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The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Turkic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, 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.
, around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them.List of countries by population With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin script and Greek alphabet alphabets.
The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by the disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius, who had previously created the Glagolitic script. Among them were Clement of Ohrid, Naum of Preslav, Constantine of Preslav, Joan Ekzarh, Chernorizets Hrabar, Saint Angelar, Sava and other scholars. Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05, s.v. "Cyril and Methodius, Saints"; Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Incorporated, Warren E. Preece – 1972, p. 846, s.v., "Cyril and Methodius, Saints" and "Eastern Orthodoxy, Missions ancient and modern"; Encyclopedia of World Cultures, David H. Levinson, 1991, p. 239, s.v., "Social Science"; Eric M. Meyers, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, p. 151, 1997; Lunt, Slavic Review, June 1964, p. 216; Roman Jakobson, Crucial problems of Cyrillo-Methodian Studies; Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky, A Handbook of Slavic Studies, p. 98; V. Bogdanovich, History of the ancient Serbian literature, Belgrade, 1980, p. 119. (2025). 9780191614880, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191614880 The script is named in honor of Saint Cyril.
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. John the Exarch); and Chernorizets Hrabar, among others. The school was also a center of translation, mostly of Byzantine Empire authors. The Cyrillic script is derived from the Greek alphabet letters, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Glagolitic and Cyrillic were formalized by the Byzantine Saints Cyril and Methodius and their Bulgarian disciples, such as Saints Saint Naum, Clement, Saint Angelar, and Sava. They spread and taught Christianity in the whole of Bulgaria. Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05, s.v. "Cyril and Methodius, Saints"; Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Incorporated, Warren E. Preece – 1972, p. 846, s.v., "Cyril and Methodius, Saints" and "Eastern Orthodoxy, Missions ancient and modern"; Encyclopedia of World Cultures, David H. Levinson, 1991, p. 239, s.v., "Social Science"; Eric M. Meyers, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, p. 151, 1997; Lunt, Slavic Review, June, 1964, p. 216; Roman Jakobson, Crucial problems of Cyrillo-Methodian Studies; Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky, A Handbook of Slavic Studies, p. 98; V. Bogdanovich, History of the ancient Serbian literature, Belgrade, 1980, p. 119.The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05, O.Ed. Saints Cyril and Methodius "Cyril and Methodius, Saints) 869 and 884, respectively, "Greek missionaries, brothers, called Apostles to the Slavs and fathers of Slavonic literature."Encyclopædia Britannica, Major alphabets of the world, Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets, 2008, O.Ed. "The two early Slavic alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic, were invented by St. Cyril, or Constantine (c. 827–869), and St. Methodii (c. 825–884). These men from Thessaloniki who became apostles to the southern Slavs, whom they converted to Christianity." Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students in the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon the Great that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.
Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic Romanians. The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav, in the medieval city itself and at nearby Patleina Monastery, both in present-day Shumen Province, as well as in the Ravna Monastery and in the Varna Monastery. The new script became the basis of used in various languages in Orthodox Church-dominated Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic languages (such as Romanian, until the 1860s). For centuries, Cyrillic was also used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs.
Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language, especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. 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 script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century.
The literature produced in Old Church Slavonic soon spread north from Bulgaria and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.Benjamin W. Fortson. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, p. 374.
Cyrillic in modern-day Bosnia is an extinct and disputed variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval Bosnia. Paleographers consider the earliest features of script had likely begun to appear between the 10th or 11th century, with the Humac tablet to be the first such document using this type of script and is believed to date from this period. It was used continuously until the 18th century, with sporadic usage extending into the 20th century.
With the orthographic reform of Saint Evtimiy of Tarnovo and other prominent representatives of the Tarnovo Literary School of the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Gregory Tsamblak and Constantine of Kostenets, the school influenced Russian, Serbian, Wallachian and Moldavian medieval culture. This is known in Russia as the second South Slavs influence.
In 170810, 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 new letterforms, called the Civil script, became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were abolished and several new letters were introduced designed by Peter himself. Letters became distinguished between upper and lower case. West European typography culture was also adopted. The pre-reform letterforms, called poluustav (), were notably retained in Church Slavonic and are sometimes used in Russian even today, especially if one wants to give a text a 'Slavic' or 'archaic' feel.
The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. 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. 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., Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from the Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to the reform. Today, many languages in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia are written in Cyrillic alphabets.
| The early Cyrillic alphabetА. Н. Стеценко. Хрестоматия по Старославянскому Языку, 1984.Cubberley, Paul. The Slavic Alphabets, 1996. | ||||
Yeri () was originally a ligature of Yer and I ( + = ). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І: (not an ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from ), , (ligature of and ), , . Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example = = , as were typographical variants like = . There were also commonly used ligatures like = .
| + Cyrillic numerals | ||||||||
| 9 | ||||||||
| 90 | ||||||||
| () | ||||||||
| 900 | ||||||||
| () | ||||||||
The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improved computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8.
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of Civil script (ru) in the early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek typefaces that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of , the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), modern Cyrillic typeface are much the same as modern Latin types of the same typeface family. The development of some Cyrillic from Latin ones has also contributed to a visual Latinization of Cyrillic type.
Cyrillic typefaces, as well as Latin ones, have roman type and italic type forms (practically all popular modern computer fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are shared by both). However, the native typeface terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense. Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns:
[[File:Cyrillic alternates.svg|thumb|right|200px| Alternative variants of lowercase (cursive) Cyrillic letters: Б/б, Д/д, Г/г, И/и, П/п, Т/т, Ш/ш.
