, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 =
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
, fam2 =
Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 =
Phoenician
, fam4 =
Greek script
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
augmented by
Glagolitic
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
, sisters =
, children =
Old Permic script
The Old Permic script ( kv, Важ Перым гижӧм, ), sometimes known by its initial 2 characters as Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the Cyrillic script once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the Permic bran ...
, unicode =
, iso15924 = Cyrl
, iso15924 note =
Cyrs
(
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
variant)
, sample = Romanian Traditional Cyrillic - Lord's Prayer text.png
, caption = 1780s Romanian text (Lord's Prayer), written with the Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
used for various languages across
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...
. It is the designated national script in various
Slavic,
Turkic,
Mongolic,
Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
,
Caucasian
Caucasian may refer to:
Anthropology
*Anything from the Caucasus region
**
**
** ''Caucasian Exarchate'' (1917–1920), an ecclesiastical exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Caucasus region
*
*
*
Languages
* Northwest Caucasian l ...
and
Iranic
The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities.
The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate ...
-speaking countries in
Southeastern Europe
Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical subregion of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkans. Sovereign states and territories that are included in the region are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia (al ...
,
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
, the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
,
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
,
North Asia
North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographical terms and is coextensive with the Asian part of Russia, and consists of three Russian regions east of the Ural Mountains: ...
, and
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
.
, around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
accounting for about half of them. With the
accession of Bulgaria to the European Union
On 1 January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became member states of the European Union (EU) in the fifth wave of EU enlargement.
Negotiations
Romania was the first country of post-communist Europe to have official relations with the European Comm ...
on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, following the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
alphabets.
The
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
was developed during the 9th century AD at the
Preslav Literary School
The Preslav Literary School ( bg, Преславска книжовна школа), also known as the Pliska Literary School or Pliska-Preslav Literary school was the first literary school in the medieval Bulgarian Empire. It was established by ...
in the
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Europ ...
during the reign of
tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...
Simeon I the Great, probably by disciples of the two
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
brothers
Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius
Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are credited wit ...
, who had previously created the
Glagolitic script
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
. The script is named in honor of
Saint Cyril.
Etymology
![Cyrillic monument](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Cyrillic_monument.jpg)
Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of
Cyril and Methodius
Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are credited wit ...
, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves, its name denotes homage rather than authorship. The name "Cyrillic" often confuses people who are not familiar with the script's history, because it does not identify a country of origin (in contrast to the "Greek alphabet"). Among the general public, it is often called "the Russian alphabet," because Russian is the most popular and influential alphabet based on the script. Some Bulgarian intellectuals, notably
Stefan Tsanev
Stefan Nedelchev Tsanev ( bg, Стефан Неделчев Цанев; born 7 August 1936) is a contemporary Bulgarian writer, known for his essays, Play (theatre), plays, poems, and historical novels.
His books include ''Ubiytsite sa mezhdu nas ...
, have expressed concern over this, and have suggested that the Cyrillic script be called the "Bulgarian alphabet" instead, for the sake of historical accuracy.
In Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Czech and Slovak, the Cyrillic alphabet is also known as ''azbuka'', derived from the old names of the first two letters of most Cyrillic alphabets (just as the term ''alphabet'' came from the first two Greek letters ''alpha'' and ''beta''). In Czech and Slovak, which have never used Cyrillic, "azbuka" refers to Cyrillic and contrasts with "abeceda", which refers to the local Latin script and is composed of the names of the first letters (A, B, C, and D). In Russian,
syllabaries
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
, especially the Japanese
kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
, are commonly referred to as 'syllabic azbukas' rather than 'syllabic scripts'.
History
![Krepchanski_manastir](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Krepchanski_manastir.jpg)
The Cyrillic script was created in the
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Europ ...
.
[Paul Cubberley (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets". In Daniels and Bright, eds. ''The World's Writing Systems.'' Oxford University Press. .] Modern scholars believe that the
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
was created at the
Preslav Literary School
The Preslav Literary School ( bg, Преславска книжовна школа), also known as the Pliska Literary School or Pliska-Preslav Literary school was the first literary school in the medieval Bulgarian Empire. It was established by ...
, the most important early literary and cultural center of the
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Europ ...
and of all
Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
:
Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic script
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
s in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet.
A number of prominent Bulgarian writers and scholars worked at the school, including
Naum of Preslav
Saint Naum (Bulgarian and Macedonian: Свети Наум, ''Sveti Naum''), also known as Naum of Ohrid or Naum of Preslav (c. 830 – December 23, 910) was a medieval Bulgarian writer, enlightener, one of the Seven Apostles of the First Bul ...
until 893;
Constantine of Preslav
Constantine of Preslav () was a medieval Bulgarian scholar, writer and translator, one of the most important men of letters working at the Preslav Literary School at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. Biographical evidence ...
;
Joan Ekzarh (also transcr. John the Exarch); and
Chernorizets Hrabar
Chernorizets Hrabar ( chu, Чрьнори́зьць Хра́бръ, ''Črĭnorizĭcĭ Hrabrŭ'', bg, Черноризец Храбър)Sometimes modernized as ''Chernorizetz Hrabar'', ''Chernorizets Hrabr'' or ''Crnorizec Hrabar'' was a Bulgarian ...
