Cyrillic alphabet

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Cyrillic alphabet
Type Alphabet
Spoken languages Many East and South Slavic languages, and almost all languages in the former Soviet Union (see Languages using Cyrillic)
Time period Earliest variants exist circa 940
Parent systems Phoenician alphabet
 → Greek alphabet
  → Glagolitic alphabet
   → Early Cyrillic alphabet
    → Cyrillic alphabet
Sister systems Latin alphabet
Coptic alphabet
Armenian
Unicode range U+0400 to U+04FF
U+0500 to U+052F
U+2DE0 to U+2DFF
U+A640 to U+A69F
ISO 15924 Cyrl
Cyrs (Old Church Slavonic variant)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced /səˈrɪlɪk/; also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by six Slavic national languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian) as well as non-Slavic (Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik of the former Soviet Union, and Mongolian). It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language that is written with it.

The alphabet has official status with many organisations. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the EU.

Contents

[edit] History

A page from Azbuka, the first Russian textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet.
A page from Azbuka, the first Russian textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet.
Main article: Early Cyrillic alphabet
History of the alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE
Meroitic 3 c. BCE
Ogham 4 c. CE
Hangul 1443 CE
Canadian syllabics 1840 CE
Zhuyin 1913 CE
complete genealogy

The layout of the early Cyrillic alphabet shares a common root with the ninth-century Glagolitic alphabet[1], which was based on the Greek uncial script and the Latin alphabet. The original mother letter-forms are closely related to uncial (ustav) cursive Greek. Saints Cyril and Methodius, Byzantine Greeks from Thessaloniki, are usually credited with the Glagolithic alphabet's development.

Although it is widely accepted that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius, the origins of the early Cyrillic alphabet are still a source of much controversy. It has been attributed to Saint Clement of Ohrid, disciple of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. Recent studies have suggested that the Cyrillic alphabet was more likely developed at the Preslav Literary School in northeastern Bulgaria.

Among the reasons for the replacement of the Glagolitic with the Cyrillic alphabet is the greater simplicity and ease of use of the latter and its closeness with the Bulgar and Greek alphabets, which were widely in use among the population of the Bulgarian Empire.

There are also other theories regarding the origins of the Cyrillic alphabet, namely that the alphabet was created by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius themselves, or that it preceded the Glagolitic alphabet, representing a "transitional" stage between Greek and Glagolitic cursive, but these have been disproved. Although Cyril is almost certainly not the author of the Cyrillic alphabet, his contributions to the Glagolitic and hence to the Cyrillic alphabet are still recognised, as the latter is named after him.

The alphabet was disseminated along with the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language, and the alphabet used for modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the following ten centuries, the Cyrillic alphabet adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reforms and political decrees. Today, dozens of languages in Eastern Europe and Asia are written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

As the Cyrillic alphabet spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, it was adopted for writing local languages, such as Old Ruthenian. Its adaptation to the characteristics of local languages led to the development of its many modern variants, below.

The Early Cyrillic alphabet
А Б В Г Д Є Ж Ѕ З И І
К Л М Н О П Ҁ Р С Т Ѹ
Ф Х Ѡ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Ѣ
Ю ІА Ѧ Ѩ Ѫ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѥ

Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.

A page from the Church Slavonic Grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky (1619).
A page from the Church Slavonic Grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky (1619).

Yeri (Ы) was originally a ligature of Yer and I (ЪІ). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter I: ІА (ancestor of modern ya, я), Ѥ, Ю (ligature of I and ОУ), Ѩ, Ѭ. Many letters had variant forms and commonly-used ligatures, for example И=І=Ї, Ѡ=Ѻ, ОУ=Ѹ, ѠТ=Ѿ.

The letters also had numeric values, based not on the native Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from the letters' Greek ancestors.

