To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". Sign Up. Travel Guides. Videos Beyond Hollywood Hungerlust Pioneers of love. Maria Angelova. Why was the Cyrillic script invented? Who created the Cyrillic script? Who writes in Cyrillic letters today? Give us feedback. Read Next View. Orpheus Apartments. No13 Boutique House. Baratero Mar Nero Apartments. At the time the Cyrillic alphabet consisted of the letters from the Greek alphabet and several additional letters which denoted Slavic sounds missing in the Greek alphabet.
Since the Cyrillic alphabet first appeared in the Russian territories, it did not change a lot for a long time. The first significant reform of the alphabet happened at the beginning of the 18 th century when Peter the Great decided to reform the written language.
The Russian Emperor decided to liquidate some letters and he introduced a new way of writing — Civil Russian alphabet. Lower case letters have been used since then before that, texts were written with capital letters. The new way of writing was meant for civil texts: text books, papers, military, scientific literature and fiction. The old way of writing was applied only for religious literature.
It is still used by the Church. The introduction of the civil Russian alphabet made it possible for Russian books to look like European ones. It became much easier to get new booked printed using printing machines from Western Europe.
The Geometry text book issued in was the first book printed in the civil Russian alphabet. In Russia they also started to use Arabic numerals after the reform. Before that, the letters from the Cyrillic alphabet were used instead of numerals. The next significant reform happened only in the beginning of the 20 th century, in , although the preparation for it started much earlier.
After this reform the Russian alphabet got rid of several letters, and it started to look like it looks now. In the 20 th century linguists created written languages for numerous indigenous ethnic groups residing on the USSR territory on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Although the creation of Cyryllic based alphabets for the native Caucasian and Asian peoples wa s a great achievement for Russian linguists, these alphabets are not quite successful, and in many cases the creators deliberately designated one sound by different signs in different variants of the same language Kabardian and Adyghe, for instance. Almost all native languages in Siberia use the Cyrillic alphabet although for some of them it was invented after the s, and most of them are close to extinction excluding widespread languages like Yakut or Even.
Ket is the last surviving member of the Yenisei family of languages, and is spoken by about people along the Yenisei River and its tributaries in Central Siberia. Its Cyrillic-based system was developed in the s by G. Verner and G. Northern Yukaghir is spoken by about people, while Southern Yukaghir has fewer than 50 speakers.
The Yukaghir languages were first written in the s using a spelling system using the Cyrillic alphabet devised by Gavril Kurilov, a native speaker of Tundra Yukaghir. Both Yukaghir languages have been taught to some extent in schools since the s.
Itelmen is a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language with fewer than speakers in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia. There is no Aleut primer even now, the only Cyrillic book in Aleut, a school dictionary, was published in the s. In Outer Manchuria the region of the Amur river , there are several small peoples, like the Orok and the Orochi peoples both less than persons in number , and several more. The Cyrillic alphabet first has been used for descriptions of their languages, and later, in the period , materials for learning these languages were published.
One of the newest Cyrillic alphabets is the Negidal — its alphabet was created in , and in the next year, a manual for the primary school grades was published. A very interesting case is that of the Soyot people. Originally they spoke a Uralic language. Then they were assimilated by the Turkic population of Siberia, and later - by the Buryats. For the revitalization of the Soyot language, in , a Cyrillic script was designed.
Two years later, a Soyot-Buryat-Russian dictionary appeared. In , the Soyot language was introduced in the primary school grades. The region is inhabited by a number of peoples, some of them quite numerous, like the Uzbek or the Kazakh. In , the Arabic script was banned and the Latin alphabet was imposed for writing Kazakh.
The Latin alphabet was in turn replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in Uyghur is another Turkic language, with about 10 million speakers mainly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, and also in Afghanistan. The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet was devised around in the Soviet Union, because they wanted an alternative to the Latin-derived alphabet they had devised some eleven years earlier, in , as they feared a romanization of the Uyghur language would strengthen the relationship of the Uyghurs to Turkey.
The Cyrillic script continued to be used in the Soviet Union, however, and is currently used in Kazakhstan. Dungan is a variety of Chinese spoken in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and written in Cyrillic letters. There are approximately 50 speakers. A Cyrillic alphabet for the Daur people in China was invented and used for two years: from to , when it was abandoned, like the Uyghur one. In Pamir, there are a number of small peoples of Indo-Iranian origin, too. Of course, various letter s characteristic only of the local alphabets , are used in all Caucasian and Asian Cyrillic alphabets.
