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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia.

, around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek alphabets.

The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, who had previously created the Glagolitic script. The script is named in honor of Saint Cyril.

Etymology

Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius, 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, 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, especially the Japanese kana, are commonly referred to as 'syllabic azbukas' rather than 'syllabic scripts'.

History

The Cyrillic script was created in the First Bulgarian Empire.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 was created at the Preslav Literary School, the most important early literary and cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs:

Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts 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 until 893; Constantine of Preslav; Joan Ekzarh (also transcr. John the Exarch); and Chernorizets Hrabar, among others. The school was also a center of translation, mostly of Byzantine authors. The Cyrillic script is derived from the Greek uncial script letters, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Glagolitic and Cyrillic were formalized by the Byzantine Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples, such as Saints Naum, Clement, Angelar, and Sava. 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. 119The 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 under Tsar Simeon the Great 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. The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav, in the medieval city itself and at nearby Patleina Monastery, both in present-day Shumen Province, as well as in the Ravna Monastery and in the Varna Monastery. The new script became the basis of alphabets used in various languages in Orthodox Church-dominated Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic languages (such as Romanian, until the 1860s). For centuries, Cyrillic was also used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs (see Bosnian Cyrillic).

Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language, especially the Old Church Slavonic 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 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, 1987Benjamin 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 that originated in medieval Bosnia.
Paleographers consider the earliest features of Bosnian Cyrillic script had likely begun to appear between the 10th or 11th century, with the Humac tablet (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 and other prominent representatives of the Tarnovo Literary School of the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Gregory Tsamblak and Constantine of Kostenets, 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, who had recently returned from his Grand Embassy in Western Europe. The new letterforms, called the Civil script, 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 in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic 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 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, Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia 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. 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 of Yer and I ( + = ). Iotation 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 manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include glyphs sufficient to reproduce the alphabet. In accordance with Unicode 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 language. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8.

Currency signs

Some currency signs have derived from Cyrillic letters:
* The Ukrainian hryvnia sign (₴) is from the cursive minuscule Ukrainian Cyrillic letter He (''г'').
* The Russian ruble sign (₽) from the majuscule Р.
* The Kyrgyzstani som sign (с) from the majuscule С (es)
* The Kazakhstani tenge sign (₸) from Т
* The Mongolian tögrög sign (₮) from Т

Letterforms and typography

The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (categorized as vyaz' and still found on many icon inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters.

Peter the Great, 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 serifs, 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 and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (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 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 handwriting is ' ("handwritten type")in German: ' or ', both meaning literally 'running type'
* A (mechanically) sloped oblique type of sans-serif 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 form.

Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Serbian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in the '' faux'' 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 approximations are used in the '' faux'' 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 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, 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, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbo-Croatian ( Standard Serbian,