Alphabets, identity and cultural orientation. The case of Ossetic

Abstract

Notwithstanding its relatively short history as a written language, Ossetic, an Iranian language spoken on both sides of the Greater Caucasus, features a surprisingly rich variety of attempts at creating a writing system, based on different scripts, such as Church Slavonic Cyrillic, Georgian (both religious and civil), Arabic, Old and Reformed Civil Cyrillic (graždanka) and even Latin.

The choice clearly reflected the cultural and political orientation of the “proponents” and/or creators, and shows in addition a gradual tendency toward decreasing of the external (foreign) factor(s) and, as a consequence, increasing of the “indigenous” contribution, which reached its peak in the Soviet Era, characterized by several discussions and projects on alphabetical issues.

The talk will take the audience on a journey through the vagaries of Ossetic writing history, with special attention to linguistic and identity issues.