols and degrees, which have 24 secondary modifications or modulations, making up a total of 40; and he went by the name Coelpen y Beirz, the bards or BARDIC ALPHABET.

The astute antiquarian naturally wants to know how this curious relic has survived to the present day?

The answer to this: in the unknown and mountainous regions of Wales, the system of bardism (membership in the ancient Celtic order of poets? - my note). Is still intact, but better known to the world under the name of druidism, which was, in fact, that branch of bardism, which is related to religion and education.

Bardism was universal and contained all the knowledge or philosophy of ancient times; Druidry was a religious code; and ovatism, it is art and science.

The preservation of symbols, perhaps, mainly refers to his own reserves and wealth, whereby tradition is reduced to science.

I am grateful for this and the following entry to my skillful friend W. Owen. F. A. S, whose authority cannot be questioned."

“The original manner of writing among the ancient English was that the letters were cut with a knife on tablets, which were most often square and sometimes triangular; therefore, 1 tablet contained either four or three lines.

Squares were used for general themes and for 4-growths in poetry; the triangular ones were adapted to the triads and for a peculiar ancient rhythm called Tribanus, and Anglin Milvir, or triplet, and warrior poems.

Several tablets with text written on them were gathered together, forming a kind of frame, presented on the attached page. Which was called "Pifinen" or interpreter and was designed in such a way that each tablet could be rotated for reading, with the end of each of them alternately turning on both sides of the frame."

In my opinion, it is very similar to the Slavic runes:

My opinion: British runes are nothing more than Slavic runes. This means that before the arrival of the British in Britain, the Slavs also lived there.

And they suffered the same fate as the Etruscans in Italy, the Illyrians in Greece, the Prussians in Germany, the Huns in Hungary, and the Slavs in Moldavia. Or have all these Englishmen, Germans, Italians and Greeks forgotten that they are Slavs?

But genetic studies show that they still belong to a different branch, albeit related: R1b, not R1a.