Cyrillic numerals
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
А В Г Д Є Ѕ З И Ѳ
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
І К Л М Н Ѯ О П Ч
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Р С Т Ѹ Ф Х Ѱ Ѡ Ц

The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet. The current Unicode standard does not represent some significant letterform variations, and omits some characters, such as Cyrillic dotless I, iotified Yat, abbreviated Yer (Yerok), and many ligatures.

The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on April 4, 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language.

[edit] Letter-forms 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 (still found on many icon inscriptions even today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often shared between adjacent letters.

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early eighteenth century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the alphabet. Thus, unlike modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles (such as the placement of serifs, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules), 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.

Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter-forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with the few exceptions: "а", "е", "p", "y" adopted Western lowercase shapes, lowercase "ф" is typically designed under the influence of "p", lowercase "Б" is "б", one of traditional hand-written forms), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small caps glyphs.[2]

Comparison of some upright and hand-written letters (Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Em, Te and Tse. Top row is set in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY)
Comparison of some upright and hand-written letters (Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Em, Te and Tse. Top row is set in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY)

Cyrillic fonts, as well as Latin ones, have roman and italic variants (practically all popular modern fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are simply shared by both). However, the native font terminology in Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense.[3] Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns:

  • A roman-style font (Cyrillic, Latin, Greek...) is simply called pryamoy shrift (‘upright font')—compare with Normalschrift (‘regular font') in German
  • An italic font is called kursiv (literally ‘cursive’) or kursivniy shrift (‘cursive font’)—from the German word Kursive, meaning italic typefaces and not actual cursive
  • Cursive handwriting is rukopisniy shrift (‘hand-written font’) in Russian—in German: Kurrentschrift or Laufschrift, both meaning literally ‘running font’

Similarly to the Latin fonts, italic and handwritten shapes of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for hand-written or stylish types) are very different from their upright shapes. In certain cases, the correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic fonts: for example, handwritten Cyrillic m is a possible lowercase counterpart of T instead of M.

The standard Cyrillic letters compared to the ones used in Serbian and Macedonian, both in regular shape and italic/cursive
The standard Cyrillic letters compared to the ones used in Serbian and Macedonian, both in regular shape and italic/cursive

As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically-sloped oblique font (naklonniy shrift—‘sloped’, or ‘slanted font’) instead of italic.

A boldfaced font is called poluzhirniy shrift (‘semi-bold font’), because there existed fully-boldfaced shapes which are out of use since the beginning of the twentieth century.

A bold italic combination (bold slanted) doesn't exist for all font families.

In Serbian and Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for advertisements, road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. The Cyrillic lowercase B, б, has a slightly different design both in the regular and italic/cursive shape, which is related to the lowercase Greek letter Delta, δ.

The following table shows the differences between the upright and italic/cursive Cyrillic letters as used in Russian. Italic, and especially cursive glyphs that are bound to confuse beginners are highlighted (confusing either because of an entirely different look, or because of being a false friend with an entirely different Latin character).

If your browser does not support Cyrillic text, see this graphical version.
а б в г д е ё ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я
а б в г д е ё ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я

[edit] As used in various languages

Main articles: Cyrillic alphabet variants, Languages using Cyrillic, and List of Cyrillic letters
Distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet worldwide. The dark green shows the countries that use Cyrillic as the one main script; the lighter green those that use Cyrillic alongside another official script.
Distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet worldwide. The dark green shows the countries that use Cyrillic as the one main script; the lighter green those that use Cyrillic alongside another official script.

Sounds are indicated using the IPA. These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions-for example, Russian его (yego, 'him/his'), which is pronounced [jɪˈvo] instead of [jɪˈgo].

Note that transliterated spellings of names may vary, especially y/j/i, but also gh/g/h and zh/j.

[edit] Derived alphabets

The first alphabet partly derived from Cyrillic is Abur, applied to the Komi language. Other writing systems derived from Cyrillic were applied to Caucasian languages and the Molodtsov alphabet for Komi language.