See also:
]]
| + Differences between upright and italic Cyrillic letters of the Russian alphabet; italic forms significantly different from their upright analogues, or especially confusing to users of a Latin alphabet, are highlighted; also available as a . |
Note: in some typefaces or styles, , i.e. the lowercase italic Cyrillic , may look like Latin , and , i.e. lowercase italic Cyrillic , may look like small-capital italic .
In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different, to more closely resemble the handwritten letters. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized in small caps form. (1994). 9788636302965, Matica Srpska. ISBN 9788636302965
| + Mandatory (blue) and optional (green) italic lowercase variants, alongside unique letters (red), in South-European orthography |
Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Serbian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in the Faux Cyrillic row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems.
In the Bulgarian alphabet, many lowercase letterforms may more closely resemble the cursive forms on the one hand and Latin glyphs on the other hand, e.g. by having an ascender or descender or by using rounded arcs instead of sharp corners. Sometimes, uppercase letters may have a different shape as well, e.g. more triangular, Д and Л, like Greek delta Δ and lambda Λ.
| + Differences between Russian and Bulgarian glyphs of upright Cyrillic lowercase letters; Bulgarian glyphs significantly different from their Russian analogues or different from their italic form are highlighted |
Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Bulgarian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in the Faux Cyrillic row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems; in some cases, such as ж with k-like ascender, no such approximation exists.
Slavic languages:
Non-Slavic languages of Russia:
Non-Slavic languages in other countries:
The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska, Slavic Europe (except for Western Slavs and Slovenian), the Caucasus, the languages of Idel-Ural, Siberia, and the Russian Far East.
The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic was Abur, used for the Komi language. Other Cyrillic alphabets include the Molodtsov alphabet for the Komi language and various alphabets for Caucasian languages.
Standard Serbian language uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to the Serbian constitution; however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity.
The Zhuang alphabet, used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from the alphabet in 1982 and replaced with Latin letters that closely resembled the letters they replaced.
Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:
See also Romanization of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Russian, Macedonian and Ukrainian.
| А A | А́ A with acute | А̀ A with grave | А̂ A with circumflex | А̄ A with macron | Ӑ A with breve | Ӓ A with diaeresis | Б Be | В Ve | Г Ge (Ghe) | Ґ Ghe upturn | Д De |
| Dje | Gje | Е Ye | Е́ Ye with acute | Ѐ Ye with grave | Е̂ Ye with circumflex | Е̄ Ye with macron | Ё Yo | Ukrainian Ye | Є́ Ukrainian Ye with acute | Ж Zhe | З Ze |
| Zje | Dze | И I | І Dotted I | І́ Dotted I with acute | Ї Yi | Ꙇ Iota | И́ I with acute | Ѝ I with grave | И̂ I with circumflex | Ӣ I with macron | Short I |
| Ӥ I with diaeresis | Ј Je | К Ka | Л El | Lje | М Em | Н En | Nje | О O | О́ O with acute | О̀ O with grave | О̂ O with circumflex |
| О̄ O with macron | Ӧ O with diaeresis | П Pe | Р Er | С Es | Sje | Т Te | Tshe | Kje | У U | У́ U with acute | У̀ U with grave |
| У̂ U with circumflex | Ӯ U with macron | Ў Short U | Ӱ U with diaeresis | Ф Ef | Х Kha | Ц Tse | Ч Che | Dzhe | Ш Sha | Shcha | Neutral Yer |
| Hard sign | Ъ̀ Hard sign with grave | Yery | Yery | Soft sign | Э E | Э́ E with acute | Ю Yu | Ю́ Yu with acute | Ю̀ Yu with grave | Я Ya | |
| Я́ Ya with acute | Я̀ Ya with grave | ||||||||||
| Examples of non-Slavic Cyrillic letters (see List of Cyrillic letters for more) | |||||||||||
| А̊ A with ring | Ә Schwa | Ӛ Schwa with diaeresis | Ӕ Ae | Ғ Ghayn | Ҕ Ge with middle hook | Ӻ Ghayn with hook | Ӷ Ge with descender | Ӂ Zhe with breve | Ӝ Zhe with diaeresis | Ҙ Dhe | Abkhazian Dze |
| Bashkir Qa | Ҟ Ka with stroke | Ӊ En with tail | Ң En with descender | Ӈ En with hook | En-ge | О̆ O with breve | Ө Oe | O-hook | Ҏ Er with tick | Ҫ The | Ҭ Te with descender |
| Ӳ U with double acute | Ү Ue | Ұ Kazakh Short U | Ҳ Kha with descender | Ӽ Kha with hook | Ӿ Kha with stroke | Shha | Ҵ Te Tse | Ҷ Che with descender | Khakassian Che | Ҹ Che with vertical stroke | Abkhazian Che |
| Semisoft sign | Palochka | ||||||||||
| Cyrillic letters used in the past | |||||||||||
| Yat | Iotated A | Iotated E | Yus | Yus | Yus | Yus | Ѯ Ksi | Ѱ Psi | Ꙟ Yn | Fita | Izhitsa |
| Izhitsa okovy | Ҁ Koppa | ОУ Uk | Ѡ Omega | Ѿ Ot | |||||||
| + Cyrillic alphabets comparison table ! colspan="81" style="text-align: center" | Early/Reference scripts |
The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are essentially the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, no longer used. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script.
Unicode as a general rule does not include accented Cyrillic letters. A few exceptions include:
To indicate stressed or long vowels, combining diacritical marks can be used after the respective letter (for example, : е́ у́ э́ etc.).
Some languages, including Church Slavonic, are still not fully supported.
Unicode 5.1, released on 4 April 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 language, Aleut language, Chuvash language, Kurdish language, and Moksha language.
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