The Cyrillic script is used a lso by the Gagauz and in some dialects of the Romani Gipsy language in Bulgaria, as well as in Serbia and Russia. In the past, even the Ladino Judaeo-Spanish speakers in Bulgarian used it. The back cover with the phrase Be happy!
In , the Serbo-Croat-Slovene Kingdom was created, and in , its name was changed to Yugoslavia. In , linguists and scholars signed the Novi Sad Literary Agreement, which made the Latin and the Cyrillic scripts equally acceptable in the country. However, only the Serbs used both alphabets in fact, while the Croats and the Bosnians preferred the Latin one.
Albanians in Yugoslavia who were educated in Serbian schools used Cyrillic letters to communicate in Albanian during the 20th century. However, this was restricted to vulgar usage only. Yugoslavia finally fell apart in , and several Slavic states replaced it: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia. Nowadays, the Cyrillic alphabet is used in the following of these countries: Macedonia, Serbia alongside with the Latin alphabet , Bosnia and Herzegovina informally , Montenegro alongside with the Latin alphabet.
The standard Macedonian orthography appeared in on the pages of New Macedonia newspaper. Many rulers have tried to forbid the Cyrillic alphabet, in different times and in different states. Ante Pavelich did the same in Croatia, in In , the Soviet Union fell apart, and many people from the Caucasus and Middle Asia replaced the Cyrillic letters with Latin or some other alphabets: the Azeri , the Chechen , the Uzbek , the Turkmens The Assirian Cyrillic alphabet, introduced in the s, was replaced with the Latin one only ten years later one of the few such examples.
Since Bel o rus sia gained independence in , efforts have been made to revive writing in the Latin alphabet. One major problem is that nobody can agree on a spelling system. Recently as part of a modernization program, the government of Kazakhstan has stated plans to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin script. Currently the costs and consequences of such a move are being investigated. Today, although Mongolian is still written using the Cyrillic alphabet , an official reintroduction of the old script was planned for , but has not yet taken place as older generations encountered practical difficulties.
However, the traditional alphabet is being slowly reintroduced through schools. Several years ago, even in Bulgaria the idea given by the Austrian Otto Kronsteiner of replacing the traditional Cyrillic alphabet was suggested.
There are several small peoples in Russia, who could acquire neither the Latin, nor the Cyrillic script, although for some of them, there are grammar descriptions in Cyrillic: Yazgulyam, Bats, Budukh, Khwarshi, Enets by the way, in some sources, like Omniglot , some of them are also considered to be languages, using the Cyrillic alphabet.
Most of the Western scientist s use the Latin alphabet for transcribing Cyrillic sources in the bibliography of their works, and this is not professional. Imagine what would happen, if a scientist from Bulgaria or Russia cite d in the same way the titles he or she has used. Then , instead of Jacobson, S. It is difficult to say if some day the Cyrillic alphabet will be totally out of use. Nowadays, alongside with the use of the civil script in everyday life, and the use of the Medieval Cyrillic script in the Orthodox typography, we can see how the latter even penetrates the internet.
It started as an Internet slang language. The language is based on phonetic spelling of the Russian language and sometimes transliteration of Ukrainian language , and often uses profanity. It combines complex orthography with creative use of idioms and literary expression. It is often used to express disagreement, amusement, or to create political satire. A similar jargon existed among young people in Russia even in the 19 th century. In one of his novels, Y. Another experimental innovation is the creation of artificial Slavic and non-Slavic languages, in the way Esperanto was created the Esperanto alphabet officially has only Latin version but, i n Soviet times, it was even printed in Cyrillic letters, because it was difficult to find type-writers with Latin letters.
Its purpose is to facilitate communication between representatives of different Slavic nations, as well as to allow people who don't know any Slavic language to communicate with Slavs. For the latter, it can fulfill an educational role as well. Slovianski can be classified as a semi-artificial language with several hundred speakers. The vocabulary is based on the shared lexical foundation of the Slavic languages. As of October , Slovio had over 44, words.
George Boeree of Shippensburg University , Pennsylvania. The grammar is highly reduced and similar to the Romance creoles. The language has phonemic spelling, using 22 letters of either the Latin or Cyrillic scripts. There were four types of medieval hand-written Cyrillic script: uncial , semi-uncial , quickscript , and vjaz embroidery style , between which were transitional stages.
