Marco Cimarosti wrote:

> E.g., I remember that, around the 1970's, the Irish script was
> considered an alphabet on its own, while today it is mostly
> considered a variant of the Latin alphabet (like, e.g., Italic). How
> did this happen? Or, on the other hand, I think that Cyrillic has
> been considered a variant of Greek for a long while. When did it
> start to be seen as an independent alphabet?

The Irish alphabet developed gradually and "naturally" out of the
preceding uncial and half-uncial varieties, but the Glagolitic and
Cyrillic scripts were invented all at once, on the basis of Greek models
but with the intention of being distinctive.

> To paraphrase Weinrich, perhaps a graphic variant becomes an alphabet
> when it starts to be used by the army?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...