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The Glagolitic alphabet or '''Glagolitsa''' is the oldest known Slavic Alphabet . It was created by brothers St Cyril (827-869 AD) and St Methodius (826-885 AD) in 855 or around 862 – 863 in order to translate the Bible and other texts into the Slavic Languages . The name of the alphabet comes from the Old Slavic ''glagolŭ'', which means ''sound'' (and is also the origin of the name for the letter "G"). Since ''glagolati'' also means ''to speak'', the Glagolitsa is poetically referred to as "the marks that speak". There are multiple popular versions concerning the authorship of Glagolitsa and the etymology of its name. There are alternative names as well. See later sections for more details. The name "Glagolitic" is in Czech ''hlaholice'', in Slovak ''hlaholika'', in Polish ''głagolica'', in Russian , Macedonian and Bulgarian ''глаго́лица'' (transliterated ''glagolitsa''), in Croatian ''glagoljica'', in Ukrainian ''глаголиця'' (transliterated ''hlaholytsia''), in Belarusian ''глаголіца'' (transliterated ''hlaholitsa''), in Slovenian ''glagolica'', in Serbian ''глагољица/glagoljica'' etc. ORIGINS OF THE GLAGOLITIC CHARACTERS The number of letters in the original Glagolitic alphabet is not known. The 41 letters we know today contain ligatures which were probably added later. In later versions, the number of letters drops dramatically, to less than 30 in modern Croatian and Czech recensions of Church Slavic language. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters (see Great Moravian below) are probably derived from graphemes of the Medieval cursive Greek Small Alphabet , but have been given an ornamental design. It is presumed that the letters ''sha'', ''shta'' and ''tsi'' were derived from the Hebrew Alphabet (the letters ש Shin and צ Tsadi ). Another opinion is that sha is derived from two Greek Sigma s placed side by side.1 The Phoneme s that these letters represent did not exist in Greek but do exist in Hebrew and are quite common in all Slavic languages. The remaining original characters are of unknown origin. Some of them are presumed to stem from the Hebrew and Samaritan scripts, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson . The Croatian Glagolitic alphabet has a long and interesting history of more than a thousand years. The Croats using the Glagolitic alphabet were the only nation in Europe who was given a special permission by Pope Innocent IV (in 1248) to use their own language and this script in liturgy. More precisely, this permission was formally given to the bishop Philip of Senj. Glagolitic letters were also used as numbers, similarly to Cyrillic Numerals . Unlike Cyrillic numerals, which inherited their numeric value from the corresponding Greek letter (see Greek Numerals ), Glagolitic letters were assigned values based on their native alphabetic order. HISTORY ]] '' found in the Zograf Monastery in 1843 ]] between 863 (when Cyril and Methodius arrived there) and 885 for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) founded by Cyril, where followers of Cyril and Methodius were educated (also by Methodius himself). In 886 , an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius (mostly students of the original academy). They were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves by Franks. Three of them however reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I Of Bulgaria to teach and instruct the future Clergy of the state into the Slavic Language s. After the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 865 , religious ceremonies and Divine Liturgy were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire , using the Byzantine Rite . Fearing growing Byzantine influence and weakening of the state, Boris viewed the introduction of the Slavic alphabet and language in church use as a way to preserve the independence of Slavic Bulgaria from Greek Constantinople . As a result of Boris's measures, two academies in Ohrid and Preslav were founded. From there, the students traveled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to in the Mass continued, until replaced by the modern vernacular languages. Some of the students of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was used in the 10th and 11th century, along with other scripts. Glagolitic was also used in Russia, although rarely. In Croatia, from the 12th century onwards, Glagolitic inscriptions appeared mostly in Littoral areas: Istra , Primorje, Kvarner and Kvarner islands, notably Krk , Cres and Lošinj ; in Dalmatia, on the islands of Zadar, but there were also findings in inner Lika and Krbava , till Kupa river, even to Međimurje and areas in Slovenia. Till 1992, it was believed that Glagolitsa in Croatia was present only in those areas, and then, in 1992, the discovery of Glagolitic inscriptions in churches along the Orljava river, totally changed the picture (churches in Brodski Drenovac , Lovčić and some others), showing that use of Glagolitic alphabet was spread from Slavonia also. Glagoljaška baština u Slavonskom Kobašu , Slavonskobrodska televizija, News from February 25, 2007. At the end of the 9th Century , one of these students of Methodius who was settled in Preslav ( Bulgaria ) created the Cyrillic Alphabet , which almost entirely replaced the Glagolitic during the Middle Ages . The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, with (at least 10) letters peculiar to Slavic languages being derived from the Glagolitic. Nowadays, Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavic (Croatian and Czech Recension s) and, sometimes, vernacular in the service-books of the Catholic Eparchy Of Križevci in Croatia. VERSIONS OF AUTHORSHIP AND NAME The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted. A less common belief, contradicting allochtonic Slovene origin, was that the Glagolitic was created or used by 4th century St. Jerome , hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian. attributed the Glagolitic letters to Saint Jerome (''Sanctus Hieronymus'').]] It is also Acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters, on the same model as 'alpha' + 'beta'. (Actually, the word means simply "alphabet", see its a bit later form '' Azbuka '' for the Cyrillic alphabet). The Slavs of Great Moravia (present-day Slovakia and Moravia ), Hungary , Slovenia and Slavonia were called ''Slověne'' at that time, which gives rise to the name '''Slovenish''' for the alphabet. Some other, more rare, names for this alphabet are '''Bukvitsa''' (from common Slavic word 'bukva' meaning 'letter', and a suffix '-itsa') and '''Illyrian'''. Hieronymian version In the Middle Ages, Glagolitsa was also known as "St. Jerome's script" due to popular mediaeval legend (created by Croatian scribes in 13th century) ascribing its invention to St Jerome (342-429).
