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The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed 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 late 9th century on the basis of the
Greek alphabet 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 ...
for the Slavic people living near the
Byzantine Empire 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 Constantin ...
in South East and Central Europe. It was used by
Slavic peoples Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic language, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout ...
in South East,
Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and Eastern Europe. It was developed in the Preslav Literary School in the capital city 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 ...
in order to write 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 ...
language. The modern
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking cou ...
is still used primarily for some Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian,
Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North M ...
,
Serbian Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also

* * * Old Serbian (disambiguat ...
, Russian and Ukrainian), Kazakhstanand for
East Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the 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 Russia, wh ...
an and
Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...
n languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence. Among some of the traditionally culturally influential countries using Cyrillic script are
Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Mac ...
, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.


Set

А Б В Г Д Є Ж З И І К Л М Н О П Р С Т Ꙋ Ф Х Ц Ѡ Ч Ш Щ Ь Ы Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙗ Ѥ Ю Ѧ Ѩ Ѫ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ҁ


Additional

Э Я Қ Ң Е Ё Ҽ Ҿ Љ Њ Џ Ј Ћ Ђ Ѓ Ќ Ӣ Ҳ Ҷ Ӯ У Ө Ӱ Ў Ә Һ Ү Ұ Ї Ґ Ꙓ Ꙙ Ꙝ Ꙛ Ꙩ Ꙭ Ꚛ ꙮ Ꚙ


History

The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as ''
ustav Ustav may refer to: * Typikon, liturgical book in Byzantine Rite churches * , the uncial style of early Cyrillic writing, used from the 9th century to the 14th-15th centuries. This evolved into ' (semi-uncial, a type still in use for the Church S ...
'', was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by
ligatures 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 ...
and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. The Glagolitic alphabet was created by the monk Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid of his brother Saint Methodius, around 863. Cyrillic, on the other hand, was a creation of Cyril's students in the 890s at the Preslav Literary School as a more suitable script for church books, based on uncial Greek but retaining some Glagolitic letters for sounds not present in Greek. An alternative hypothesis proposes that it emerged in the border regions of Greek proselytization to the Slavs before it was codified and adapted by some systematizer among the Slavs; the oldest Cyrillic manuscripts look very similar to 9th and 10th century Greek uncial manuscripts, and the majority of uncial Cyrillic letters were identical to their Greek uncial counterparts.Auty, R. ''Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts and Glossary.'' 1977. One possibility is that this systematization of Cyrillic was undertaken at the Council of Preslav in 893, when the Old Church Slavonic liturgy was adopted by 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 ...
. The Cyrillic alphabet was very well suited for the writing of Old Church Slavic, generally following a principle of "one letter for one significant sound", with some arbitrary or phonotactically-based exceptions. Particularly, this principle is violated by certain vowel letters, which represent plus the vowel if they are not preceded by a consonant. It is also violated by a significant failure to distinguish between /ji/ and /jĭ/ orthographically. 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.Cubberley 1994 Letters served as numerals as well as phonetic signs; the values of the numerals were directly borrowed from their Greek-letter analogues. Letters without Greek equivalents mostly had no numeral values, whereas one letter, koppa, had only a numeric value with no phonetic value. Since its creation, the Cyrillic script 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 script are used to write languages throughout Eastern Europe and
Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...
. The form of the Russian alphabet underwent a change when Tsar
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 ...
introduced the civil script (russian: гражданский шрифт, graždanskiy šrift, or , ), in contrast to the prevailing church typeface, (russian: церковнославя́нский шрифт, cerkovnoslavjanskiy šrift) in 1708. (The two forms are sometimes distinguished as ''paleo-Cyrillic'' and ''neo-Cyrillic''.) Some letters and breathing marks which were used only 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 The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking cou ...
orthographies for most other languages. Today, the early orthography and typesetting standards remain in use only in
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 H ...
. A comprehensive repertoire of early Cyrillic characters has been included in the Unicode standard since version 5.1, published April 4, 2008. These characters and their distinctive letterforms are represented in specialized computer fonts for Slavistics.


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. Sometimes the Greek letters that were used in Cyrillic mainly for their numeric value are transcribed with the corresponding Greek letters for accuracy: ѳ = θ, ѯ = ξ, ѱ = ψ, ѵ = υ, and ѡ = ω.


