Punktike ja palatalisatsioon. Lähivaade XIX sajandi esimese poole kirjaviisiuuendusele

Palatalization is not indicated in standard Estonian orthography. In the 1820s, Otto Wilhelm Masing proposed marking palatalization with a small dot placed beneath the vowel preceding the palatalized consonant. This article examines the extent to which Masing’s proposal was adopted and explores the reasons why the palatalization mark ultimately failed to become part of standard written Estonian. Masing also introduced the letter õ to distinguish between the sounds ö /ø/ and õ /ɤ/ in writing. That innovation was successful, even though – much like palatalization – õ varied regionally in pronunciation and the new character made printing more costly. Only a few printers and authors experimented with the palatalization mark, and all but two soon abandoned it. The only ones who remained committed to the idea were Heinrich Rosenplänter and Masing himself. However, they were unable to provide clear rules for when the palatalization mark should be used and were inconsistent in applying it. As a result, neither any printed texts nor the spoken language of the time offered a reliable model or standard for marking palatalization. Although the palatalization mark never caught on in general writing, it was adopted to some extent by authors of primers, who used it in the earliest stages of reading instruction.