Keine Zeit

Keine Zeit (“Now is not the time” in German and “Не пора” in Ukrainian) was created by a whim of me, Antigonius, for reasons truly most petty. In the sphere of amateur Ukrainian linguistics there is a small, but vocal group of people that grants Cyrillic script, the chosen writing system of Ukrainian people a near mythical importance. And though such groups exist in every culture and for every language, this obsession was later on used by many people to justify the most outlandish takes and, what I found most egregious, sell people stuff and even receive government grants based on what is effectively a pseudo-science. The biggest offender to me at that time was the work of a calligrapher named Vasylj Jakovyč Čebanyk, who created a script called “Rutenia” which was (and still is) advertised as a direct continuation of Ukrainian Cyrillics, deliberately destroyed by Russia and Russian imperialism.

Now, as an amateur in Slavic studies, Ukraine and in general the entire region of East-Central Europe has a very special place in my heart, being the place with cultures and peoples seldom explored in fiction outside of the looming shadow and lenses of Russia, Russian culture, and Russian biases. Add to this my dislike for pseudo-science and that resulted in me one day just snapping and deciding “Fine, you wanna see how Ukrainian Cyrillic would look without Russian influence, I’ll show you how it would look like, and you won’t understand nothing of it”.

And that’s how Rutenivka or Ruthenian script was created: a script that has a direct genetic connection to the Old Cyrillic and Greek respectively. After that I though that it would be fun to additionally create a Russian civil script, but never deviating from the philosophy Peter the Great had for this reformed script. And that’s how Petrin script was created. And then these little projects piled up and it grew into an explanation of the people who use these cultures, then into countries and finally into Keine Zeit – the big sum of all the ideas and small changes.

Though this project is currently hosted and being written only by me, I do welcome...most of the proposals and suggestions. The more, the merrier, as they say!

If you are interested in participation in the project, please read this first.