(Martin Hattala and His Contribution to the Discussion on the Historical Relationship Between Glagolitic and Cyrillic)

Abstract: The reform of standard Slovak at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century is one of the cultural milestones in Slovak history, which is inextricably linked with the name Martin Hattala. However, this important linguist, in addition to the issue of literary language, also dealt with issues of Slavic studies and especially the historical origins of Glagolitic and Cyrillic. The aim of our paper is to point out Hattala‘s scientific contribution to the discussion of the historical relationship between these ancient alphabetical systems. Moreover, our research is important in terms of following Hattala‘s attitudes at the time of new discoveries of ancient texts, which led to the gradual formation of the view that the original Slavic script constructed by Constantine the Philosopher was Glagolitic. Hattala belonged to that part of the Slavic scientific community which recognized Cyrillic as the original Slavic script, and from this scientific position he also approached individual controversial issues and newly discovered textual monuments. He expressed his attitude on the current views of well-known Russian linguists in an article focused on the analysis of the text of the monk Chrabr about letters existing in five historical transcripts. These researchers found incorrect alphabetic and numerical data in two of these transcripts testifying to the Glagolitic basis of these textual monuments. M. Hattala expressed a negative attitude to that evidence, which he justified on the one hand by the incompetence and thus the unreliability of the scriptors transcribing these monuments, and on the other by the inconsistency of current researchers in examining the disputed parts of the text. Although M. Hattala in his polemics did not give up the traditional opinion on the origin of the Slavic script, with some of his research findings he contributed to a more thorough scientific discourse on one of the basic questions of Slavic studies.

Authors: Kralčák, Ľubomír

DOI: 10.17846/CL.2021.14.2.139-147

Publication order reference: prof. PaedDr. Ľubomír Kralčák, PhD.; Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Faculty of Arts, Department of Slovak Language and Literature, Štefánikova 67, 949 74 Nitra, Slovakia; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2550-4366, WOS Researcher ID: AAP-6381-2020, SCOPUS Author ID: 55332638700

Source: Konštatínove listy, 2021, vol.: 14, issue: 2, pages: 139-147 (PDF file)

Keywords: GLAGOLITIC, CYRILLIC, ALPHABET, MANUSCRIPT, ALPHABETICAL SYSTEMS

Language: SLOVAK