What is "taraskievica"

Taraškievica or Belarusian Classical Orthography is a variant of the orthography of the Belarusian language, based on the literary norm of the modern Belarusian language, the first normalization of which was made by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič in 1918, and was in official use in Belarus until the Belarusian orthography reform of 1933. Since 1933, Taraškievica has been used informally in Belarus and by Belarusian diaspora abroad. In a more common sense Taraškievica is sometimes considered to be a linguistic norm.

The name Taraškievica is intended to emphasize the similarity of the orthography to the work of Branisłaŭ Taraškievič and may have appeared before World War II.

Around 1994, an alias, Classical Orthography, was introduced by Vincuk Viačorka, the promoter and author of the modern codification of the Taraškievica.

In 2005, with the publishing of the Belarusian Classical Orthography, the modern normalization of Taraškievica was made. In 2007 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned Taraškievica its own language subtag "tarask" (full language tag of Belarusian in the Classical orthography is "be-tarask").