Title: The case of the Cyrillic letter PALOCHKA Source: Michael Everson Status: Expert Contribution Date: 2000-07-09

( ≈ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I) commonly used in Russia and available in many character sets, such as typewriters. As a letterform it has not undergone a great deal of evolution, but this document presents such shapes as it is known to have. Strictly speaking the páločka is caseless; formerly it had been given the Unicode property of “other letter ” but this was changed in 1999 to the Unicode property of “capital letter”. This document investigates the appropriateness of that decision. The name is the Russian word пáлочка ‘drumstick, baton, wand’; in typography пáлочка means ‘stem, main stroke’, as the vertical line in the letter T. 1 абаза хьацIа ‘Abazin (person) ’ (Latinski bold) (�угов 1967:24) 2 �I цI цIы (Latinski plain and Latinski italic) (�угов 1967:24) 3 �I�� � ��А���� � даредакторпI ‘Vladimir Tugov editor ’ (Latinski plain) (�угов 1967:title) 4 А. Гь. ХIАМЗАТОВ ‘A. H. Ħamzatov ’ (Bastion bold) (XIамзатов 1993:title) 5 МАХIАЧХЪАЛА ‘Makhachkala ’ (Bastion plain) (XIамзатов 1993:title) 6 Авар калам: шагьаразул школазе цIалул тIехь I класс. (Bastion plain) (XIамзатов 1993:title) 7 ХI хIа хIи хIу хIо хIе (Bastion bold) (XIамзатов 1993:55) Note the use of an identical glyph for the páločka and the Roman numeral in line 6 here (the book is for children in the first year of school). So far we have a páločka which looks like a capital letter I and which, notably (line 2), retains its serifs when italicized. 8 ���� � �IА � ‘Lezgian ’ (Latinski bold) (�амалданов & �ажабов 1992:title) This book, for children of the second year of school, contains also models for penmanship. Unfortunately, I only have a few sample pages of the book, and do not have its samples of how the páločka is handwritten. However, Haarmann 1990:500 gives examples of the handwritten letter in transliterations for an Arabic orthography for Adyge: the orthography, devised by Umar Bersej in 1853, shows ARABIC LETTER BE WITH OGONEK, and two transcriptions of that: бп [пI]. An anomolous presentation is however found in a recent work: 9 ТIАХЬАЗУЛ ТУКАДА ‘In the bookshop ’ (Bastion bold) (Атаев 1992:63) 10 МагIарул мацIалда тIахьал ругищ нужер? ‘Do you have any books in Avar? (Bastion plain