From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1445
Date: 2000-02-08
----- Original Message -----From: Mark OdegardSent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 12:54 AMSubject: [cybalist] Re: glagolitzaThe article in the online Brittanica covers it adequately:http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,119413+13 ,00.html
Paul Cubberley, in his chapter in Daniels and Bright's The World's Writing System, p. 346, seems to believe the extra consonants were based on Armenian exemplars, while the extra vowels were based on Greek variants.
He gives this etymological note on p. 347: "Glagolitic, (glagólitica) from glagol-, (word, say').
Mark.
Just a brief comment on the name of the script. The name glagolica [sic! -- the c should be pronounced ts] is relatively late. In the oldest texts the script was called simply pismena slověnskaja 'Slavic letters' or, less often, kurilovica 'Cyrillic' after its actual or alleged inventor -- a name subsequently applied to the other Slavic script.
The term glagolica was in all likelihood coined in Croatia at a time when the Old Church Slavonic words glagolU 'word' and glagolati 'speak', occurring very frequently in Biblical texts read out in church, were attracting the attention of Croatian-speakers because of their exotic/archaic flavour. Both derive from the reduplicated Slavic root *gol-gol- 'speak (a lot)'. The simple form of the same root is visible in Slavic *gol-s- 'voice', *gols-In- 'loud' (hence glasnost') and in Germanic *kall- (English call).
Piotr