Elbasan alphabet

Elbasan script
Languages Albanian
Direction Left-to-right
ISO 15924 Elba, 226
Unicode alias
 Elbasan

U+10500 – U+1052F

Final Accepted Script Proposal

The Elbasan script is a mid 18th-century alphabetic script used for the Albanian language. It was named after the city of Elbasan where it was invented. It was mainly used in the area of Elbasan and Berat. It is widely considered to be the first original alphabet developed for transcribing the Albanian language.

The primary document associated with the alphabet is the Elbasan Gospel Manuscript, known in Albanian as the Anonimi i Elbasanit (The Anonymous of Elbasan).[1] The document was created at St. Jovan Vladimir's Church in central Albania, but is preserved today at the National Archives of Albania in Tirana. Its 59 pages contain Biblical content written in an alphabet of 40 letters,[1] of which 35 frequently recur and 5 are rare. Dots are used on three characters as inherent features of them to indicate varied pronunciation (pre-nasalization and gemination) found in Albanian. The script generally uses Greek letters as numerals with a line on top.

Another original script used for Albanian, was Beitha Kukju's script of the 19th century. This script did not have much influence either.

Unicode

The Elbasan alphabet (U+10500–U+1052F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

Elbasan[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1050x 𐔀 𐔁 𐔂 𐔃 𐔄 𐔅 𐔆 𐔇 𐔈 𐔉 𐔊 𐔋 𐔌 𐔍 𐔎 𐔏
U+1051x 𐔐 𐔑 𐔒 𐔓 𐔔 𐔕 𐔖 𐔗 𐔘 𐔙 𐔚 𐔛 𐔜 𐔝 𐔞 𐔟
U+1052x 𐔠 𐔡 𐔢 𐔣 𐔤 𐔥 𐔦 𐔧
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 9.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Sources

  1. 1 2 Elsie, Robert (1995). "The Elbasan Gospel Manuscript ("Anonimi i Elbasanit"), 1761, and the Struggle for an Original Albanian Alphabet" (PDF). Südost-Forschungen. Regensburg: Südost-Institut. 54: 105–159. ISSN 0081-9077.


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