, among others. The school was also a center of translation, mostly of
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
authors. The Cyrillic script is derived from the
Greek uncial script letters, augmented by
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s and consonants from the older
Glagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
for sounds not found in Greek. Glagolitic and Cyrillic were formalized by the Byzantine
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are credited wit ...
and their disciples, such as Saints
Naum,
Clement
Clement or Clément may refer to:
People
* Clement (name), a given name and surname
* Saint Clement (disambiguation)#People
Places
* Clément, French Guiana, a town
* Clement, Missouri, U.S.
* Clement Township, Michigan, U.S.
Other uses
* ...
,
Angelar, and
Sava
The Sava (; , ; sr-cyr, Сава, hu, Száva) is a river in Central and Southeast Europe, a right-bank and the longest tributary of the Danube. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia and along its border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally th ...
. They spread and taught Christianity in the whole of Bulgaria.
[''Columbia Encyclopedia'', Sixth Edition. 2001–05, s.v. "Cyril and Methodius, Saints"; ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Encyclopædia Britannica Incorporated, Warren E. Preece – 1972, p. 846, s.v., "Cyril and Methodius, Saints" and "Eastern Orthodoxy, Missions ancient and modern"; ''Encyclopedia of World Cultures'', David H. Levinson, 1991, p. 239, s.v., "Social Science"; Eric M. Meyers, ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East'', p. 151, 1997; Lunt, ''Slavic Review'', June, 1964, p. 216; Roman Jakobson, ''Crucial problems of Cyrillo-Methodian Studies''; Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky, ''A Handbook of Slavic Studies'', p. 98; V. Bogdanovich, ''History of the ancient Serbian literature'', Belgrade, 1980, p. 119][The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05, O.Ed. Saints Cyril and Methodius "Cyril and Methodius, Saints) 869 and 884, respectively, "Greek missionaries, brothers, called Apostles to the Slavs and fathers of Slavonic literature."][Encyclopædia Britannica, ''Major alphabets of the world, Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets'', 2008, O.Ed. "The two early Slavic alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic, were invented by St. Cyril, or Constantine (c. 827–869), and St. Methodii (c. 825–884). These men from Thessaloniki who became apostles to the southern Slavs, whom they converted to Christianity."] Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students in the
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Europ ...
under Tsar
Simeon the Great
Tsar Simeon (also Symeon) I the Great ( cu, цѣсар҄ь Сѷмеѡ́нъ А҃ Вели́къ, cěsarĭ Sỳmeonŭ prĭvŭ Velikŭ bg, цар Симеон I Велики, Simeon I Veliki el, Συμεών Αʹ ὁ Μέγας, Sumeṓn prôto ...
that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.
[
Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic ]Vlachs
"Vlach" ( or ), also "Wallachian" (and many other variants), is a historical term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate mainly Romanians but also Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians and other Easter ...
. The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav
The modern Veliki Preslav or Great Preslav ( bg, Велики Преслав, ), former Preslav ( bg, link=no, Преслав; until 1993), is a city and the seat of government of the Veliki Preslav Municipality (Great Preslav Municipality, new B ...
, in the medieval city itself and at nearby Patleina Monastery, both in present-day Shumen Province
Shumen Province ( bg, Област Шумен, transliterated ''Oblast Shumen'', former name Shumen okrug) is a province in northeastern Bulgaria named after its main city Shumen. It is divided into 10 municipalities with a total population, as ...
, as well as in the Ravna Monastery Ravna may refer:
;Bosnia and Herzegovina:
* Ravna, Jablanica - a city in Jablanica municipality, Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Ravna (Maglaj) - a city in Maglaj municipality, Zenica-Doboj Canton, Federation of B ...
and in the Varna Monastery
Varna Monastery is a large preserved early medieval monastery complex, opened near Varna, Bulgaria, with the status of a cultural monument of national importance for Bulgaria since 2015.Проф. д.и.н. Казимир Попконстанти ...
. The new script became the basis of alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
s used in various languages in Orthodox Church
Orthodox Church may refer to:
* Eastern Orthodox Church
* Oriental Orthodox Churches
* Orthodox Presbyterian Church
* Orthodox Presbyterian Church of New Zealand
* State church of the Roman Empire
* True Orthodox church
See also
* Orthodox (di ...
-dominated Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic languages (such as Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
, until the 1860s). For centuries, Cyrillic was also used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs (see Bosnian Cyrillic
Bosnian Cyrillic, widely known as Bosančica is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval Bosnia. The term was coined at the end of the 19th century by Ćiro Truhelka. It was widely used in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina ...
).
Cyrillic and Glagolitic
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
were used for the Church Slavonic language
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...
, especially the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
variant. Hence expressions such as "И is the tenth Cyrillic letter" typically refer to the order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script. The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century.
