Cyrillic

Probably all of you have seen the Cyrillic alphabet around somewhere, if only in badly-made eighties movies with Russian characters or on those signs in public places that are in about 20 languages . This is because, unlike many ancient writing systems, the Cyrillic alphabet survived and is currently used by over fifty languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Chechen, and Bulgarian. The map shows the countries in the world that use the Cyrillic alphabet. Dark green means Cyrillic is the only official alphabet, and the lighter green means that it is used along with others.

The Cyrillic alphabet, however, was not the first alphabet used by the Slavic people. The first one was called Glagolitic, and it is believed to have been developed, or at least formalized, by two brothers, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, at around the year 860 CE so that they could translate the Bible into Old Church Slavonic. This is the same as the reason that the Gothic alphabet was developed, which Amanda mentioned a few days ago . I think it is easy to forget how much influence the Bible has had on our world in things that aren't directly related to religion, but it really has shaped our current world incredibly much. The Glagolitic alphabet was developed from the Greek alphabet as well as a few other symbols to stand for sounds that were in Slavic languages but not the original Greek, and probably had around 41 letters, although no one is sure the exact number.

Cyrillic itself was probably developed a little bit later by St. Cyril's students, although it is often attributed to St. Cyril himself (hence the name). It was also based on the Greek alphabet, but it took the symbols for non-Greek sounds from the Glagonic alphabet. It was used to write Old Church Slavonic as well as Glagonic, and although there was a while when they were used at the same time, it eventually won out and became the standard alphabet for Slavic languages as well as languages of countries that Slavs conquered (I think that mostly happened during the Soviet Union days, but that is not exactly in the time period we are studying right now). Of course, just like the Roman alphabet changed, the Cyrillic alphabet has changed since it was first created to fit each individual language better. The picture is an alphabet quilt of the modern Russian version, which I thought was super adorable. Below is a chart of the letters in the original version. (Sorry it is so huge. Blogger's formatting options are terrible unless you know HTML, which I don't. I think the chart is also possibly missing two letters, because the character wouldn't show up. If any letter looks particularly interesting, just click on it and Wikipedia will tell you more about it ^_^)

Unicode	Name	IPA	Unicode	Name	IPA	Unicode	Name	IPA
А а	azŭ	[a]	О о	onŭ	[o]	Ѣ ѣ	jatĭ	[æ]
Б б	buky	[b]	П п	pokoi	[p]	Ѥ ѥ	je:	[iɛ]
В в	vědě	[v]	Р р	rĭci	[r]	Ю ю	ju	[iu]
Г г	glagoli	[ɡ]	С с	slovo	[s]	Ѧ ѧ	ęsŭ	[ɛ̃]
Д д	dobro	[d]	Т т	tvrdo	[t]	Ѩ ѩ	jęsŭ	[jɛ̃]
Є є	estĭ	[ɛ]	Оу оу	ukŭ	[u]	Ѫ ѫ	ǫsŭ	[ɔ̃]
Ж ж	živěte	[ʒ]	Ф ф	frtŭ	[f]	Ѭ ѭ	jǫsŭ	[jɔ̃]
Ѕ ѕ	dzělo	[dz]	Х х	xěrŭ	[x]	Ѯ ѯ	ksi	[ks]
З з	zemlja	[z]	Ѡ ѡ	otŭ	[oː]	Ѱ ѱ	psi	[ps]
И и	iže	[i]	Ц ц	ci	[ts]	Ѳ ѳ	fita	[t]~[θ]~[f]
І і / Ї ї	i/ižei	[i]	Ч ч	črvĭ	[tʃ]	Ѵ ѵ	ižica	[ɪ], [y], [v]
К к	kako	[k]	Ш ш	ša	[ʃ]
Л л	ljudije	[l]	Щ щ	šta	[ʃt]
М м	myslite	[m]	Ъ ъ	jerŭ	[ŭ]
Н н	našĭ	[n]	Ь ь	jerĭ	[ĭ]

To be honest, I really want to learn how to read Cyrillic now. This happens whenever I spend a certain amount of time with a specific language or alphabet. It is why I can read Korean (as in, I know how the words are pronounced), even though I don't know what any of it means. Maybe I will add Russian to the list, hmmm.... (but Arabic is phonetic too, and it is so pretty. I might have to do that first...)