The epoque of traditional attribution of the script to Jerome ended probably in 1812. P. Solarić's "Букварь славенскiй трiазбучный" (''Three-alphabet Slavic Primer''), Venice, 1812 mentions the version as a fact of scinnce (see Jagić 1911, p. 52; Vajs 1932, p. 23). In modern times, only certain marginal authors share this point of view, usually "re-discovering" one of already known mediaeval sources. For example, K. Šegvić in ''Nastavni vjesnik'', XXXIX, sv. 9-10, 1931, refers to a work of Rabanus Maurus . (see Vajs 1932, p. 23). Naïve etymology versions of the word "glagolitsa"
Pre-Glagolic Slavic writing systems A hypothetical pre-Glagolic writing system is typically referenced as '' Cherty I Rezy '' (strokes and incisions) Chernorizets Hrabar ''An Account of Letters''; Preslav 895 ; Oldest manuscript 1348 - but no material evidence of the existing of any pre-Glagolitic Slavic writing system was found, only a few short and foggy references in old chronicles and lives of the saints. All artefacts presented as witnesses of pre-glagolitic Slavic inscriptions were later attributed as texts in known scripts and in known non-Slavic languages, or just as falsifications. L. Niederle, "Slovanské starožitnosti" (Slavic antiquities), III 2, 735; citation can be found in Vajs 1932, p. 4. The well-known Chernorizets Hrabar's ''strokes and incisions'' are usually considered as reference to a kind of property mark or some fortune-telling signs. The 'Russian letters' from one version of St. Cyril's life are explainable as misspelled 'Syrian letters' (in Slavic, the roots are very similar: 'рус-' (rus-) vs. 'сур-' (sur-, syr-)) etc. CHARACTERISTICS The alphabet has two variants: round and square. The round variant is dominated by circles and smooth curves, and the square variant features a lot of right angles, and sometimes trapezoids. See an image of both variants (incomplete) . Or for more details The square variant lends itself to a more abundant use of Ligature s than in the Latin or the Cyrillic script. The following table lists each letter in order, giving a picture (round variant), its name, its approximate sound in IPA , the presumed origin (if applicable), and the corresponding modern Cyrillic letter. The names ''Yer'' to ''Yus'' are sometimes written ''Jer'' to ''Jus''. There are several letters that have no modern counterpart, such as the Nasal Vowel s Yus . Note that Yery is simply a Digraph of Yer and I. In older texts, Uk and three out of four Yuses also can be written as digraphs, in two separate parts. The order of Izhe and I varies from source to source, as does the order of the various forms of Yus. Correspondence between Glagolitic Izhe and I - and Cyrillic И and I - is not known; textbooks and dictionaries often mention one of two possible versions and keep silence about the existence of the opposite one. UNICODE The Glagolitic alphabet was added to Unicode in version 4.1. The codepoint range is U+2C00 – U+2C5E. See Mapping Of Unicode Characters for context. IN POPULAR CULTURE In Western Europe, Glagolitic is one of the least known Eastern European alphabets. It also has a particularly exotic appearance to Western eyes, as (unlike Cyrillic or Greek) few of the letters bear any resemblance to Roman letters. It may be for this reason that Glagolitic was selected as the script used by an Extraterrestrial species in the 3-D IMAX movie, '' Alien Adventure ''. Not only did the aliens write in Glagolitic, but their leader was called "Cyrillus" (However, the alien language was unrelated to Slavic, as in fact they spoke the Walloon Language , a dialect from the production company's homeland, Belgium ). MISCELLANEA
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