The literature produced in Old Church Slavonic soon spread north from Bulgaria and became the lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.["On the relationship of old Church Slavonic to the written language of early Rus'" Horace G. Lunt; Russian Linguistics, Volume 11, Numbers 2–3 / January, 1987][Benjamin W. Fortson. ''Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction'', p. 374]
Bosnian Cyrillic, widely known as ''Bosančica'' is an extinct variant of the Cyrillic alphabet
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
that originated in medieval Bosnia
This is the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Middle Ages, between the ancient and Roman period and the Ottoman period.
Early Middle Ages
The western Balkans had been reconquered from "barbarians" by Byzantine Emperor Justinian (r. 52 ...
.
Paleographers consider the earliest features of Bosnian Cyrillic script had likely begun to appear between the 10th or 11th century, with the Humac tablet
The Humac tablet ( sh-Cyrl-Latn, Хумачка плоча, Хумска плоча, separator=" / ", Humačka ploča, Humska ploča) is an Old Slavic epigraph in Bosnian Cyrillic script in the form of a stone tablet, believed to be variously da ...
(a tablet written in Bosnian Cyrillic) to be the first such document using this type of script and is believed to date from this period. Bosnian Cyrillic was used continuously until the 18th century, with sporadic usage even taking place in the 20th century.
With the orthographic reform of Saint Evtimiy of Tarnovo
Saint Euthymius of Tarnovo (also ''Evtimiy''; , ''Sveti Evtimiy Tarnovski'') was Patriarch of Bulgaria between 1375 and 1393. Regarded as one of the most important figures of medieval Bulgaria, Euthymius was the last head of the Bulgarian Orth ...
and other prominent representatives of the Tarnovo Literary School
The Tarnovo Literary School ( bg, Търновска книжовна школа) of the late 14th and 15th century was a major medieval Bulgarian cultural academy with important contribution to the Medieval Bulgarian literature established in the ...
of the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Gregory Tsamblak
Gregory Tsamblak or Grigorij Camblak ( bg, Григорий Цамблак, sr-Cyr, Григорије Цамблак; c. 1365–1420) was a Bulgarian writer and cleric. He was the pretended Metropolitan of Lithuania between 1413 and 1420. A Bulga ...
and Constantine of Kostenets Constantine of Kostenets ( bg, Константин Костенечки, Konstantin Kostenechki; born ca. 1380, died after 1431), also known as Constantine the Philosopher ( sr, Константин Филозоф), was a medieval Bulgarian scholar ...
, the school influenced Russian, Serbian, Wallachian and Moldavian medieval culture. This is known in Russia as the second South-Slavic influence.
In the early 18th century, the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great
Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
, who had recently returned from his Grand Embassy
The Grand Embassy (russian: Вели́кое посо́льство, translit=Velíkoye posól'stvo) was a Russian diplomatic mission to Western Europe from 9 March 1697 to 25 August 1698 led by Peter the Great.
Description
In 1697 and 1698, Pe ...
in Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
. The new letterforms, called the Civil script
The Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries.
Early changes
Old ...
, became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were abolished and several new letters were introduced designed by Peter himself. Letters became distinguished between upper and lower case. West European typography culture was also adopted. The pre-reform letterforms, called 'Полуустав', were notably retained in Church Slavonic and are sometimes used in Russian even today, especially if one wants to give a text a 'Slavic' or 'archaic' feel.
The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...
in Eastern Orthodox
Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism.
Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or "canonical") ...
and Eastern Catholic
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous ('' sui iuris'') particular churches of t ...
rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the course of the following millennium, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reform and political decrees. A notable example of such linguistic reform can be attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, who updated the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet ( sr, / , ) is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, updated in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write ...
by removing certain graphemes no longer represented in the vernacular and introducing graphemes specific to Serbian (i.e. Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to the reform. Today, many languages in the Balkans
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
, Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago an ...
are written in Cyrillic alphabets.
Letters
Cyrillic script spread throughout the East Slavic and some South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic
Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian; be, старажытнаруская мова; russian: древнерусский язык; uk, давньоруська мова) was a language used during the 9th–15th centuries by East ...
. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, discussed below.
Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.
Yeri () was originally a ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
of Yer and I ( + = ). Iotation
In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alpha ...
was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І: (not an ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from ), , (ligature of and ), , . Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example = = , as were typographical variants like = . There were also commonly used ligatures like = .
The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from the letters' Greek ancestors.
The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from those of modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s, and changed over time. Few fonts include glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s sufficient to reproduce the alphabet. In accordance with Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
policy, the standard does not include letterform variations or ligatures found in manuscript sources unless they can be shown to conform to the Unicode definition of a character.
The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...
language. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI
Segoe ( ) is a typeface, or family of fonts, that is best known for its use by Microsoft. The company uses Segoe in its online and printed marketing materials, including recent logos for a number of products. Additionally, the Segoe UI font su ...
user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8.
Currency signs
Some currency sign
A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by the monetary authority, like the national central bank for the currency concerned.
In formatting, the symbol can use various format ...
s have derived from Cyrillic letters:
* The Ukrainian hryvnia sign
The hryvnia sign (₴) is a currency symbol, used for the Ukrainian hryvnia currency since 2004.