Numerals, diacritics and punctuation

Each letter had a numeric value also, inherited from the corresponding Greek letter. A titlo over a sequence of letters indicated their use as a number; usually this was accompanied by a dot on either side of the letter. In numerals, the
ones place A numerical digit (often shortened to just digit) is a single symbol used alone (such as "2") or in combinations (such as "25"), to represent numbers in a Positional notation, positional numeral system. The name "digit" comes from the fact that t ...
was to the left of the tens place, the reverse of the order used in modern Arabic numerals. Thousands are formed using a special symbol, (U+0482), which was attached to the lower left corner of the numeral. Many fonts display this symbol incorrectly as being in line with the letters instead of subscripted below and to the left of them. Titlos were also used to form abbreviations, especially of nomina sacra; this was done by writing the first and last letter of the abbreviated word along with the word's grammatical endings, then placing a titlo above it. Later manuscripts made increasing use of a different style of abbreviation, in which some of the left-out letters were superscripted above the abbreviation and covered with a
pokrytie Pokrytie (  ҇  ) is one of the historic diacritical signs of Cyrillic that was used in Old Church Slavonic, later medieval Cyrillic literary traditions and modern Church Slavonic. It is a modification of titlo adapted for covering (henc ...
diacritic. Several
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s, adopted from Polytonic Greek orthography, were also used, but were seemingly redundant (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 Trema may refer to: * a List of Greek and Latin roots in English/P–Z#T, Greek and Latin root meaning ''hole'' * ''Tréma'', a word in French meaning diaeresis ** more generally, two dots (diacritic) * Trema (plant), ''Trema'' (plant), a genus of ...
'', diaeresis (U+0308) :   ''varia'' (
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
), indicating stress on the last syllable (U+0300) :   ''oksia'' (
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...
), indicating a stressed syllable ( Unicode U+0301) :   '' titlo'', indicating
abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevi ...
s, or letters used as numerals (U+0483) :   '' kamora'' ( circumflex accent), indicating
palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...
(U+0484); in later Church Slavonic, it disambiguates plurals from homophonous singulars. :   ''dasia'' or ''
dasy pneuma In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, d ...
'', rough breathing mark (U+0485) :   ''psili'', ''zvatel'tse'', or ''
psilon pneuma The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma; ell, ψιλή ''psilí''; la, spīritus lēnis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricat ...
'', soft breathing mark (U+0486). Signals a word-initial vowel, at least in later Church Slavonic. :   Combined ''zvatel'tse'' and ''varia'' is called ''apostrof''. :   Combined ''zvatel'tse'' and ''oksia'' is called ''iso''. Punctuation systems in early Cyrillic manuscripts were primitive: there was no space between words and no upper and lower case, and punctuation marks were used inconsistently in all manuscripts. :   ''
ano teleia An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
'' (U+0387), a middle dot used to separate phrases, words, or parts of words :  
Full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
, used in the same way :   Armenian
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
(U+0589), resembling a colon, used in the same way :   Georgian paragraph separator (U+10FB), used to mark off larger divisions :   triangular colon (U+2056, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions :   diamond colon (U+2058, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions :   quintuple colon (U+2059, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions :   Greek question mark (U+037E), similar to a semicolon Some of these marks are also used in Glagolitic script. Used only in modern texts :  
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
(U+002C) :  
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
(U+002E) :   exclamation mark (U+0021)


Gallery


Old Bulgarian examples

File:Codex_Suprasliensis.jpg, Codex Suprasliensis File:Ivan_ALexander_and_his_family_Tetraevangelia.jpg, Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander File:Bulgar_Translation_Of_Manasses_Chronicle.png, Bulgar translation of Manasses chronicle File:Tomb_stone_of_Mostich_Boyla.jpg, Mostich tomb stone


Medieval Greek Uncial manuscripts from which early Cyrillic letter forms take their shapes