[edit] Relationship to other writing systems

[edit] Latin alphabets

A number of languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in the Latin alphabet, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek and Moldavian. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, official status shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova and Azerbaijan, but Uzbekistan still uses both systems.

[edit] Romanization

There are various systems for romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin characters, and transcription to convey pronunciation.

Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:

See also romanization of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Russian, and Ukrainian.

[edit] Cyrillization

Representing other writing systems with Cyrillic letters is called Cyrillization.

[edit] Computer encoding

Further information: Cyrillic characters in Unicode
Cyrillic characters in Unicode
* Unicode.org chartPDF
    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
400   Ѐ Ё Ђ Ѓ Є Ѕ І Ї Ј Љ Њ Ћ Ќ Ѝ Ў Џ
410   А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П
420   Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
430   а б в г д е ж з и й к л м н о п
440   р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я
450   ѐ ё ђ ѓ є ѕ і ї ј љ њ ћ ќ ѝ ў џ
460   Ѡ ѡ Ѣ ѣ Ѥ ѥ Ѧ ѧ Ѩ ѩ Ѫ ѫ Ѭ ѭ Ѯ ѯ
470   Ѱ ѱ Ѳ ѳ Ѵ ѵ Ѷ ѷ Ѹ ѹ Ѻ ѻ Ѽ ѽ Ѿ ѿ
480   Ҁ ҁ ҂ ҃ ҄ ҅ Ӽ ҈ ҉ Ҋ ҋ Ҍ ҍ Ҏ ҏ
490   Ґ ґ Ғ ғ Ҕ ҕ Җ җ Ҙ ҙ Қ қ Ҝ ҝ Ҟ ҟ
4A0   Ҡ ҡ Ң ң Ҥ ҥ Ҧ ҧ Ҩ ҩ Ҫ ҫ Ҭ ҭ Ү ү
4B0   Ұ ұ Ҳ ҳ Ҵ ҵ Ҷ ҷ Ҹ ҹ Һ һ Ҽ ҽ Ҿ ҿ
4C0   Ӏ Ӂ ӂ Ӄ ӄ Ӆ ӆ Ӈ ӈ Ӊ ӊ Ӌ ӌ Ӎ ӎ
4D0   Ӑ ӑ Ӓ ӓ Ӕ ӕ Ӗ ӗ Ә ә Ӛ ӛ Ӝ ӝ Ӟ ӟ
4E0   Ӡ ӡ Ӣ ӣ Ӥ ӥ Ӧ ӧ Ө ө Ӫ ӫ Ӭ ӭ Ӯ ӯ
4F0   Ӱ ӱ Ӳ ӳ Ӵ ӵ Ӷ ӷ Ӹ ӹ Ӻ ӻ Ӽ ӽ Ӿ ӿ
500   Ԁ ԁ Ԃ ԃ Ԅ ԅ Ԇ ԇ Ԉ ԉ Ԋ ԋ Ԍ ԍ Ԏ ԏ
510   Ԑ ԑ Ԓ ԓ Ԕ ԕ Ԗ ԗ Ԙ ԙ Ԛ ԛ Ԝ ԝ Ԟ ԟ
520   Ԡ ԡ Ԣ ԣ Ԥ ԥ Ԧ ԧ Ԩ ԩ Ԫ ԫ Ԭ ԭ Ԯ ԯ

In Unicode, the Cyrillic and Cyrillic Supplementary blocks extend from U+0400 to U+052F. The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 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 does not include accented Cyrillic letters, but they can be combined by adding U+0301 ("combining acute accent") after the accented vowel (e.g., ы́ э́ ю́ я́). Some languages, including modern Church Slavonic, are still not fully supported.

Unicode 5.1, released on April 4, 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, Abkhaz, Aleut, Chuvash, Kurdish, and Mordvin. [2]

Punctuation for Cyrillic text is similar to that used in European Latin-alphabet languages.