Description
The hryvnia sign is a cursive minuscule Ukrainian Cyrillic letter He (''г''), or a mirrored letter S, with a double horizontal stroke ...
(₴) is from the cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
minuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
Ukrainian Cyrillic letter He (''г'').
* The Russian ruble sign
The ruble sign, , is the currency sign used for the Russian ruble, the official currency of Russia. Its form is a Cyrillic letter Er (Cyrillic), Р with an additional horizontal stroke. The design was approved on 11 December 2013 after a public ...
(₽) from the majuscule Р.
* The Kyrgyzstani som
The som (Kyrgyz: сом; ISO code: KGS; sign: с) is the currency of Kyrgyzstan.
Etymology
The official name of the Soviet currency in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek was ''soum'', and this name appeared written on the back of banknotes ...
sign (с) from the majuscule С (es)
* The Kazakhstani tenge
The tenge ( or ; kk, теңге, teñge, ; sign: ₸ ; code: KZT) is the currency of Kazakhstan. It is divided into 100 tiyn ( kk, тиын, tıyın also transliterated as ''tiyin'').
History
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in December ...
sign (₸) from Т
* The Mongolian tögrög
The tögrög or tugrik (Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, Mongolian Cyrillic: , Mongolian script: , transcription: ; currency sign, sign: ₮; ISO 4217, code: MNT) is the official currency of Mongolia. It was historically subdivided into 100 ( / ). C ...
sign (₮) from Т
Letterforms and typography
The development of Cyrillic typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
passed directly from the medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
stage to the late Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
, without a Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
phase as in Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (categorized as vyaz' and still found on many icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...
inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters.
Peter the Great
Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
, Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms ( ru) in the early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...
s, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), 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.
Lowercase forms
Cyrillic uppercase
Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
and lowercase
Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are grapheme, characters typeset with glyphs that resemble letter case, uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding letter case, lowercase letters ...
(with exceptions: Cyrillic , , , , , and adopted Western lowercase shapes, lowercase is typically designed under the influence of Latin , lowercase , and are traditional handwritten forms, although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs.
Cyrillic fonts, as well as Latin ones, have roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
and italic types (practically all popular modern fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are shared by both). However, the native font terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense. Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns:
* Roman type is called ' ("upright type")compare with ' ("regular type") in German
* Italic type is called ' ("cursive") or ' ("cursive type")from the German word ', meaning italic typefaces and not cursive writing
* Cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
handwriting is ' ("handwritten type")in German: ' or ', both meaning literally 'running type'
* A (mechanically) sloped oblique type of sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
faces is ' ("sloped" or "slanted type").
* A boldfaced type is called ' ("semi-bold type"), because there existed fully boldfaced shapes that have been out of use since the beginning of the 20th century.
Italic and cursive forms
Similarly to Latin fonts, italic and cursive types of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for handwritten or stylish types) are very different from their upright roman types. In certain cases, the correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic fonts: for example, italic Cyrillic is the lowercase counterpart of not of .
Note: in some fonts or styles, , i.e. the lowercase italic Cyrillic , may look like Latin , and , i.e. lowercase italic Cyrillic , may look like small-capital italic .
In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different to more closely resemble the handwritten letters. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized in small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
form.
Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Serbian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
approximations are used in the ''faux
Faux may refer to: People
*Faux (surname)
Places Places in Belgium
* Faux, a village in the Belgian commune of Court-Saint-Étienne
Places in France
* Faux, Ardennes, French commune of the Ardennes department
* Faux, Dordogne, French commune of t ...
'' row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems.
In Bulgarian typography, many lowercase letterforms may more closely resemble the cursive forms on the one hand and Latin glyphs on the other hand, e.g. by having an ascender or descender or by using rounded arcs instead of sharp corners. Sometimes, uppercase letters may have a different shape as well, e.g. more triangular, Д and Л, like Greek delta Δ and lambda Λ.
Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Bulgarian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
approximations are used in the ''faux
Faux may refer to: People
*Faux (surname)
Places Places in Belgium
* Faux, a village in the Belgian commune of Court-Saint-Étienne
Places in France
* Faux, Ardennes, French commune of the Ardennes department
* Faux, Dordogne, French commune of t ...
'' row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems; in some cases, such as ж with ''k''-like ascender, no such approximation exists.
Accessing variant forms
Computer fonts typically default to the Central/Eastern, Russian letterforms, and require the use of OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...
Layout (OTL) features to display the Western, Bulgarian or Southern, Serbian/Macedonian forms. Depending on the choices of the font manufacturer, they may either be automatically activated by the ''local variant'' locl
feature for text tagged with an appropriate language code
A language code is a code that assigns letters or numbers as identifiers or classifiers for languages. These codes may be used to organize library collections or presentations of data, to choose the correct localizations and translations in comput ...
, or the author needs to opt-in by activating a ''stylistic set'' ss##
or ''character variant'' cv##
feature. These solutions only enjoy partial support and may render with default glyphs in certain software configurations.