File:Codex_Colbertinus_700.jpg, ℓ ''1'' File:Lectionary_5_(GA)%2C_f.115r.jpg, ℓ ''5'' File:Codex_Harcleianus.PNG, ℓ ''150'' File:Lectionary 152 K051435.JPG, ℓ ''152'' File:Lectionary_179_(Gen_1).JPG, ℓ ''179'' Old Testament, Genesis File:Lectionary_183_folio_2.JPG, ℓ ''183'' folio 2 File:Lectionary_269_(Matth._8%2C32-9%2C1.9).JPG, ℓ ''269'' File:Lectionary 296 f.6v.JPG, ℓ ''296'' folio 6 verso


Early Cyrillic manuscripts

aprakos Aprakos is a kind of Gospel or Acts of the Apostles book, otherwise known as weekly or service Gospel (Acts). In aprakoses, the text is organized not in the natural order of books, but along with the weekly church readings starting from the Holy (E ...
)" widths="100px" heights="100px" perrow="7"> File:Ostromir_Gospel_4.jpg, Ostromir Gospels File:Scepkin1903Sava142ob.jpg,
Sava's book Sava's book ( bg, Савина книга, ''Savina kniga''; russian: Саввина книга, ''Savvina kniga'') is a 129-folio Cyrillic Old Church Slavonic canon evangeliary, written in the eleventh century. The original 126 parchment folio ...
File:Khitrovo_Gospels_05.jpg, Khitrovo Gospels File: Miroslav's_Gospel_001.jpg,
Miroslav Gospel Miroslav Gospel ( sr, Мирослављево jеванђеље / Miroslavljevo jevanđelje, ) is a 362-page Serbian illuminated manuscript Gospel Book on parchment with very rich decorations. It is one of the oldest surviving documents written ...
File: Archangel_Gospel_03.jpg,
Arkhangelsk Gospel The Archangelsk Gospel (russian: Архангельское Евангелие) is a lectionary in Old Church Slavonic dated to 1092. It is the fourth oldest Eastern Slavic manuscript.Башлыкова М. Е., ''Архангельское Ева ...
File: Pogod 18 list 19 ob mt18-15 18-20 mt4-23 4-24.jpg, File:Andronikovo_Gospel_158rev.jpg, Andronikov Gospels


See also

*
Relationship of Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts As the 9th-century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius undertook their mission to evangelize to the Slavs of Great Moravia, two writing systems were developed: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Both scripts were based on the Greek alphabet and share comm ...
* Bosnian Cyrillic * Romanian Cyrillic alphabet * Reforms of Russian orthography * Nationalism in the Middle Ages#Eastern Europe, Byzantium, Slavs, Greeks


References


Sources

* Berdnikov, Alexander and Olga Lapko, , ''EuroTEX ’99 Proceedings'', September 1999 * Birnbaum, David J., , September 28, 2002 * Cubberley, Paul (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets". In Daniels and Bright, below. * Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. (1996). ''The World's Writing Systems.'' Oxford University Press. . * Everson, Michael and Ralph Cleminson, , September 4, 2003 * Franklin, Simon. 2002. ''Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300.'' Cambridge University Press. . *Iliev, I. Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet. Plovdiv. 2012/Иван Г. Илиев. Кратка история на кирилската азбука. Пловдив. 2012
Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet
* Lev, V., "The history of the Ukrainian script (paleography)", in ''Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1''. University of Toronto Press, 1963, 1970, 1982. * Simovyc, V., and J. B. Rudnyckyj, "The history of Ukrainian orthography", in ''Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1'' (''op cit''). * Zamora, J.,
Help me learn Church Slavonic
'
Azbuka
Church Slavonic calligraphy and typography.
Obshtezhitie.net
Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts and early printed books.


External links



* ttp://ponomar.net/cu_support.html Slavonic Computing Initiative
churchslavonic – Typesetting documents in Church Slavonic language using Unicode

fonts-churchslavonic – Fonts for typesetting in Church Slavonic language

Church Slavonic Typography in Unicode
(Unicode Technical Note no. 41), 2015-11-04, accessed 2016-02-23. {{DEFAULTSORT:Early Cyrillic Alphabet Cyrillic alphabets Preslav Literary School History of writing 1st-millennium establishments in Europe Western calligraphy Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture Medieval scripts Eastern Orthodox Christian culture