The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabeticwriting system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Church Slavonic language, and was historically used for its ancestor, Old Church Slavonic. It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillic script, which is used for some Slavic languages (such as Russian), and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.
The Glagolitic alphabet was created by the Byzantine monk Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid of his brother Saint Methodius, around 863.[3] Most scholars agree that Cyrillic, on the other hand, was created by Cyril's students at the Preslav Literary School in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books, based on uncial Greek but retaining some Glagolitic letters for sounds not present in Greek.[4][5][6][7] At the time, the Preslav Literary School was the most important early literary and cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs:[6]
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.
The earliest Cyrillic texts are found in northeastern Bulgaria, in the vicinity of Preslav—the Krepcha inscription, dating back to 921,[8] and a ceramic vase from Preslav, dating back to 931.[6] Moreover, unlike the other literary centre in the First Bulgarian Empire, the Ohrid Literary School, which continued to use Glagolitic well into the 12th century, the School at Preslav was using Cyrillic in the early 900s.[9] The systematization of Cyrillic may have been undertaken at the Council of Preslav in 893, when the Old Church Slavonic liturgy was adopted by the First Bulgarian Empire.[1]
American scholar Horace Lunt has alternatively suggested that Cyrillics 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,[3] and the majority of uncial Cyrillic letters were identical to their Greek uncial counterparts.[1]
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.[3] Particularly, this principle is violated by certain vowel letters, which represent [j] plus the vowel if they are not preceded by a consonant.[3] It is also violated by a significant failure to distinguish between /ji/ and /jĭ/ orthographically.[3] 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.[4] Letters served as numerals as well as phonetic signs; the values of the numerals were directly borrowed from their Greek-letter analogues.[3] Letters without Greek equivalents mostly had no numeral values, whereas one letter, koppa, had only a numeric value with no phonetic value.[3]
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.
The form of the Russian alphabet underwent a change when Tsar Peter the Great introduced the civil script (Russian: гражданский шрифт, romanized:graždanskiy šrift, or гражданка, graždanka), in contrast to the prevailing church typeface, (Russian: церковнославя́нский шрифт, romanized: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 orthographies for most other languages. Today, the early orthography and typesetting standards remain in use only in Church Slavonic.
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.
View of the cave monastery near the village of Krepcha, Opaka Municipality in Bulgaria. Here is the oldest Cyrillic inscription dated of 921.[10]
A more complete early Cyrillic abecedary (on the top half of the left side), this one written by the boy Onfim between 1240 and 1260 AD (birch bark document № 199).[11]
When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [dʲ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.
The form ꙃ had the phonetic value [dz] and no numeral value, whereas the form ѕ was used only as a numeral and had no phonetic value.[3] Since the 12th century, ѕ came to be used instead of ꙃ.[14][15] In many manuscripts з is used instead, suggesting lenition had taken place.[3]
When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [ʎ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.[3]
When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [ɲ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.[3]
When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю or ѭ), this letter is pronounced [rʲ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.[3] This palatalization was lost rather early in South Slavic speech.[3]
When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [c]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.
This letter was not needed for Slavic but used to transcribe Greek Φ and Latin ph and f.[3] It was probably, but not certainly, pronounced as [f] rather than [p]; however, in some cases it has been found as a transcription of Greek π.[3]
This letter was rarely used, mostly appearing in the interjection "oh", in the preposition ‹otŭ›, in Greek transcription, and as a decorative capital.[3]
This letter varied in pronunciation from region to region; it may have originally represented the reflexes of [tʲ].[3] It was sometimes replaced by the digraph шт.[3] Pronounced [ʃtʃ] in Old East Slavic. Later analyzed as a Ш-Т ligature by folk etymology, but neither the Cyrillic nor the Glagolitic glyph originated as such a ligature.[3]
Pronounced [ja] when not preceded by a consonant. In western South Slavic dialects of Old Church Slavonic, this letter had a more closed pronunciation, perhaps [ɛ] or [e].[3] This letter was written only after a consonant; in all other positions, ꙗ was used instead.[3] An exceptional document is Pages of Undolski, where ѣ is used instead of ꙗ.
There was no [jo] sound in early Slavic, so І-ОУ did not need to be distinguished from І-О. After č, š, ž, c, dz, št, and žd, this letter was pronounced [u], without iotation.
This letter does not exist in the oldest (South Slavic) Cyrillic manuscripts, but only in East Slavic ones.[3] It was probably not present in the original Cyrillic alphabet.[1] Called юсъ малый йотированный (iotated little yus) in Russian.
This letter was not needed for Slavic but was used to transcribe Greek and as a numeral. It seems to have been generally pronounced [t], as the oldest texts sometimes replace instances of it with т.[3] Normal Old Church Slavonic pronunciation probably did not have a phone [θ].[3]
This letter had no phonetic value, and was used only as a numeral. After about 1300, it was replaced as a numeral by črĭvĭ.[3]
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.[12]
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.[3] In numerals, the ones place was to the left of the tens place, the reverse of the order used in modern Arabic numerals.[3] Thousands are formed using a special symbol, ҂ (U+0482), which was attached to the lower left corner of the numeral.[3] 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.[3] 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 diacritic.[3]
Several diacritics, adopted from Polytonic Greek orthography, were also used, but were seemingly redundant[3] (these may not appear correctly in all web browsers; they are supposed to be directly above the letter, not off to its upper right):
а҅dasia or dasy pneuma, rough breathing mark (U+0485)
а҆psili, zvatel'tse, or psilon pneuma, soft breathing mark (U+0486). Signals a word-initial vowel, at least in later Church Slavonic.
