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ORIGINS The plan of the alphabet is derived from the Early Cyrillic Alphabet , itself a derivative of the Glagolitic Alphabet , a Ninth Century Uncial Cursive usually credited to two brothers from Thessaloniki , Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius . The glyphs in the Cyrillic alphabet are, however, mainly Byzantine Greek Letters . Some of them, especially those representing sounds that did not exist in medieval Greek, retain their Glagolitic forms. Whereas it is widely accepted that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius, the origins of the early Cyrillic alphabet are still a source of much controversy. Though it is usually attributed to Saint Clement Of Ohrid , a Bulgarian disciple of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the alphabet is more likely to have developed at the Preslav Literary School in northeastern Bulgaria , where the oldest Cyrillic inscriptions have been found, dating back to the 940 s. The theory is supported by the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet almost completely replaced the Glagolitic in northeastern Bulgaria as early as the end of the Tenth Century , whereas the Ohrid Literary School —where Saint Clement worked—continued to use the Glagolitic until the Twelfth Century . Among the reasons for the replacement of the Glagolithic with the Cyrillic alphabet is the greater simplicity and ease of use of the latter and its closeness with the Greek alphabet, which had been well known in the First Bulgarian Empire . There are also other theories regarding the origins of the Cyrillic alphabet, namely that the alphabet was created by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius themselves, or that it preceded the Glagolitic alphabet, representing a "transitional" stage between Greek and Glagolitic cursive, but these have been widely disproved. Although Cyril is almost certainly not the author of the Cyrillic alphabet, his contributions to the Glagolitic and hence to the Cyrillic alphabet are still recognised, as the latter is named after him. The alphabet was disseminated along with the Old Church Slavonic Liturgical Language , and the alphabet used for modern Church Slavonic Language in Eastern Orthodox rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the following ten centuries, the Cyrillic alphabet adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reforms and political decrees. Today, Dozens Of Languages in Eastern Europe and Asia are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. LETTER-FORMS AND TYPOGRAPHY The development of Cyrillic Typography passed directly from the Medieval stage to the late Baroque , without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe . Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (still found on many Icon inscriptions even today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often shared between adjacent letters. Peter The Great , tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early eighteenth century; over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the alphabet. Thus, unlike modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles (such as the placement of Serif s, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules), modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. Cyrillic Uppercase and Lowercase letter-forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially Small Capitals (with the exception of a few forms such as "а" and "е" which adopted Western lowercase shapes), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small caps glyphs. In the absence of '' (''kursivnyi''). Cursive or hand-written shapes of many letters, especially the lowercase letters, are entirely different from the upright shapes. As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically-sloped oblique font (''naklonnyi''). In Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian, some cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These cursive letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. ''External link:'' Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE . The following table shows the differences between the upright and cursive Cyrillic letters as used in Russian. Cursive glyphs that are bound to confuse beginners (either because of an entirely different look, or because of being a False Friend with an entirely different Latin character) are highlighted. ''Reference:'' Bringhurst, Robert (2002). '' The Elements Of Typographic Style '' (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4. ROMANIZATION There are various systems for Romanization of Cyrillic text, including Transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin characters, and Transcription to convey Pronunciation . Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:
Serbian is written in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin Alphabet For Belarusian , and some non-Slavic languages, such as Azerbaijani , Uzbek or Moldavian have confronted permanent Romanization after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In Serbian there is a one-to-one correspondence between Vuk Karadžić 's Serbian Cyrillic and Ljudevit Gaj 's Croatian Gajica (derived from the Czech Alphabet . See Serbo-Croatian Language#Writing Systems .) The Belarusian Latin alphabet is traditionally based on Polish and is called Łacinka , but, because of the political realities in the former USSR, Belarusian is usually Romanized by analogy to Russian. See also: External links:
AS USED IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES Sounds are indicated using IPA . These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have Phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian ''его'' (meaning ''him/his''), which is pronounced instead of . Note that spellings of names may vary, especially Y/J/I, but also GH/G/H and ZH/J. Slavic languages Old Church Slavonic ''Main article:'' Early Cyrillic Alphabet Old Church Slavonic is the first literary and Liturgical Slavic Language developed from the native language of the 9th Century Missionaries , Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is not the same as the modern Church Slavonic Language , which is still used in some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic church services. As the Cyrillic alphabet spread throughout the Slavic world, it was adopted for writing local languages, such as Old Ruthenian . Its adaptation to the characteristics of local languages led to the development of its many modern variants, below. Yeri (ЪІ) was originally a Ligature of Yer and I. Ya (Я) was written in an archaic form called A Iotified . Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic and varied a great deal in Manuscript s, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate Glyph s to reproduce the alphabet. Some characters are missing from the current Unicode standard altogether, including Cyrillic dotless I, iotified Yat , abbreviated Yer ("Yerok"), and many Ligatures . See also: Glagolitic Alphabet . Russian ''Main article:'' Russian Alphabet Notes: # In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called Yer . Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent Vowel , still preserved in Bulgarian . See the notes for Bulgarian. # When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with ) follows a consonant, the consonant will become palatalised (the sound will mix with the consonant), and the vowel’s initial sound will not be heard independently. The Hard Sign will indicate that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign will indicate that the consonant should be palatised, but the vowel’s sound will not mix with the Palatalization of the consonant. The Soft Sign will also indicate that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatised. Examples: та (); тя (); тья (); тъя (); т (); ть (). Historical letters: before ", replaced by Фф), (Ять " Yat ", replaced by Ее), and (ижица " Izhitsa ", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by Reforms Of Russian Orthography . Ukrainian ''Main article:'' Ukrainian Alphabet . Ukrainian differs from Russian in the following ways:
Belarusian Belarusian is also written in a Belarusian Latin Alphabet ('' Łacinka ''). Historically, Belarusian Tatars have written the language in the Arabic Alphabet (''Arabica''), and Belarusian Jew s in the Hebrew Alphabet . NB: Before 1933, Ґ () was also present. Some linguists call for restoring the letter. Belarusian differs from Russian in the following ways:
Bulgarian See Bulgarian Language#Alphabet . Bulgarian differs from Russian in the following ways:
Modern Serbian since the 19th century Serbian differs from Russian in the following ways:
Macedonian See Also: Macedonian alphabet Macedonian differs from ''Serbian'' in the following ways:
Non-Slavic languages These alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian Languages . The first few of them were generated by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural ( Mari , Udmurt , Mordva , Chuvash , Kerashen Tatars ) in 1870s . Later such alphabets were created for some of the Siberia n and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s , some of those alphabets were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet . All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script ( Mongolian Script , etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in late 1930s, all of the Roman-based alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union (with the exception of the Baltic alphabets) were switched over to Cyrillic as well. The Abkhazian alphabet was switched to Georgian Script , but after the death of Stalin Abkhaz also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz Language , which had used Greek Script before. In Uzbekistan , Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan , the use of Cyrillic to represent local languages has often been a politically controversial issue after the collapse of the Soviet Union , as it evokes the era of Soviet rule (see Russification ). Some of Russia's languages have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law (see Tatar Alphabet ). A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman-based or returning to a former script. Unlike the Roman alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages by using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari , Udmurt and Chuvash , umlauts and breves also were used. Abkhaz Abkhaz is a Caucasian Language , spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia , Georgia . See Abkhaz Alphabet . Turkic languages =Azerbaijani The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Azerbaijani Language from 1939 to 1991. See Azerbaijani Alphabet for discussion. =Bashkir The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Bashkir Language after the winter of 1938 . =Chuvash The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash Language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938. =Kazakh Kazakh is also written with the Latin alphabet (in Turkey , but not in Kazakhstan ), and modified Arabic Alphabet (in China , Iran and Afghanistan ).
The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans. =Kyrgyz Kyrgyz has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.
=Uzbek The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Uzbek Language from 1940 to 1992. Table comparing Cyrillic with Roman alphabets, with IPA equivalents Moldovan The Moldovan Language used the Cyrillic alphabet between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria . Mongolian The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia ), Buryat (around Lake Baikal ) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea ). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol Vertical Alphabet , which is being slowly reintroduced in Mongolia. =Khalkha
The Cyrillic letters Кк, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans. =Buryat The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.
=Kalmyk The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = xaʎmag).
CYRILLIC IN UNICODE Main article: Cyrillic Characters In Unicode . In Unicode , the Cyrillic block extends from U+0400 to U+052F. The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script. Unicode does not include accented Cyrillic letters, but they can be Combined by adding U+0301 ("combining acute accent") after the accented vowel (e.g., ы́ э́ ю́ я́). Some languages (e.g., modern Church Slavonic ) still are not fully supported. SEE ALSO
''Character Encodings''
EXTERNAL LINKS Belarusian Alphabet
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