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Early Cyrillic Alphabet

 
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The old Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
 was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire
First Bulgarian Empire

The First Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state founded in AD 632 in the lands near the Danube Delta and disintegrated in AD 1018 after its annexation to the Byzantine Empire....
 in the tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Solun dialect of the Thessaloniki region by the 9th century Byzantine Greeks missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and other Ancient Greek language ecclesiastica...
 liturgical language.

Slavic scripts were developed in what is now the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia

The Republic of Macedonia , , often referred to simply as Macedonia, is a landlocked country on the Balkans in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south and Albania to the west....
 (Glagolitic
Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic peoples alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagol? "utterance" ....
) and later in Bulgaria
Bulgaria

The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....
 (Cyrillic). The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as ustav, was based on Greek uncial
Uncial

Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Byzantine Empire scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic....
 script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek.






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The old Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
 was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire
First Bulgarian Empire

The First Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state founded in AD 632 in the lands near the Danube Delta and disintegrated in AD 1018 after its annexation to the Byzantine Empire....
 in the tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Solun dialect of the Thessaloniki region by the 9th century Byzantine Greeks missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and other Ancient Greek language ecclesiastica...
 liturgical language.

History

The Slavic scripts were developed in what is now the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia

The Republic of Macedonia , , often referred to simply as Macedonia, is a landlocked country on the Balkans in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south and Albania to the west....
 (Glagolitic
Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic peoples alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagol? "utterance" ....
) and later in Bulgaria
Bulgaria

The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....
 (Cyrillic). The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as ustav, was based on Greek uncial
Uncial

Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Byzantine Empire scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic....
 script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. There was no distinction of capital and lowercase letters, though manuscript letters were rendered larger for emphasis, or in various decorative initial and nameplate forms.

Tradition holds that the two Slavic scripts were invented by two brothers, the monks Saint Methodius and Saint Cyril, who brought Christianity to Bulgaria in the 860s. However, Glagolitic appears to be older, and Cyrillic later. It appears that Glagolitic may have predated Christianity, and was only formalized by St Cyril and expanded by him to cover non-Greek sounds, possibly under commission of Boris I
Boris I of Bulgaria

Boris I or sometimes Boris-Mihail , also known as Bogoris was the ruler of Bulgaria 852–889. At the time of his baptism in 864, Boris was named Michael after his godfather, Emperor Michael III....
 when Christianity was made the official state religion in 864. Cyrillic, on the other hand, may have been a creation of Cyril's students, perhaps at the Preslav Literary School
Preslav Literary School

The Preslav Literary School was the first literary school in the medieval Bulgaria. It was established by Boris I of Bulgaria in 885 or 886 in Bulgaria's capital, Pliska....
, who derived it from a more 'dignified' Greek in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books, though retaining Cyril's non-Greek additions from Glagolitic.

Since its creation, the Cyrillic alphabet has adapted to changes in spoken language and developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages. It has been the subject of academic reforms and political decrees. Variations of the Cyrillic alphabet are used to write languages throughout Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
 and Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
.

The form of the Russian alphabet underwent a change when Tsar Peter I of Russia
Peter I of Russia

Peter I the Great or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov ruled Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his weak and sickly half-brother, Ivan V of Russia....
 introduced the Civil Script
Reforms of Russian orthography

The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, approximately during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs....
 (Russian graždanskij šrift, or graždanka, in contrast to the prevailing Church Typeface, cerkovnoslavjanskij šrift) in 1708. Some letters and breathing marks which were only used for historical reasons were dropped. Medieval letterforms used in typesetting were harmonized with Latin typesetting practices, exchanging medieval forms for Baroque ones, and skipping the western European Renaissance developments. The reform subsequently influenced Cyrillic orthographies for most other languages. Today, the early orthography and typesetting standards only remain in use in Church Slavonic.

A comprehensive repertoire of early Cyrillic characters is included in the Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 5.1 standard, published on April 4, 2008. These characters and their distinctive letterforms are represented in specialized computer fonts for Slavistics
Slavistics

Slavic studies or Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture....
.

The alphabet



In addition to the basic letters, there were a number of scribal variations, combining ligatures, and regionalisms used, all of which varied over time.