Cyrillic alphabets
Among others, Cyrillic is the standard script for writing the following languages:
*Slavic languages: Belarusian, Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
, Macedonian, Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Rusyn
Rusyn may refer to:
* Rusyns, Rusyn people, an East Slavic people
** Pannonian Rusyns, Pannonian Rusyn people, a branch of Rusyn people
** Lemkos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
** Boykos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
* Rusyn l ...
, Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
( Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin), Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
*Non-Slavic languages of Russia: Abaza, Adyghe, Avar, Azerbaijani (in Dagestan
Dagestan ( ; rus, Дагеста́н, , dəɡʲɪˈstan, links=yes), officially the Republic of Dagestan (russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respúblika Dagestán, links=no), is a republic of Russia situated in the North C ...
), Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Erzya, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karachay-Balkar
Karachay-Balkar (, ), or Mountain Turkic (, ), is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia, European Russia, as well as by an immigrant population in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey. I ...
, Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to:
* Kildin Island
* Kildin class destroyer
* Kildin Sami
* Ostrov (air base)
Ostrov (Russian: ''Веретье'' ("Veret"); also Ostrov-5, Gorokhovka) is a Russian Air Force air base , Komi, Mari, Moksha
''Moksha'' (; sa, मोक्ष, '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'' and ''mukti'', is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriology, ...
, Nogai, Ossetian (in North Ossetia–Alania
The Republic of North Ossetia–Alania; os, Республикӕ Цӕгат Ирыстон — Алани, ''Respublikæ Cægat Iryston — Alani'', ) is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe. Its population acco ...
), Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
, Sakha/Yakut, Tatar
The Tatars ()[Tatar]
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different , Tuvan, Udmurt, Yuit
Central Siberian Yupik, (also known as Siberian Yupik, Bering Strait Yupik, Yuit, Yoit, "St. Lawrence Island Yupik", and in Russia "Chaplinski Yupik" or Yuk) is an endangered Yupik language spoken by the indigenous Siberian Yupik people along the ...
(Yupik)
*Non-Slavic languages in other countries: Abkhaz, Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
(now mostly in church texts), Dungan Dungan may refer to:
* Donegan, an Irish surname, sometimes spelled Dungan
* Dungan people, a group of Muslim people of Hui origin
** Dungan language
** Dungan, sometimes used to refer to Hui Chinese people generally
* Dungan Mountains in Sibi Dist ...
, Kazakh (to be replaced by Latin script by 2025), Kyrgyz Kyrgyz, Kirghiz or Kyrgyzstani may refer to:
* Someone or something related to Kyrgyzstan
*Kyrgyz people
*Kyrgyz national games
*Kyrgyz language
*Kyrgyz culture
*Kyrgyz cuisine
*Yenisei Kirghiz
*The Fuyü Gïrgïs language in Northeastern China
...
, Mongolian (to also be written with traditional Mongolian script
The classical or traditional Mongolian script, also known as the , was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. It is traditionally writte ...
by 2025), Tajik
Tajik, Tadjik, Tadzhik or Tajikistani may refer to:
* Someone or something related to Tajikistan
* Tajiks, an ethnic group in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan
* Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan
* Tajik (surname)
* Tajik cu ...
, Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ), (now only in church texts), Turkmen
Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to:
Peoples Historical ethnonym
* Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages
Ethnic groups
* Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
(officially replaced by Latin script), Uzbek (also officially replaced by Latin script, but still in wide use), Yupik Yupik may refer to:
* Yupik peoples, a group of indigenous peoples of Alaska and the Russian Far East
* Yupik languages, a group of Eskimo-Aleut languages
Yupꞌik (with the apostrophe) may refer to:
* Yup'ik people
The Yup'ik or Yupiaq (sg ...
(in Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
)
The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska, Slavic Europe
Slavic, Slav or Slavonic may refer to:
Peoples
* Slavic peoples, an ethno-linguistic group living in Europe and Asia
** East Slavic peoples, eastern group of Slavic peoples
** South Slavic peoples, southern group of Slavic peoples
** West Slavi ...
(except for Western Slavic
The West Slavic languages are a subdivision of the Slavic languages, Slavic language group. They include Polish language, Polish, Czech language, Czech, Slovak language, Slovak, Kashubian language, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian language, Upper Sorbia ...
and some Southern Slavic
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, ...
), the Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
, the languages of Idel-Ural
Idel-Ural ( tt-Cyrl, Идел-Урал, translit=Idel-Üral, russian: Идель-Урал), literally Volga-Ural, is a historical region in Eastern Europe, in what is today Russia. The name literally means ''Volga-Urals'' in the Tatar language. T ...
, Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
, and the Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admini ...
.
The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic was Abur
The Old Permic script ( kv, Важ Перым гижӧм, ), sometimes known by its initial 2 characters as Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the Cyrillic script once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the Permic bran ...
