Writing systems

At the beginning of the 20th century, when some of the restrictions on freedom of speech in Belarusian language publications in the Russian Empire were abolished, variants based on the Cyrillic script and Latin alphabet competed with each other, but ultimately it was Cyrillic which gained more popularity (Fałowski 2011Fałowski 2011 / komentarz/comment/r /
Fałowski, Adam 2011. „Język białoruski”, w: Barbara Oczkowa & Elżbieta Szczepańska (red.) Słowiańskie języki literackie. Rys historyczny. Kraków: UJ, s. 145-160.
).
Łacinka – Belarusian variant of the Latin alphabet – and Taraškievica, i.e. the Cyrillic alphabet in a form introduced by Branislaw Tarashkyevich (Pryhodzicz 1998: 21Pryhodzicz 1998 / komentarz/comment/r /
Прыгодзіч, Мікалай Р. [Pryhodzicz] 1998. „З гісторыі беларускай мовы”, w: Najnowsze dzieje języków słowiańskich. Беларуская мова. Opole: UO, s. 13-24.
) are used among Belarusian emigrants. The website of the exile Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, who refer to the short-lasting period of Belarusian statehood at the beginning of the 20th century, is maintained with the use of Taraškievica (http://www.bnr.org).
Traditional Belarusian Łacinka has been used since 2001 in Belarus as an auxiliary alphabet in cartography instead of other transcription systems based on Western languages. This practice can be observed on the maps available on the Google Maps website. It was postulated by I. Haponenka (2009Haponenka 2009 / komentarz/comment/r /
Haponenka, Iryna 2009. „Што ты ёсць, беларуская лацінка?”, Звязда 229 (26587). [http://www.zviazda.by/ru/archive/article.php?id=48534&idate=2009-12-03]
) to apply the system also in documents (e.g. passports).
Łacinka is used in a non-regular magazine Litwa printed in Belarus. The magazine is of an opposition and monarchist character, and its creators refer to the previously mentioned self-identification as Lithuanians (Bury 2008Bury 2008 / komentarz/comment/r /
Bury, Jan 2008. „Litwinizm - nowe zjawisko na Białorusi”, Kresy.pl. [http://www.kresy.pl/wydarzenia?zobacz/litwinizm---nowe-zjawisko-na-bialorusi-1]
). Publications (books, magazines, websites) in Belarusian dialects from Poland make use of various forms of the modified Latin alphabet and Cyrillic. The Cybervioska website presents literary texts in four versions : dialectal in the Latin alphabet with orthography modelled on Polish (the presence of digraphs), dialectal in Belarusian Łacinka, standard Belarusian in Łacinka and standard Belarusian in Cyrillic (http://cybervioska.w.interia.pl/razryuka_4.htm). An example of an in-between variant is Michaś Ŝachoviĉ’s poetry volume, Napievy (Ŝachoviĉ 1987Ŝachoviĉ 1987 / komentarz/comment/r /
Ŝachoviĉ, Michaś 1987. Napievy. Białystok: Wojewódzki Dom Kultury.
), where diacritics <Ŝ> and <ĉ>were used to transcribe the author’s name, while diagraphs , for retroflex consonants occur in the orthography of the poems.
Polish-Lithuanian Tatars used the Arabian scripts to transcribe Polish and Belarusian (Łapicz 1986Łapicz 1986 / komentarz/comment/r /
Łapicz, Czesław 1986. Kitab Tatarów litewsko-polskich. Toruń: UMK.
).


Example of a Belarusian text transcribed in the Arabian script. Copy of the text in the British Museum. Reproduced after Łapicz 1986: 229Łapicz 1986 / komentarz/comment/r /
Łapicz, Czesław 1986. Kitab Tatarów litewsko-polskich. Toruń: UMK.
.