Alphabet Letters
Zhivete Ж
Cyrillic Letters
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Origin Developed in the late ninth or early tenth century, after the death of Constantine-Cyril, in the First Bulgarian Empire
Zhivete is the seventh letter of Cyrillic and writes zh, the voiced palato-alveolar fricative. Its name is a Slavonic imperative meaning live. It has no numeral value, because Greek had no letter for this sound and so no number to lend, and the sign itself is one of those Cyrillic took from Glagolitic rather than from the Greek uncial. That combination, a Glagolitic shape and no Greek numeral, is the signature of the letters Cyrillic needed for Slavonic and could not find in Greek, and the same pattern holds for tsy, cherv, sha and shta. Its shape has no Greek model at all, and the resemblance sometimes noticed between it and the Hebrew shin is one of the standing and unresolved arguments about where the non-Greek Slavic letters came from.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodDeveloped in the late ninth or early tenth century, after the death of Constantine-Cyril, in the First Bulgarian Empire 2 Place of OriginThe First Bulgarian Empire, in the school of the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, with Preslav and Ohrid the two centres most often named 2 Origin of the NameA Slavonic word used as the letter name, shared by both Slavic alphabets 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Sense of the Namezhivete is a Slavonic imperative meaning live 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet: one letter to a sound, built on Greek uncial letterforms with additional signs, several of them taken from Glagolitic, for the Slavonic sounds Greek could not write 1 PositionThe seventh letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet in the traditional order 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Attributions
Associated SoundThe consonant zh, a voiced palato-alveolar fricative 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceOne of the letters Cyrillic took from Glagolitic rather than from Greek, and correspondingly one of those with no numeral value 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Learn More
Zhivete: A Letter for a Sound Greek Did Not Have
Zhivete stands seventh and writes zh, the voiced palato-alveolar fricative. Its name is a Slavonic imperative plural meaning live. It carries no numeral value.
The absence of a number is the diagnostic. Greek had no letter for this sound, so there was no Greek numeral attached to any sign that could be borrowed for it, and the letter takes its place in the alphabetical order without taking a place in the arithmetical one. The same combination, a shape with no Greek model and a letter with no Greek number, holds for tsy, cherv, sha and shta, and those five letters together are the clearest evidence of where the borrowed Greek alphabet ended and the work done for Slavonic began.
The sound itself is thoroughly Slavic. It arose from earlier palatalisations, it is common, and no Slavic language has lost it, which is why the letter has survived in every Cyrillic alphabet in use today with its shape essentially unchanged. It is symmetrical about a vertical axis, which is unusual in this script and has attracted comment for as long as anyone has been comparing letterforms.
In the church books it needs no special rules: unlike the pairs of letters that write one sound, zhivete has no rival and no orthographic distribution to learn. It is one of the small number of Cyrillic letters that has only ever meant one thing.
The Argument About the Letters Greek Could Not Supply
Roughly a dozen Early Cyrillic letters have no Greek model, and where their shapes came from is one of the standing questions of Slavic palaeography. Three positions are held.
The majority reading derives them from Glagolitic. The two alphabets share an inventory of sounds, an order and a set of names, and Glagolitic is the older; on this account whoever assembled Cyrillic kept the Greek uncial wherever it would serve and took the remaining signs from the alphabet already fitted to the language, simplifying them to sit on a Greek page.
A second reading looks to Semitic scripts, comparing zhivete, sha and tsy with Hebrew or Samaritan letters. The comparison has been made since the nineteenth century and rests partly on shape and partly on the argument that a Thessalonican scholar of the period could plausibly have known such letters.
A third position holds that neither derivation can be demonstrated. The shapes at issue are simple, and simple shapes resemble each other by accident; a resemblance is weak evidence in either direction.
What would settle it is a dated exemplar from the period when the choices were made, and none survives. The earliest manuscripts of both alphabets are later than the events they bear on. Until something older is found, or a decisive argument is made from the internal structure of the two letter sets, this stays a question with camps rather than an answer.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Why this is disputed. Zhivete writes zh, a sound Greek had no letter for, and the Cyrillic sign is usually read as adapted from the Glagolitic zhivete. Some Slavists propose the ultimate model behind the Glagolitic letter is a Samaritan or Hebrew form reworked by Glagolitic's inventor, a claim not universally accepted, so the Cyrillic to Glagolitic step is on firmer ground than any claim about what stands behind the Glagolitic letter itself.
Originates in Language
Zhivete is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet, which was assembled to write Old Church Slavonic and which takes its letter names from that language.
Related To
Cyrillic Zhivete writes the same sound and stands in the same place in the Slavonic alphabet. Glagolitic numbers it 7 by counting its own letters in order; Cyrillic leaves it unnumbered, Greek having no letter in that slot. Which of the two Slavonic scripts came first, and how much either owes the other, is argued rather than settled.
Zhivete answers to Glagolitic Zhivete: the same name and the same sound zh. Glagolitic numbers it 7 by counting its own letters in order; Cyrillic leaves it unnumbered, Greek having no letter in that slot.
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