а҆̀ Combined zvatel'tse and varia is called apostrof.
а҆́ Combined zvatel'tse and oksia is called iso.
д꙽, д̾Yerok[ru] or payerok (U+A67D, U+033E), indicating an omitted 'jerŭ' (ъ) after a letter.[16]
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.[3]
·ano teleia (U+0387), a middle dot used to separate phrases, words, or parts of words[3]
The Cyrillic script, Slavonic script or simply 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, and used by many other minority languages.
The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity there. After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, their disciples were expelled and they moved to the First Bulgarian Empire instead. The Early Cyrillic alphabet, which developed gradually in the Preslav Literary School by Greek alphabet scribes who incorporated some Glagolitic letters, gradually replaced Glagolitic in that region. Glagolitic remained in use alongside Latin in the Kingdom of Croatia and alongside Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire, and later mainly for cryptographic purposes.
Cyril and Methodius were brothers, Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic is the first Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic subgroup of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and remains the liturgical language of many Christian Orthodox churches. Until the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666, Church Slavonic was the mandatory language of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ya, Ia or Ja is a letter of the Cyrillic script, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus, and possibly Iotated A. Among modern Slavic languages, it is used in the East Slavic languages and Bulgarian. It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Uralic, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.
Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The language appears also in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.
Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek τίτλος, "title" and is a cognate of the words tittle and tilde. The titlo still appears in inscriptions on modern icons and in service books printed in Church Slavonic.
The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is used to write the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.
En is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
The Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, called Old Slavonic. In the 10th century, Cyrillic script became used in Kievan Rus' to write Old East Slavic, from which the Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian alphabets later evolved. The modern Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total: 21 consonants, 1 semivowel, 10 vowels and 1 palatalization sign. Sometimes the apostrophe (') is also included, which has a phonetic meaning and is a mandatory sign in writing, but is not considered as a letter and is not included in the alphabet.
The Preslav Literary School, also known as the "Pliska Literary School" or "Pliska-Preslav Literary school" was the first literary school in the medieval First Bulgarian Empire. It was established by Boris I in 886 in Bulgaria's capital, Pliska. In 893, Simeon I moved the seat of the school from the First Bulgarian capital Pliska to the new capital, Veliki Preslav. Preslav was captured and burnt by the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces in 972 in the aftermath of Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria.
Chernorizets Hrabar was a Bulgarian monk, scholar and writer who worked at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. He is credited as the author of On the Letters.
Dze is a letter of the Cyrillic script, used in the Macedonian alphabet to represent the voiced alveolar affricate, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨ds⟩ in "needs" or "kids" in English. It is derived from the letter dzelo or zelo of the Early Cyrillic alphabet, and it was used historically in all Slavic languages that use Cyrillic.
Izhitsa is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet and several later alphabets, usually the last in the row. It originates from the Greek letter upsilon and was used in words and names derived from or via the Greek language, such as кѵрилъ or флаѵии. It represented the sounds or as normal letters и and в, respectively. The Glagolitic alphabet has a corresponding letter with the name izhitsa as well. Also, izhitsa in its standard form or, most often, in a tailed variant was part of a digraph оѵ/оу representing the sound. The digraph is known as Cyrillic "uk", and today's Cyrillic letter u originates from its simplified form.
Iotated E or Iotated Ukrainian Ye also known as Iye(Ѥѥ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is used in the Church Slavonic language and Early Cyrillic.
Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century, when Peter the Great replaced it with Arabic numerals as part of his civil script reform initiative. Cyrillic numbers played a role in Peter the Great's currency reform plans, too, with silver wire kopecks issued after 1696 and mechanically minted coins issued between 1700 and 1722 inscribed with the date using Cyrillic numerals. By 1725, Russian Imperial coins had transitioned to Arabic numerals. The Cyrillic numerals may still be found in books written in the Church Slavonic language.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language that originated in medieval Serbia. Reformed in 19th century by the Serbian philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write modern standard Serbian, the other being Gaj's Latin alphabet.
Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world. The creator is Saint Clement of Ohrid from the Preslav literary school in the First Bulgarian Empire.
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 commonalities, but the exact nature of relationship between the Glagolitic alphabet and the Early Cyrillic alphabet, their order of development, and influence on each other has been a matter of great study, controversy, and dispute in Slavic studies.
Glagolitic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Glagolitic script, generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril. They are similar to Cyrillic numerals, except that numeric values are assigned according to the native alphabetic order of the Glagolitic alphabet. Use of Glagolitic script and numerals declined through the Middle Ages and by the 17th century Glagolitic was used almost only in religious writings. It is unclear if the use of Glagolitic numerals persisted as long as the use of Glagolitic script.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Auty, R. Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts and Glossary. 1977.
↑ Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. "First Alphabet Found in Egypt", Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
↑ Dvornik, Francis (1956). The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences. p.179. The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or „modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches, and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing, which was more akin to the Greek uncial, simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs.
1 2 3 Curta, Florin (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.221–222. ISBN978-0-521-81539-0.
Franklin, Simon. 2002. Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-511-03025-8.
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. ISBN0-8020-3105-6
Simovyc, V., and J. B. Rudnyckyj, "The history of Ukrainian orthography", in Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1 (op cit).
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View of the cave monastery near the village of Krepcha, Opaka Municipality in Bulgaria. Here is the oldest Cyrillic inscription dated of 921. [10]
The Cyrillic alphabet on birch bark document № 591 from ancient Novgorod (Russia). Dated to 1025–1050 AD.
