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Font: Cyrillic
Traditionally, the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet is
attributed to Saint Cyril and his brother Methodius who evangelized
the Southern Slavs in the middle of the 9th century AD. The
inventors of Cyrillic script wanted to create a means for recording
religious texts translated into the Slavic tongue of Moravia.
Especially in its older form (see 'Old Church Slavonic'), it is
evident that Cyrillic was derived from the uncial style of Greek
script. In its early days, it was commonly referred to as
azbuka, a name meaning 'alphabet' (which is taken from names
of the first two letters). The name 'Cyrillic' came into effect much
later in history. Though in general it follows the alphabetic order
of Greek script, Cyrillic breaks that pattern for all the letters
which represent sounds unknown in Greek. Moreover, Cyrillic follows
the Greek scheme for assigning numeric values to letters (see
similar discussion under 'Glagolitic'). Since Greek script suited
the Greek language ideally, it is only natural that its adaptation
to Slavic languages would be less than perfect. In fact, it resulted
in a good number of redundancies where several letters represent a
single sound. In spite of these deficiencies, Cyrillic script took
hold in Bulgaria and Serbia, spreading to Russia soon thereafter.
For several centuries, the Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts coexisted
until Cyrillic gained the upper hand in the 13th century AD. Many
scholars believe that during that time, Glagolitic influenced the
development of several Cyrillic letters. In the period which
followed, Glagolitic gained a strong foothold in Croatia only.
Eager to facilitate the publication of non-ecclesiatic books in
Russia, Czar Peter the Great launched a reform of the Cyrillic
alphabet. As a result, some redundant letters were removed and a new
one was introduced. As a lover of European culture, the Czar also
wanted to make Cyrillic stylistically closer to the then current
typefaces for the Latin alphabet. However, many of the changes were
enforced as standard practice only after the Russian Revolution. In
the reform of 1918, additional changes were made, including the
removal of letters used only in words borrowed from Greek. Since
that time, Cyrillic script has taken on its contemporary form.
As a script for Slavic languages, Cyrillic has served its purpose
well. Today, it is used in writing several languages including
Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian.
While the primary Cyrillic letters served well as the basis of the
pan-Slavic alphabet, the differences in phonologies among these
languages had led to small differences in the repertoire and use of
Cyrillic. Many of these differences were standardized first in the
19th century. Under the Soviet regime, Cyrillic was also used to
write non-Slavic languages spoken within the Soviet Union. Among
these are languages in the Persian, Caucasian and Turkic families
such as Tajik, Abkhaz, Azeri, Uzbek, and Tatar. Naturally, the
phonologies of these languages differ greatly from those of the
Slavic family. To accommodate these differences, the Cyrillic
orthographies for these languages made abundant use of additional
diacritics, appendages, digraphs, as well as additional letters
borrowed from the Latin alphabet. Since the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, several of the republics have abandoned the use of
Cyrillic, often reverting to re-Soviet traditions.
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