Cyber-Latinica: A Comparative Analysis of Latinization in Internet Slavic
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Abstract
This article proposes an account of the emergence of grassroots, non-standard Latin-based orthographic conventions in Internet Slavic – here termed Cyber-Latinica – in four standard languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Serbian. The comparative analysis shows that online writers in these languages employ a range of strategies specific to computer-mediated writing, resulting in a clear distinction between latinization practices in the ex-Yugoslav standard languages, Serbian and Macedonian, on the one hand, and Russian and Bulgarian, on the other. The analysis further shows that the emergence of novel orthographic conventions is not contingent on the grammatical structures and genetic proximity of the languages, but that the patterns are governed by the interplay of several factors underlying orthographic encodings: orthographic economy, shared alphabet inventory, keyboard and alphabet mappings, and societal bilingualism, including diasporic, linguistic minority, and second language writing practices.
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