These scripts could use either only capital letters majuscules , or only small letters minuscules , besides the calligraphic letters like the letter K in the picture below.
The oldest script was the uncial - a majuscule script, written entirely in capital letters, commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes.
The Slavic uncial derived from the Greek majuscule of the 9 th century AD. In the 12 th century popular uncial scripts appeared, and the majuscule Italic script was invented for writing notes, signatures, etc. The Slavic uncial script developed into another majuscule script - the semi-uncial , which later became the basis for the typographical pre-civil Cyrillic script. In the 15 th century, it totally replaced the uncial.
The quickscript sometimes called italic or cursive , and more precisely, semi-cursive developed from the semi-uncial in the 14 th century, and first, it was used as administrative writing.
Calligraphy developed out of it and later 19 th century , the modern hand-written script, which is taught at schools, when no intervals were left between the letters. This hand-written style is the most diverse, and the least researched of the scripts. For example, in the 19 th century, in Bulgaria, there were three types of quickscript: a Church Slavonic type, a Greek type, and a Russian semi-cursive type. The vjaz or embroidery style is a kind of writing, in which the letters stay close to each other, and get connected into a continuous ornament.
Although Gutenberg had as model only hand-written scripts, his first typographic scripts looked different from the old hand-written letters. During the Renaissance period the second half of the 15th century , attempts began to design scripts with pair of compasses and a ruler. Since then, a lot of scripts have been created, not only typographic, but also cartographic, placard, decorative, etc.
One of the first typographs, who made new printing scripts, in the 15 th century, were Aldus Manutius, Claude Garamond, etc. The Russian semi-uncial was used in religious and secular literature till , when the civil script was invented for the laic books, and the typographic semi-uncial was identified for the religious works only.
Between , he worked with the Dutch Yan Tessing in publishing Slavic books, and in , he opened his own typography in Amsterdam.
The Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque , without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe: New Roman cursive , also called minuscule cursive or later Roman cursive , developed from old Roman cursive, and later evolved into the medieval script known as Carolingian minuscule, which was used in 9th century France and Germany in the imperial chancery, and whose revival in the Renaissance by Petrarca and other writers forms the basis of the modern Latin lowercase letters, which Peter I the Great took as a model for the civil script.
Peter I the Great only legalized this practice. The westernized letter forms which he mandated to be used in the early 18th century, were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of Modern Greek fonts modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family.
The modern typographic cursive originated from the hand-written minuscule cursive. Since it was very typical for Italy during the Renaissance, in France and England it was called italic script , unlike the upright roman script. The cursive variant of the typographic civil script has been used since for the first time — in the newspaper Sankt Petersburg News. The form of the typographic cursive first was similar to the hand-written cursive but with time it changed under the influence of the roman script.
Gothic Style Cyrillic script Source: Wikipedia. Statute of Lithuania of in Ruthenian Source: Wikipedia. In Serbian, as well as in Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are different from those used in other languages.
Nowadays, the design of new Cyrillic scripts is going on. Throughout the world, there are competitions on designing scripts. One of them, the Granshan competition, was initiated by the Ministry of Culture of Armenia in and received woldwide popularity.
Later, Indic and Arabic text typeface categories were included in the competition. In addition, an international triennial of stage poster was held in Sofia, Bulgaria, in The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type.
Modern Cyrillic fonts, as well as Latin ones, have roman upright type and italic or cursive type. A special system, called Unicode is used for facilitating computer writing in Cyrillic and other scripts, as well. It is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text, expressed in most of the world's writing systems. Developed in conjunction with the Universal Character Set standard, and published in book form as The Unicode Standard , the latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than characters covering scripts.
Albanian alphabet. Aleut Gospel. Appendix: Cyrillic Script. Belarusian alphabet. Birch Bark Document. Birch Bark L etter no. Bosnian Cyrillic. Carolingian minuscule. Church Slavonic language. Congress Poland. Constantine of Kostenets. Cyrillic Digraphs. Cyrillic Script. Danube script. Dontchev, S. In: Balkan Media. The First Media Magazine of the Balkans. Dzurova, A. Die Botschaften der Kyrilliza. Evtimiy of Tarnovo. Francysk Skaryna. Granshan
0コメント