Kulishivka



Kulishivka [Kulišivka]. A Ukrainian alphabet and orthography used for the first time by Panteleimon Kulish in his Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi (Notes on Southern Rus’, 1856) and adopted in the 1860s by Populist publications in Galicia. Kulishivka retained ь at the end of words and often after labials (pьjut’—they drink) and after r; replaced the old Ѣ as well as o in closed syllables with i; introduced є after soft consonants—davnie (old), but est’ (is) and svoe (one's own)—while rendering the e in such cases as э—эhe (yes), poэta (poet); introduced ë—ëho (his), slëzy (tears); eliminated the letter ы, replacing the old ы and i by и—vyvčyv (learned); and used the Latin g—grunt (land). This became the foundation of a systematized way of writing contemporary Ukrainian orthography (see Zhelekhivka), which is sometimes also called Kulishivka. From the 1880s Kulish modified his orthography extensively in the phonetic direction—occja to replace otcja (‘father’ gen sg), ticci to replace titci (‘aunt’ dat sg), š čereva instead of z čereva (‘from the belly’), ž žonoju instead of z žonoju (‘with the wife’), bež žalju instead of bez žalju (‘without pity’)—but this reform was not widely adopted.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]