, used for the Komi language
The Komi language ( kv, коми кыв, ''komi kyv''), also known as Zyryan, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan (Komi: коми-зырян кыв, komi-zyrjan kyv),[Molodtsov alphabet
The Komi language, a Uralic language spoken in the north-eastern part of European Russia, has been written in several different alphabets. Currently, Komi writing uses letters from the Cyrillic script. There have been five distinct stages in the hi ...](_bla ...<br></span></div>. Other Cyrillic alphabets include the <div class=)
for the Komi language and various alphabets for Caucasian languages
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows th ...
.
Usage of Cyrillic versus other scripts
Latin script
A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Serbian and Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
(in the Republic of Moldova
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
until 1989, in the Danubian Principalities
The Danubian Principalities ( ro, Principatele Dunărene, sr, Дунавске кнежевине, translit=Dunavske kneževine) was a conventional name given to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which emerged in the early 14th ce ...
throughout the 19th century). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except the breakaway region of Transnistria
Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as a part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester riv ...
, where Moldovan Cyrillic
The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language spoken in the Soviet Union ( Moldovan) and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989 (and still in use today in the breakaway Moldovan regio ...
is official), Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the sout ...
, and Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
. Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
still uses both systems, and Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
has officially begun a transition from Cyrillic to Latin (scheduled to be complete by 2025). The Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n government has mandated that Cyrillic must be used for all public communications in all federal subjects of Russia
The federal subjects of Russia, also referred to as the subjects of the Russian Federation (russian: субъекты Российской Федерации, subyekty Rossiyskoy Federatsii) or simply as the subjects of the federation (russian ...
, to promote closer ties across the federation. This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used by many Chechens.
Standard Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to the Serbian constitution; however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity.
The Zhuang alphabet
Standard Zhuang (autonym: , , (pre-1982: ; Sawndip: ); ) is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangq ...
, used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from the alphabet in 1982 and replaced with Latin letters that closely resembled the letters they replaced.
Romanization
There are various systems for Romanization
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
of Cyrillic text, including transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
letters, and transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
to convey pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
.
Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:
*Scientific transliteration
Scientific transliteration, variously called ''academic'', ''linguistic'', ''international'', or ''scholarly transliteration'', is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic script to the Latin script (romanization). Thi ...
, used in linguistics, is based on the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet.
*The Working Group on Romanization Systems of the United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
recommends different systems for specific languages. These are the most commonly used around the world.
*ISO 9
ISO 9 is an international standard establishing a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and non-Slavic languages.
Published on February 23, 1995 by the International ...
:1995, from the International Organization for Standardization.
*American Library Association and Library of Congress Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets (ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
), used in North American libraries.
*BGN/PCGN Romanization
BGN/PCGN romanization are the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN).
The system ...
(1947), United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use).
* GOST 16876, a now defunct Soviet transliteration standard. Replaced by GOST 7.79, which is ISO 9
ISO 9 is an international standard establishing a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and non-Slavic languages.
Published on February 23, 1995 by the International ...
equivalent.
*Various informal romanizations of Cyrillic
Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems. , which adapt the Cyrillic script to Latin and sometimes Greek glyphs for compatibility with small character sets.
See also Romanization of Belarusian
Romanization or Latinization of Belarusian is any system for transliterating written Belarusian language, Belarusian from Cyrillic script, Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
Standard systems for romanizing Belarusian
Standard systems for romanizing ...
, Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
, Kyrgyz Kyrgyz, Kirghiz or Kyrgyzstani may refer to:
* Someone or something related to Kyrgyzstan
*Kyrgyz people
*Kyrgyz national games
*Kyrgyz language
*Kyrgyz culture
*Kyrgyz cuisine
*Yenisei Kirghiz
*The Fuyü Gïrgïs language in Northeastern China
...
, Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Macedonian and Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
.
Cyrillization
Representing other writing systems with Cyrillic letters is called Cyrillization
Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabets, Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been ca ...
.
Summary table
Computer encoding
Unicode
As of Unicode version 15.0, Cyrillic letters, including national and historical alphabets, are encoded across several blocks:
*Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
U+0400–U+04FF
*Cyrillic Supplement
Cyrillic Supplement is a Unicode block containing Cyrillic letters for writing several minority languages, including Abkhaz, Kurdish, Komi, Mordvin, Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the ...
U+0500–U+052F
*Cyrillic Extended-A
Cyrillic Extended-A is a Unicode block containing combining Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 ...
U+2DE0–U+2DFF
*Cyrillic Extended-B
Cyrillic Extended-B is a Unicode block
A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation pu ...
U+A640–U+A69F
*Cyrillic Extended-C
Cyrillic Extended-C is a Unicode block containing Cyrillic characters for facsimile reprinting Old Believer
Old Believers or Old Ritualists, ''starovery'' or ''staroobryadtsy'' are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and r ...
U+1C80–U+1C8F
*Cyrillic Extended-D
Cyrillic Extended-D is a Unicode block containing superscript and subscript Cyrillic characters used in Cyrillic-based phonetic transcription. The block contains the first Cyrillic characters defined outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane
In t ...
U+1E030–U+1E08F
*Phonetic Extensions
Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the Oxford English dictionary and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notations. ...
U+1D2B, U+1D78
*Combining Half Marks
Combining Half Marks is a Unicode block containing diacritical combining characters for spanning multiple characters.
