A Few Words About Orthography

The Votic language does not have a standardised writing system. Consequently, I was consigned to developing an orthography of my own.

Dimitri Cvetkov, the Vote who wrote "Esimein Vaddja Čeeli Gramatikk" and also a dictionary of Jõgõperä Votic (this is now available translated and latinised by Johanna Laakso, so the format is Votic-Estonian-Russian-Finnish), had developed an orthography based on the Cyrillic script which well reflects the Orthodox Christian faith of the Votians. I worked with Cyrillic for a while, and I have finally found a system which reflects Votic phonology well.

Thanks to Unicode I am able to have this website written in the new system. I also hope that other people using, studying or otherwise working with the Votic language will find this system useful, and perhaps this will finally lead to a standardised orthography for the Votic language.

The Votian Cyrillic Orthography

This is the Votian Cyrillic orthography used on this site:

Аа = a
Бб = b
Вв = v
Гг = g
Дд = d
Ее = e
Жж = ž
Зз = z
Ии = i
Јј = j
Кк = k
Лл = l
Мм = m
Нн = n
Оо = o
Пп = p
Рр = r
Сс = s
Тт = t
Уу = u
Фф = f
Хх = h
Цц = ts
Чч = tš
Шш = š
Ьь = palatalisation mark
Ыы = õ
Ээ = ä
Өө = ö
Үү = ü