Therefore, it’s different and letters that you know can and will have different sounds. Cyrillic alphabets include the Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Russian alphabets. You’ve probably already noticed there are more letters in the Cyrillic alphabet than in the English alphabet—seven more, to be precise (for a total of 33). ; kyrylytsia).Slavic system based on the Greek majuscule script (ustav, uncial letters) (see Ustav script). Congratulations– You just learned 15,15% of the Russian alphabet! 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 Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian … Slovenian Cyrillic is a way to write Slovenian with the Cyrillic alphabet devised by Alexander Ilynovich from Kaluga Oblast, Russia. There were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. Roman legend credited the introduction to one Evander, son of the Sibyl, supposedly 60 years before the Trojan war, but there is no historically sound basis to this tale. 1. The Cyrillic Alphabets also have an interesting story behind their origins. The Cyrillic Alphabets also have an interesting story behind their origins. Representing other writing systems with Cyrillic letters is called Cyrillization. Beside above, who invented the Cyrillic alphabet and what languages is it used in? The Cyrillic alphabet and the languages that use it. Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. 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 alphabet was an indirect result of the missionary work of the 9th-century “Apostles of the Slavs,” St. Cyril (or Constantine) and St. Methodius. A bold italic combination (bold slanted) does not exist for all font families. Cyrillic alphabet, writing system developed in the 9th–10th century ce for Slavic-speaking peoples of the Eastern Orthodox faith. The earliest literature written in Cyrillic was translations of parts of the Bible and various church texts. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized among languages and there are no officially recognized variations.[21]. Origins of Cyrillic Alphabets. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with exceptions: Cyrillic ⟨а⟩, ⟨е⟩, ⟨і⟩, ⟨ј⟩, ⟨р⟩, and ⟨у⟩ adopted Western lowercase shapes, lowercase ⟨ф⟩ is typically designed under the influence of Latin ⟨p⟩, lowercase ⟨б⟩, ⟨ђ⟩ and ⟨ћ⟩ are traditional handwritten forms), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs.[18]. The Cyrilic (Russian) Alphabet Curiously, the Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril, a Greek monk who, along with St. Methodius, brought Christianity to what is now Russia. The Cyrilic (Russian) Alphabet Curiously, the Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril, a Greek monk who, along with St. Methodius, brought Christianity to what is now Russia. Other character encoding systems for Cyrillic: Each language has its own standard keyboard layout, adopted from typewriters. 2. The following table shows the differences between the upright and italic Cyrillic letters of the Russian alphabet. Thus, there are many similarities between the two alphabets, which makes it much easier to learn the Russian Alphabet. Starting from the XVIII century, separate publications of Komi texts appear both in the Latin alphabet and in the Cyrillic alphabet. The following letters are the same in … The work began in the Slavic kingdom of Moravia and spread to Serbia and Bulgaria. The inventor of this alphabet was a Byzantine missionary. The Cyrillic alphabet was an indirect result of the missionary work of the 9th-century “ Apostles of the Slavs,” St. Cyril (or Constantine) and St. Methodius. Upgrade to remove ads. Slavic system based on the Greek majuscule script (ustav, uncial letters) (see Ustav script). St. Cyril, the inventor of the Cyrillic alphabet, was a Byzantine missionary. (Nothing to do with an international chain of toy megastores.) Its first vari­ant, the Early Cyril­lic al­pha­bet, was cre­ated at the Preslav Lit­er­ary School. The second consonant in double letters is not omitted, except in some cases. These men were from Thessalonica, and they traveled to the southern Slavic regions to spread Christianity. Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to the Serbian constitution;[36] however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. Few fonts include glyphs sufficient to reproduce the alphabet. The use of a specific alphabet generally corresponds with stages in history, with Arabic being used first, followed by Latin for a short period and then Cyrillic, which remains the most widely used alphabet in Tajikistan.The Bukhori dialect spoken by Bukharan Jews traditionally used the Hebrew alphabet but more often today is written using the Cyrillic variant. Indeed, it is believed that this alphabet was developed by the Saint Cyril’s disciples in the late 9th century. The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from the letters' Greek ancestors. You’ve probably already noticed there are more letters in the Cyrillic alphabet than in the English alphabet—seven more, to be precise (for a total of 33). As of 2019[update], around 250 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. West European typography culture was also adopted. Currently, Cyrillic is in use by more than 50 languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Kazakh, Turkmen, and many more. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity.[37]. 3. Note: in some fonts or styles, lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ (⟨д⟩) may look like Latin ⟨g⟩ and lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ (⟨т⟩) may look exactly like a capital italic ⟨T⟩ (⟨T⟩), only smaller. 3. Cyrillic is used by those Slavic peoples who accepted... Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. John the Exarch); and Chernorizets Hrabar, among others. The transition to the Cyrillic alphabet occurred in 1940. In Russia, Cyrillic was first written in the early Middle Ages in clear-cut, legible ustav (large letters). Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (still found on many icon inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters. Notes. 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). Russian is 99% phonetic. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used by many Chechens. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except the breakaway region of Transnistria, where Moldovan Cyrillic is official), Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. It is currently used exclusively or as one of several alphabets for more than 50 languages, notably Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin (spoken in Montenegro; also called Serbian), Russian, Serbian, Tajik (a dialect of Persian), Turkmen, Ukrainian, and Uzbek. Kazakhs used Arabic script from the 10th-20th centuries. [19] Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns: As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically sloped oblique type (naklonniy shrift—"sloped", or "slanted type") instead of italic. The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. It was during the reign of the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century AD that an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet was first developed by the Saints Cyril and Methodius, replacing the Glagolitic script (itself based on the Greek alphabet). Uzbekistanstill uses bot… Jump to: navigation, searchnavigation, search The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8. Bringhurst (2002) writes "in Cyrillic, the difference between normal lower case and small caps is more subtle than it is in the Latin or Greek alphabets. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script. [25] It must be noted here that 'alphabet' is not the same as 'script' (e.g. The good news is that, because the Cyrillic alphabet was invented based on the Greek alphabet, from which the Latin alphabet – one of the most widely employed writing systems globally – was developed, it will not take anyone familiar with the Latin alphabet a long time to master. The new letterforms, called the Civil script, became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were abolished and several letters were designed by Peter himself. Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language, especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. [26] Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic Vlachs. Origins of Cyrillic Alphabets. Unicode as a general rule does not include accented Cyrillic letters. The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. SPELL. Cyrillic script Belarusian alphabet Rusyn language Orthographic ligature Cyrillic alphabets. In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian,[20] some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different to resemble more to the handwritten letters. Many of the letterforms differed from those of modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. 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. 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. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The second consonant in double letters is not omitted, except in some cases. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. Cyrillic is a kind of alphabet used in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, and Serbia. 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. Jump to: navigation, searchnavigation, search However, the native font terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense. a few Old and New Church Slavonic combinations: Ivan G. Iliev. Complicating matters, some of the familiar letters sound the same in English and Russian, while others are pronounced quite differently (see PECTOPAH above). Those in the diaspora especially refuse to use the Chechen Cyrillic alphabet, which they associate with Russian imperialism. The number has not been consistent throughout its existence. English and Japanese CH are written Чч, while German CH is writ… In Daniels and Bright, eds. English. English and Japanese CH are written Чч, while German CH is writ… By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1. 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. MATCH. Today, many languages in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia are written in Cyrillic alphabets. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cyrillic-alphabet, Public Broadcasting Service - Cyrillic Alphabet, Omniglot - History and Development of the Cyrillic Alphabet. A boldfaced type is called poluzhirniy shrift ("semi-bold type"), because there existed fully boldfaced shapes that have been out of use since the beginning of the 20th century. [26] Its first variant, the Early Cyrillic alphabet, was created at the Preslav Literary School. Earliest variants exist c. 893 – c. 940: Parent systems. Russians use an alphabet based on the Cyrillic script. Proto-Sinaitic. WRITE. From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core. Paul Cub­ber­ley posits that al­though Cyril may ha… Download an alphabet chart for Slovenian Cyrillic (Excel) Sample text. Only $1/month. А К М О Т In this case I identified using several resources that the letters: AKMOT were, generally, exactly the same as in english. From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core. The Cyrillic script (/sɪˈrɪlɪk/ sə-RIL-ik) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia and is used as the national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia and East Asia. letter Її exists in the Cyrillic script since its very invention and is still used in Ukrainian, but is absent in the modern Bulgarian alphabet, that is Cyrillic as used in Bulgarian), so the accurate name is actually 'the Bulgarian script'. Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to the reform. For centuries Cyrillic was used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs too (see Bosnian Cyrillic). Based on the Greek ceremonial script, the original Cyrillic alphabet included the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet and 19 letters for sounds specific to the Slavic language. Dotted I (Cyrillic) Short U (Cyrillic) Yery Yo (Cyrillic) Ukrainian alphabet. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. Modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by the early disciples of Cyril and Methodius in the Preslav Literary School, the most important early literary and cultural centre of the Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs. The Cyrillic script family contains many specially treated two-letter combinations, or digraphs, but few of these are used in Slavic languages. Signs for streets & squares were in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is based on the one sound, one letter system. That is the alphabet we today refer to as Cyrillic, ćirilica. LEARN. Congratulations– You just learned 15,15% of the Russian alphabet! What the early Cyrillic alphabet looked like Maybe you remember a phrase like: “Tom ka” better than my AKMOT, but it is up to you. Linguists are unsure whether it was Cyril or one of his followers who invented the alphabet, which is based on the uppercase Greek letters. The new alphabet consists of 32 letters and letters of the old Cyrillic alphabet will be replaced by Latin analogues based on their phonetic similarity. Saint Cyril and his brother, Saint Methodius, developed the first known Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic, in the 860s, and their students improved upon it, along with the Saints' early version of Cyrillic, in the following decades. The reason the Cyrillic alphabet was invented was to spread the Christian religion among the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe. Part 2: The Sounds of the Russian Alphabet. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, as were typographical variants like О = Ѻ. Linguists are unsure whether it was Cyril or one of his followers who invented the alphabet, which is based on the uppercase Greek letters. Now I am sharing with you, dear blog readers, on how I started to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. In the Russian language syllabaries, especially the Japanese kana, are commonly referred to as 'syllabic azbukas' rather than 'syllabic scripts'. Complicating matters, some of the familiar letters sound the same in English and Russian, while others are pronounced quite differently (see PECTOPAH above). The Balkan Slavs may initially have used the Greek alphabet for the occasional notation of a Slavic name or an individual word. Cyrillic script spread throughout the East Slavic and some South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Paul Cubberley (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets". [citation needed]. Words are written based on how they are pronounced. An early tradition, in attributing the invention of an…, …of the Slavonic alphabet (Cyrillic and Glagolitic) made possible the translation of the Bible and the Greek liturgy and brought literacy as well as the Christian faith to the Slavic peoples. For me the mnemonic AKMOT is fine, but you may find that any of the combinations is better for you. The Cyrillic alphabet has gone through many reforms in both Russia and other countries. Among the general public, it is often called "the Russian alphabet," because Russian is the most popular and influential alphabet based on the script. Their mission to Moravia lasted only a few decades. This is why the two alphabets share a number of features. Slovenian Cyrillic (Словенщіна) Slovenian Cyrillic is a way to write Slovenian with the Cyrillic alphabet devised by Alexander Ilynovich from Kaluga Oblast, Russia. Cards in order of the Russian Alphabet. Their disciples went to South Slavic regions of the first Bulgarian empire, including what are now Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, where in the 900s they constructed a new script for Slavic, based on capital Greek letters, with some additions; confusingly, this later script (drawing on the name of Cyril) became known as Cyrillic. Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has ordered a new variation of the Kazakh-language alphabet based on Latin letters that would replace the current alphabet based on Cyrillic … So what’s a Russian language lea… Writing system used for various languages of Eurasia, "Cyrillic" and "Cyrillic alphabet" redirect here. Standard Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. The Cyrillic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia and is used as the national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia and East Asia. For national variants of the Cyrillic script, see, 1780s Romanian text (Lord's Prayer), written with the Cyrillic script, Letters Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Me, Te, Tse, Be and Ve in upright (printed) and cursive (handwritten) variants. Among others, Cyrillic is the standard script for writing the following languages: The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska,[24] Slavic Europe (except for Western Slavic and some Southern Slavic), the Caucasus, Siberia, and the Russian Far East. The Cyrillic script was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century, to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language.It was named after Saint Cyril, who with his brother Methodius had created the earlier Glagolitic Slavonic script. Punctuation for Cyrillic text is similar to that used in European Latin-alphabet languages. Therefore, it’s different and letters that you know can and will have different sounds. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). When the ancestors of the Russian people and the precursors of the modern Russian state adopted Christianity, it was done under Byzantine influence. German ALLE is written Аллэ but English ALL is written Ол. 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, Abkhaz, Aleut, Chuvash, Kurdish, and Moksha.[39]. In Russia, the first reformer of the Cyrillic was printer and publisher Ivan Fyodorov. Words are written based on how they are pronounced. The Russian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script, meaning it’s somewhat different from Roman script, i.e. Based on the Greek ceremonial script, the original Cyrillic alphabet included the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet and 19 letters for sounds specific to the Slavic language. А К М О Т In this case I identified using several resources that the letters: AKMOT were, generally, exactly the same as in english. 1 About the alphabet itself 2 Languages that use cyrillic 2.1 Belorussian 2.2 Bulgarian 2.3 Moldovan 2.4 Russian 2.5 Serbian 2.6 Ukrainian 2.7 Andrey or Andrei- Transliteration Issues Cyrillic alphabet comes from the time of the Christianization of Kievan Rus. U+1C80–U+1C8F Cyrillic Extended-C The Cyrillic script ( / s ɪ ˈ r ɪ l ɪ k / ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia and is used as the national script in various Slavic -, Turkic - and Iranic -speaking countries in Eastern Europe , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and Northern Asia . Maybe you remember a phrase like: “Tom ka” better than my AKMOT, but it is up to you. The Cyrillic alphabet is based on the Greek alphabet, with other letters added for sounds not in Greek. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived and the Latins finally adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. (Top is set in Georgia font, bottom in Odessa Script.). Belarusian alphabet. Old Permic script: Sister systems. It was during the reign of the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century AD that an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet was first developed by the Saints Cyril and Methodius, replacing the Glagolitic script (itself based on the Greek alphabet). The literature produced in the Old Bulgarian language soon spread north and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where it came to also be known as Old Church Slavonic. The modern Cyrillic alphabets—Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian—have been modified somewhat from the original, generally by the loss of some superfluous letters. A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Serbian and Romanian (in the Republic of Moldova until 1989, in Romania throughout the 19th century). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. 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. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. А . The Russian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script, meaning it’s somewhat different from Roman script, i.e. The reason the Cyrillic alphabet was invented was to spread the Christian religion among the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe. The schwa and the [æ] sound are written Ээ. (3) The…, The two early Slavic alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic, were invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is based mostly on the Greek alphabet, and some letters for the specific Slavic sounds are based on the Glagolitic alphabet. TEST. While the Western church was based in Rome (which used the Latin alphabet we see on this page), these countries were Christianized from Constantinople, which spoke Greek. 4. History Early Cyrillic alphabet. Cards in order of the Russian Alphabet. In certain cases, the correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic fonts: for example, italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ is the lowercase counterpart of ⟨Т⟩ not of ⟨М⟩. Fazylzhanova Muratkyzy, a linguist who worked with the government to create the new alphabet, echoes this assessment, and says many Kazakhs associate the Cyrillic-based script to … The Kazakh language was based on Latin script in 1929-1940. In Russia, the first reformer of the Cyrillic was printer and publisher Ivan Fyodorov. This is why the two alphabets share a number of features. These additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, discussed below. FLASHCARDS. [citation needed] This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. So, in the second edition of Nicolaes Witsen’s book “Noord en Oost Tartarye” (Northern and Eastern Tataria), published in 1705, a translation of the prayer “Our Father” into the Komi language, written in Latin, was published. Cyril was a Greek monk who, with Methodius, brought written language to Christian converts in the mid-9th century (c. 860) in what is now Russia. Russian is written in the Cyrillic script. A Byzantine monk named Saint Cyril created the Cyrillic alphabet in around 683 AD. A few exceptions include: To indicate stressed or long vowels, combining diacritical marks can be used after the respective letter (for example, .mw-parser-output .monospaced{font-family:monospace,monospace}U+0301 ◌́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT: ы́ э́ ю́ я́ etc.). The Cyrillic alphabet is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet. Cyrillic alphabet (????? It was created in the 9th century by the Saints Cyril and Methodius, two brothers born in Thessaloniki. Russian is written in the Cyrillic script. [citation needed], Unicode 5.1, released on 4 April 2008, introduces major changes to the Cyrillic blocks. As of Unicode version 13.0, Cyrillic letters, including national and historical alphabets, are encoded across several blocks: The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are essentially the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. Beside above, who invented the Cyrillic alphabet and what languages is it used in? You’ve probably also noticed that a lot of the letters look familiar: A, B, H, P, O, Y—just to list a few—while some of the letters look downright odd: Щ, Э, Й, anyone? The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian … In a few alphabets, trigraphs and even the occasional tetragraph are used. They have been found in the medieval city itself, and at nearby Patleina Monastery, both in present-day Shumen Province, in the Ravna Monastery and in the Varna Monastery. 2012. Alphabet (impure) and Bicameral. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. (2) Two alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Latin, are used for writing Slavic languages. Latin missionaries…. 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 schwa and the [æ] sound are written Ээ. Their mission to Moravia lasted only a few decades. It was introduced in the 1940s and has been in use as the official writing system of Mongolia ever since. … The Cyrillic alphabet is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet. In accordance with the principle on which alphabets are based, these rules will generally map letters of the alphabet to the phonemes (significant sounds) of the spoken language. Cyrillic is used by those Slavic peoples who accepted their religion from Byzantium, whereas Roman Christianity brought the use of the Latin alphabet to the Poles, Lusatians, Wends, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croats. 'The Lives of St. Tsurho and St. Strahota', Bohemia, 1495, Vatican Library, This page was last edited on 23 December 2020, at 07:20. [7] With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following Latin and Greek.[8]. In the 9th century AD the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I the Great, following the cultural and political course of his father Boris I, commissioned a new script, the Early Cyrillic alphabet, to be made at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire, which would replace the Glagolitic script, produced earlier by Saints Cyril and Methodius and the same disciples that created the new Slavic script in Bulgaria. 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Reason the Cyrillic blocks many similarities between the upright and italic Cyrillic letters written Cyrillic! Cyrillic what was the cyrillic alphabet based on Yery Yo ( Cyrillic ) Ukrainian alphabet and what languages is used..., mostly of Byzantine authors example, the inventor of the Soviet Union 1991. St. Cyril, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used many.