Block
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the C ...
U+FE2E–U+FE2F
The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are essentially the characters from ISO 8859-5
ISO/IEC 8859-5:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 5: Latin/Cyrillic alphabet'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 198 ...
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 as a general rule does not include accented Cyrillic letters. A few exceptions include:
*combinations that are considered as separate letters of respective alphabets, like Й, Ў, Ё, Ї, Ѓ, Ќ (as well as many letters of non-Slavic alphabets);
*two most frequent combinations orthographically required to distinguish homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...
s in Bulgarian and Macedonian: Ѐ, Ѝ;
*a few Old and New Church Slavonic combinations: Ѷ, Ѿ, Ѽ.
To indicate stressed or long vowels, combining diacritical mark
In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks (including combining accents).
Unicode also ...
s can be used after the respective letter (for example, : е́ у́ э́ etc.).
Some languages, including Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...
, are still not fully supported.
Unicode 5.1, released on 4 April 2008, introduces major changes to the Cyrillic blocks. Revisions to the existing Cyrillic blocks, and the addition of Cyrillic Extended A (2DE0 ... 2DFF) and Cyrillic Extended B (A640 ... A69F), significantly improve support for the early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
, Abkhaz, Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
, Chuvash, Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
, and Moksha
''Moksha'' (; sa, मोक्ष, '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'' and ''mukti'', is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriology, ...
.
Other
Punctuation for Cyrillic text is similar to that used in European Latin-alphabet languages.
Other character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
systems for Cyrillic:
*CP866
Code page 866 (CCSID 866) (CP 866, "DOS Cyrillic Russian") is a code page used under DOS and OS/2 in Russia to write Cyrillic script. It is based on the "alternative code page" (russian: Альтернативная кодировка) develope ...
8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
for use in MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
also known as GOST-alternative. Cyrillic characters go in their native order, with a "window" for pseudographic characters.
*ISO/IEC 8859-5
ISO/IEC 8859-5:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 5: Latin/Cyrillic alphabet'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 198 ...
8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
*KOI8-R
KOI8-R (RFC 1489) is an 8-bit character encoding, derived from the KOI-8 encoding by the programmer Andrei Chernov in 1993 and designed to cover Russian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. KOI8-R was based on Russian Morse code, which was created fr ...
8-bit native Russian character encoding. Invented in the USSR for use on Soviet clones of American IBM and DEC computers. The Cyrillic characters go in the order of their Latin counterparts, which allowed the text to remain readable after transmission via a 7-bit line that removed the most significant bit
In computing, bit numbering is the convention used to identify the bit positions in a binary number.
Bit significance and indexing
In computing, the least significant bit (LSB) is the bit position in a binary integer representing the binary 1 ...
from each bytethe result became a very rough, but readable, Latin transliteration of Cyrillic. Standard encoding of early 1990s for Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
systems and the first Russian Internet encoding.
*KOI8-U
KOI8-U (RFC 2319) is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian language, Russian and Bulgarian language, Bulgarian, but replaces eight b ...
KOI8-R with addition of Ukrainian letters.
* MIK8-bit native Bulgarian character encoding for use in Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...
.
*Windows-1251
Windows-1251 is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic script such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic, Macedonian and other languages.
On the web, it is the second most-used si ...
8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. The simplest 8-bit Cyrillic encoding32 capital chars in native order at 0xc0–0xdf, 32 usual chars at 0xe0–0xff, with rarely used "YO" characters somewhere else. No pseudographics. Former standard encoding in some Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
distributions for Belarusian and Bulgarian, but currently displaced by UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-width encoding, variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit'' ...
.
*GOST-main.
*GB 2312
is a key official character set of the People's Republic of China, used for Simplified Chinese characters. GB2312 is the registered internet name for EUC-CN, which is its usual encoded form. ''GB'' refers to the Guobiao standards (国家标准 ...
Principally simplified Chinese encodings, but there are also the basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).
* JIS and Shift JIS
Shift JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII Corporation in conjunctio ...
Principally Japanese encodings, but there are also the basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).
Keyboard layouts
Each language has its own standard keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actua ...
, adopted from typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s. With the flexibility of computer input methods, there are also transliterating or phonetic/homophonic keyboard layouts made for typists who are more familiar with other layouts, like the common English QWERTY keyboard
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typ ...
. When practical Cyrillic keyboard layouts or fonts are unavailable, computer users sometimes use transliteration or look-alike "volapuk" encoding to type in languages that are normally written with the Cyrillic alphabet.
See also
* Cyrillic Alphabet Day
Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are credited w ...
* Cyrillic digraphs
The Cyrillic script family contains many specially treated two-letter combinations, or digraphs, but few of these are used in Slavic languages. In a few alphabets, trigraphs and even the occasional tetragraph or pentagraph are used.
In early ...
* Cyrillic script in Unicode
As of Unicode version 15.0 Cyrillic script is encoded across several blocks:
* CyrillicU+0400–U+04FF 256 characters
* Cyrillic SupplementU+0500–U+052F 48 characters
* Cyrillic Extended-AU+2DE0–U+2DFF 32 characters
* Cyrillic Extended-BU+A ...