Other character encoding systems for Cyrillic:

  • CP866 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in MS-DOS also known as GOST-alternative
  • ISO/IEC 8859-5 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by International Organization for Standardization
  • KOI8-R – 8-bit native Russian character encoding
  • KOI8-U – KOI8-R with addition of Ukrainian letters
  • MIK – 8-bit native Bulgarian character encoding for use in DOS
  • Windows-1251 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in Microsoft Windows. Former standard encoding in some Linux distributions for Belarusian and Bulgarian, but currently displaced by UTF-8.
  • GOST-main
  • GB 2312 - Principally simplified Chinese encodings, but there are also basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).
  • JIS and Shift JIS - Principally Japanese encodings, but there are also basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).

[edit] Keyboard layouts

Each language has its own standard keyboard layout, adopted from typewriters. With the flexibility of computer input methods, there are also transliterating or homophonic keyboard layouts made for typists who are more familiar with other layouts, like the common English qwerty keyboard. When practical Cyrillic keyboard layouts or fonts are not available, computer users sometimes use transliteration or look-alike "volapuk" encoding to type languages which are normally written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

See Keyboard layouts for non-Roman alphabetic scripts.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, Glagolitic alphabet, 2008, O.Ed., citation: "it is probably closely related to the Cyrillic alphabet. Slavic tradition is generally inconsistent as to which script to attribute to the Eastern Orthodox “apostle to the Slavs,” St. Cyril (or Constantine). Although dissimilar to Cyrillic in letter form, Glagolitic had approximately the same number of letters as Cyrillic and identical sound values for the letters; this implies a common origin for the two systems."
  2. ^ 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,..." (p 32) and "in most Cyrillic faces, the lower case is close in color and shape to Latin small caps" (p 107).
  3. ^ Name ital'yanskiy shrift (Italian font) in Russian refers to a particular font family [1], whereas rimskiy shrift (roman font) is just a synonym for Latin font, Latin alphabet.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Look up Cyrillic alphabet in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

[edit] External links

Letters of the Cyrillic alphabet
А
A		 Б
Be		 В
Ve		 Г
Ge		 Ґ
Ge upturn		 Д
De		 Ђ
Dje		 Ѓ
Gje		 Е
Ye		 Ё
Yo		 Є
Ye
Ж
Zhe		 З
Ze		 Ѕ
Dze		 И
I		 І
Dotted I		 Ї
Yi		 Й
Short I		 Ј
Je		 К
Ka		 Л
El		 Љ
Lje
М
Em		 Н
En		 Њ
Nje		 О
O		 П
Pe		 Р
Er		 С
Es		 Т
Te		 Ћ
Tshe		 Ќ
Kje		 У
U
Ў
Short U		 Ф
Ef		 Х
Kha		 Ц
Tse		 Ч
Che		 Џ
Dzhe		 Ш
Sha		 Щ
Shcha		 Ъ
Hard sign (Yer)		 Ы
Yery		 Ь
Soft sign (Yeri)
Э
E		 Ю
Yu		 Я
Ya
Cyrillic Non-Slavic Letters
Ӏ
Palochka		 Ә
Cyrillic Schwa		 Ғ
Ayn		 Ҙ
Dhe		 Ҡ
Bashkir Qa		 Қ
Qaf		 Ң
Ng		 Ө
Barred O		 Ү
Straight U		 Ұ
Straight U
with stroke		 Һ
He
Cyrillic Archaic Letters
ІА
A iotified		 Ѥ
E iotified		 Ѧ
Yus small		 Ѫ
Yus big		 Ѩ
Yus small iotified		 Ѭ
Yus big iotified		 Ѯ
Ksi		 Ѱ
Psi		 Ѳ
Fita		 Ѵ
Izhitsa		 Ѷ
Izhitsa okovy
Ҁ
Koppa		 Ѹ
Uk		 Ѡ
Omega		 Ѿ
Ot		 Ѣ
Yat