Coexistence of Multiple Writing Systems: Classifying Digraphia in Post-Socialist Countries

Abstract

This study aims to specify the definitions of two terms, bigraphia and digraphia, and examine how these phenomena appear in post-socialist countries. It is currently a global phenomenon to use two or more writing systems in one country, due to the spread of English and the Internet. Bigraphia means when the function and prestige of two writing systems (or two varieties of one system) are equal. On the other hand, when there is a difference in the function and/or prestige between two writing systems, it is defined as digraphia. The paper examines the combination of writing systems in post-socialist countries such as Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. In-digraphia refers to a situation in which variations of one writing system coexist, and out-digraphia refers to a situation in which two different writing systems coexist. A narrower sense of digraphia is observed in Belarus today: Belarusian Cyrillic-Т(BC-T) is used to write Tarashkievitsa and Belarusian Cyrillic-N (BC-N) is used to write Narkamaŭka. Out-digraphia is observed in Serbia and Uzbekistan. In these countries, Cyrillic and Latin scripts are used to write Serbian and Uzbek. Out-digraphia is also confirmed in Russian texts: It is commonly thought that only Cyrillic letters are used to write Russian, but recently the use of the so-called “macaronic alphabet,” which is a mix of Cyrillic and Latin letters, has become common.