* Faux Cyrillic
Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text, usually to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia, though it may be used in other contexts as well. It is a common Western trope us ...
, real or fake Cyrillic letters used to give Latin-alphabet text a Soviet or Russian feel
* List of Cyrillic digraphs and trigraphs
The following multigraphs are used in the Cyrillic script. The palatalized consonants of Russian and other languages written as C- are mostly predictable and therefore not included here unless they are irregular. Likewise, in the languages of ...
* Russian Braille
Russian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Russian language. With suitable extensions, it is used for languages of neighboring countries that are written in Cyrillic in print, such as Ukrainian and Mongolian. It is based on the Latin trans ...
* Russian cursive
Russian cursive is a variant of the Russian alphabet used for writing by hand. It is typically referred to as ''(rússky) rukopísny shrift'', "(Russian) handwritten font". It is the handwritten form of the modern Russian Cyrillic script, use ...
* Russian manual alphabet
The Russian Manual Alphabet (RMA) is used for fingerspelling in Russian Sign Language.
Like many other manual alphabets, the Russian Manual Alphabet bears similarities to the French Manual Alphabet. However, it was adapted to account for the lette ...
* Vladislav the Grammarian Vladislav the Grammarian (Bulgarian and sr, Владислав Граматик; 1456–79) was a Bulgarian Orthodox Christian monk, scribe, historian and theologian active in medieval Bulgaria and Serbia, regarded as part of both the Bulgarian an ...
* Yugoslav Braille
Yugoslav Braille is a family of closely related braille alphabets used for South Slavic languages of former Yugoslavia, namely Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian. It is based on the unified international braille conventions, with the letter ...
* Yugoslav manual alphabet
Internet top-level domains in Cyrillic
* gTLDs
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of eve ...
* .мон
.мон is the internationalised (Cyrillic) internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Mongolia. It is administered by .MN Registry, Datacom. The domain name is composed of the consonants in the three first letters of the country name. T ...
* .бг
(abbreviation of bg, България, translit=Balgarija) is an internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) for Bulgaria.[.қаз
.қаз (abbreviation of kk, Қазақстан, translit=Qazaqstan) is the Internet internationalized country code top-level domain ( iccTLD) for Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental cou ...]( ...<br></span></div>
* <div class=)
* .рф
The domain name .рф (romanized as ''.rf''; abbreviation of ) is the Cyrillic country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation, in the Domain Name System of the Internet. In the Domain Name System it has the ASCII DNS name . The domain ...
* .срб
(romanized as ''.srb''; abbreviation of sr, Србија/) is the Internationalised (Cyrillic) Internet country code top-level domain ( IDN ccTLD) for Serbia. It has been active since May 3, 2011.
The Serbian National Internet Domain Registry ...
* .укр
The domain name .укр ( romanized as ''.ukr''; abbreviation of uk, Україна, tr. ''Ukrayina'') is an approved internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) for Ukraine. It is a common abbreviation used in Ukraine, as in '' ...
* .мкд
.мкд (Punycode .xn--d1alf, '' latinized:'' .mkd) is the internationalized Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for North Macedonia. It is administered by The Macedonian Academic Research Network (MARnet). In November 2012, MARnet ...
* .бел
.бел (abbreviation of be, Беларусь, translit=Belarus) is an approved internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) for Belarus. Activation of the domain was finished in late 2014. The Latin script domain for Belarus is ...
Notes
References
*Bringhurst, Robert
Robert Bringhurst Appointments to the Order of Canada (2013). (born 16 October 1946) is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote ''The Elemen ...
(2002). ''The Elements of Typographic Style
''The Elements of Typographic Style'' is a book on typography and style by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 (v2.4), 2002 (v2.5), ...
'' (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. .
*
*Ivan G. Iliev. Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet. Plovdiv. 2012
Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet
*
*Nezirović, M. (1992). ''Jevrejsko-španjolska književnost''. Sarajevo: Svjetlost. ited in Šmid, 2002*Prostov, Eugene Victor. 1931. "Origins of Russian Printing". ''Library Quarterly'' 1 (January): 255–77.
*Šmid, Katja (2002). " ", in ''Verba Hispanica'', vol X. Liubliana: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Liubliana. .
*'The Lives of St. Tsurho and St. Strahota', Bohemia, 1495, Vatican Library
*Philipp Ammon
''Tractatus slavonicus''.
in: ''Sjani (Thoughts) Georgian Scientific Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature'', N 17, 2016, pp. 248–256
External links
overview and history of Cyrillic charsets.
Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts
a collection of writing systems and transliteration tables
Cyrillic Alphabets of Slavic Languages
review of Cyrillic charsets in Slavic Languages.
Cyrillic and its Long Journey East – NamepediA Blog
article about the Cyrillic script
*
Unicode collation charts
including Cyrillic letters, sorted by shape
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cyrillic alphabet
Bulgarian inventions
Eastern Europe
North Asia
Central Asia