Numerals, diacritics and punctuation


Each letter had a numeric value also, inherited from the corresponding Greek
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 letter. A titlo
Titlo

Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol first used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic language languages....
 over a sequence of letters indicated their use as a number. See Cyrillic numerals
Cyrillic numerals

Cyrillic numerals was a numbering system derived from the Cyrillic alphabet, used by South Slavs and East Slavs Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 1700s when Peter I of Russia replaced it with the Arabic numeral system....
, Titlo
Titlo

Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol first used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic language languages....
.

Several diacritic
Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s, adopted from Polytonic Greek orthography, were also used (these may not appear correctly in all web browsers; they are supposed to be directly above the letter, not off to its upper right):

  trema
Umlaut (diacritic)

The word umlaut is the name of a type of sound shift in spoken language and of the diacritic mark used to represent it Orthography. The diacritic mark comprises a pair of dots or lines placed over the letter that represents the affected Vowel....
, diaeresis (U+0308)
  varia (grave accent
Grave accent

The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Catalan language, French language, Greek language until 1982 , Italian language, Norwegian language, Occitan language, Portuguese language, Scottish Gaelic language, Vietnamese language, Welsh language, Dutch language, and other languages....
), indicating stress on the last syllable (U+0340)
  oksia (acute accent
Acute accent

The acute accent is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet and Greek alphabet writing systems....
), indicating a stressed syllable (Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 U+0341)
  titlo
Titlo

Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol first used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic language languages....
, indicating abbreviation
Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase....
s, or letters used as numeral
Numeral

The term numeral can refer to* Numeral system, a system of mathematical notation for writing numbers* Number names, the words used in a language or writing system to represent numbers...
s (U+0483)
  kamora
Kamora

Kamora is a brand of List of liqueurs#Coffee liqueurs produced in Mexico. It is slightly less sweet, and also less expensive than its main competitor Kahl?a....
, indicating palatalization
Palatalization

Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
 (U+0484), similar to an inverted breve
Breve

A breve is a diacritical mark ?, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It looks similar to caron , but the caron has a sharp tip, whilst the breve is rounded....
  dasy pneuma, rough breathing mark (U+0485)
  zvatel'tse, or psilon pneuma, soft breathing mark (U+0486)
  Combined zvatel'tse and varia is called apostrof.
  Combined zvatel'tse and oksia is called iso.


Punctuation marks:

  ano teleia (U+0387), a middle dot used as a word separator
  comma
Comma

A comma is a type of punctuation mark .Comma may also refer to* Comma , a type of interval in music theory* Comma , a species of butterfly...
 (U+002C)
  full stop
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
 (U+002E)
  Armenian
Armenian alphabet

The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. Up to the 19th century, Classical Armenian had been the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian....
 full stop
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
 (U+0589), resembling a colon
Colon (punctuation)

The colon is a punctuation mark, consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line....
  Georgian
Georgian alphabet

The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus ....
 paragraph separator (U+10FB)
  triangular colon (U+2056, added in Unicode 4.1)
  diamond colon (U+2058, added in Unicode 4.1)
  quintuple colon (U+2059, added in Unicode 4.1)
  Greek
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 question mark
Question mark

The question mark , also known as an interrogation point, question point, query, or eroteme, is a punctuation that replaces the Full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence....
 (U+037E), similar to a semicolon
Semicolon

A semicolon is a conventional punctuation mark with several uses, mainly for pauses in sentences. The Italy printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements....
  exclamation mark
Exclamation mark

An exclamation mark or exclamation point is a punctuation mark: ! It is usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and often marks the end of a sentence....
 (U+0021)


See also

  • Bosnian Cyrillic
    Bosnian Cyrillic

    Bosnian Cyrillic or Croatian Cyrillic is an extinct Cyrillic script, that originated in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was widely used in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia ....
  • Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
    Romanian Cyrillic alphabet

    The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write Romanian language before 1860?1862, when it was officially replaced by Romanian alphabet, although Cyrillic remained in occasional use until circa 1920....
  • Reforms of Russian orthography
    Reforms of Russian orthography

    The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, approximately during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs....