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Alphabet Letter

Pe Ⱊ

Glagolitic Letters
Origin Devised about 863 CE for the Moravian mission of Constantine the Philosopher, later Saint Cyril, and his brother Methodius

Pe is the twenty-sixth letter in the Glagolitic order as the Unicode Standard arranges it. It is a rare sign and its value is not securely established: it is generally read as a form of p, and it appears in abecedaria, the alphabet lists copied out as exercises or as inscriptions, more often than in running text. Letters of this kind are the reason the total number of letters in Glagolitic is given differently by different authorities, since a sign attested only in an abecedary may be counted or set aside. This atlas records the letter and leaves its numeral value unassigned rather than choosing between the values different sources place in this slot.

Facts
Open Questions
Associated Sound
A consonant of uncertain value, most often read as p or as a variant of it 2Tradition: The Glagolitic alphabet of Old Church Slavonic
The sound this sign wrote is not established, and nobody holds a position on it. The reference literature reads it as a form of p without saying what distinguished it from the ordinary letter for that sound; the sign appears chiefly in abecedaria, the alphabet lists copied out as exercises, rather than in running text; and different sources place different numeral values in this part of the order. The atlas records no numeral value here rather than choosing among them. This is an unfilled gap and not an argument between camps. The open question on this page says what would close it.
Origin of the Name
Not established for this letter's own name
Pe's own description discusses only its uncertain value and its appearance chiefly in abecedaria rather than running text, and gives no origin for its name. The already-live OpenQuestion on the opaque tail of Glagolitic letter names covers exactly this class of letter.
Sense of the Name
Not established for this letter's own name
Pe's own description gives no sense for its name at all. Covered by the already-live OpenQuestion on the opaque tail of Glagolitic letter names.
Identity
Alphabet
Glagolitic 1
Script Type
An alphabet: each letter writes a single sound, consonant or vowel, with no inherent vowel and no vowel diacritics 2
Position
The twenty-seventh letter of the Glagolitic alphabet in the traditional order 2Tradition: The Glagolitic alphabet of Old Church Slavonic
Alphabet (class)
Glagolitic 1
Script type (class)
Alphabet 2
Origins
Origin Period
Devised about 863 CE for the Moravian mission of Constantine the Philosopher, later Saint Cyril, and his brother Methodius 3
Place of Origin
Byzantium and Great Moravia; the letters were made in Constantinople or Thessalonica and carried north for the mission 3
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Attested chiefly in abecedaria rather than in running text, which is why the total count of Glagolitic letters is given differently by different authorities 2Tradition: The Glagolitic alphabet of Old Church Slavonic
Learn More
Pe: The Glagolitic Letter

Pe is one of the least secure letters in the Glagolitic repertoire. The Unicode Standard encodes it and gives it that name, placing it in the order after the second sign for the vowel o, and the reference literature reads it as a form of p without settling what distinguished it from the ordinary letter for that sound.

Signs of this kind reach us mainly through abecedaria, the lists of the alphabet copied out as exercises, as inscriptions or at the head of a book, rather than through running text. That is a weak kind of attestation. An abecedary tells you that a scribe knew of a sign and thought it belonged in the list; it does not tell you what the sign was for, how it was pronounced, or whether the scribe had ever used it to write a word.

The letter carries no numeral value in the atlas, and that is a deliberate record of uncertainty rather than a statement that it had none. Different sources place different values in this part of the order, and choosing among them would mean asserting one reading of a disputed slot.

The atlas therefore lists the letter, states plainly that its value is not established, and carries an open question saying what would settle it. That is a better outcome than either omitting the sign or filling the gap with a plausible guess.

Pe and the Problem of Counting an Alphabet

How many letters does Glagolitic have? The honest answer is that it depends what you are counting, and pe is one of the letters that makes the question unavoidable.

The oldest Slavonic discussion of the alphabet, the treatise on the letters by the monk known as Chernorizets Hrabar, gives a figure of thirty eight. The surviving manuscripts do not agree with that figure or with each other. The atlas lists forty four, following the arrangement of the Unicode Standard, which encodes the signs attested across the whole tradition, including regional forms, positional variants and letters like this one that are known chiefly from lists.

Each of those counts is answering a different question. Hrabar is reporting what he understood the alphabet to be. A manuscript shows what one scribe in one place actually used. Unicode is providing addresses for everything anyone might need to typeset. None of them is a reconstruction of what Constantine made, because the evidence for that does not survive.

A reader coming to the script for the first time is better served by knowing that than by being given a number. The count varies because the object varies, and a sign attested only in an alphabet list sits exactly on the boundary between a letter of the alphabet and a mark that a scribe once drew.

Connections

Contained In

Glagolitic, Scripts & Magical Alphabets

Originates in Language

Old Church Slavonic, Languages

Glagolitic was devised in the 860s so that Greek scripture and liturgy could be read in Slavonic, and Pe belongs to the alphabet of Old Church Slavonic, the language of that translation and of the earliest Slavonic books.

Source Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and MethodiusFrancis Dvornik

Related To

Cyril of Thessalonica, Historical Figures
Source Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and MethodiusFrancis Dvornik
Sources
1. Glagolitic Script (Wikipedia)
Glagolitic letter table
2. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996on the Slavic alphabets, their letters and their numeral systemsView the Source
3. Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius
Francis Dvornik, Rutgers University Press, 1970on the Moravian mission and the making of the Slavic lettersView the Source
The Unicode Standard
The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Consortiumon the encoded characters, their names and their block assignmentView the Source
Open Questions (2 open questions)
Did the opaque Glagolitic letter names, fritu, heru, tsi and sha among them, ever carry a sense in Slavonic?

The first twenty letter names of Glagolitic are ordinary Slavonic words and read together as connected sentences, from azu buky vede, I know letters, through ritsi slovo tvrido, say the word firmly. From fritu onwards the names stop meaning anything recoverable, and the reference literature records them as of uncertain or unknown origin without offering a reading. This is an absence rather than a disagreement: no camps hold rival etymologies for these names, and no investigation has settled whether they are corrupted Slavonic words, reflexes of Greek letter names, or labels that never carried a sense. The same gap stands over the corresponding Cyrillic names, which are the same names.

What would resolve this A systematic etymological study of the full set of Slavic letter names, working from the earliest abecedaria and from the acrostic alphabet poems of the Old Church Slavonic tradition, which arrange the names in verse and may preserve senses the plain lists do not. A demonstration that the names never carried a sense would close the question as firmly as a set of etymologies would.
Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philologyPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), The World's Writing Systems
What sound did the Glagolitic letter pe write, and is it a letter of the alphabet or a variant of another sign?

The letter is encoded in the Unicode Standard and appears in the abecedaria, the alphabet lists copied out as exercises or inscriptions, more often than in running text. The reference literature reads it as a form of p without establishing what distinguished it from the ordinary letter for that sound, and different sources place different numeral values in this part of the order. Nobody holds a position on the question, which is why the atlas records the letter with no numeral value rather than choosing among the values on offer. It is an unfilled gap and not an argument between camps.

What would resolve this An attestation of the sign in running text, in a context where the word it writes can be identified, would settle the sound. A survey of every surviving Glagolitic abecedary, recording where this sign falls in the order and whether it is ever given a numeral value in the list, would settle whether it was counted as a letter of the alphabet or carried as a variant.
Slavic palaeography; codicology; Old Church Slavonic philologyThe Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard
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