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Cyrillic alphabet

Encyclopedia : C : CY : CYR : Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. It has also been used for other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language which is written with it.

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
Ukrainian Ye
Ж
Zhe 		З
Ze 		Ѕ
Dze 		И
I 		І
Ukrainian 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
U short 		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
History of the Alphabet
Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
Meroitic 3rd c. BC
Complete genealogy

Contents

History

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

The layout of the alphabet is derived from the early Cyrillic alphabet, itself a derivative of the Glagolitic alphabet, a ninth century uncial cursive usually credited to two brothers from Thessaloniki, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. The glyphs in the Cyrillic alphabet are however mainly Byzantine Greek letters. Some of them, especially those representing sounds that did not exist in medieval Greek, retain their Glagolitic forms.

Whereas 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. Though it is usually attributed to Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian (Ohrid was one of the two scholar centers in the First Bulgarian Empire) disciple of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the alphabet is more likely to have developed at the Preslav Literary School in northeastern Bulgaria, where the oldest Cyrillic inscriptions have been found, dating back to the 940s. The theory is supported by the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet almost completely replaced the Glagolitic in northeastern Bulgaria as early as the end of the tenth century, whereas the Ohrid Literary School—where Saint Clement worked, continued to use the Glagolitic until the twelfth century. Of course, as the disciples of St. Cyril and Methodius spread throughout the First Bulgarian Empire, it is likely that the two schools were a part of a single tradition.

Among the reasons for the replacement of the Glagolithic with the Cyrillic alphabet is the greater simplicity and ease of use of the latter and its closeness with the Greek alphabet, which had been well known in the First 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 widely 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 Slavic world, 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 (and the numerical meanings of the letters)
А Б В Г Д Є Ж Ѕ З И І
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10
К Л М Н О П Ҁ Р С Т Ѹ
20 30 40 50 70 80 100 200 300 400
Ф Х Ѡ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ ЪІ Ь Ѣ
500 600 800 900 90
Ю ІА Ѧ Ѩ Ѫ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѥ
60 700 9

Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.

Yeri (ЪІ) was originally a ligature of Yer and I. 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 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.

See also: Glagolitic alphabet.

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 exception of a few forms such as "а" and "е" which adopted Western lowercase shapes), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small caps glyphs.

Comparison of some upright and cursive letters (Ge, De, I, I kratko(ye), Em, Te and Tse. Top row is set in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY)
Comparison of some upright and cursive letters (Ge, De, I, I kratko(ye), Em, Te and Tse. Top row is set in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY)

In the absence of Roman and Italic traditions, Cyrillic type fonts are properly classified as upright (Russian: pryamoi shrift) and cursive (kursivnyi). Cursive or hand-written shapes of many letters, especially the lowercase letters, are entirely different from the upright shapes. As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically-sloped oblique font (naklonnyi).

In Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian, some cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These cursive letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. External link: [Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE].

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

 In case your browser does not correctly support cursive Cyrillic forms, you can view [media].
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

Reference: Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.

As used in various languages

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.
Enlarge
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 IPA. These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian его (meaning him/his), which is pronounced /jevo/ instead of /jego/.

Note that spellings of names may vary, especially Y/J/I, but also GH/G/H and ZH/J.

See also a more complete list of languages using Cyrillic.

Common letters

The following table lists Cyrillic letters which are used in most national versions of the Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.

 Common Cyrillic letters
Upright Cursive Name Sound
А а А а A
Б б Б б Be
В в В в Ve
Г г Г г Ge
Д д Д д De
Е е Е е Ye
Ж ж Ж ж Zhe
З з З з Ze
И и И и I
Й й Й й Short I
К к К к Ka
Л л Л л El
М м М м Em
Н н Н н En
О о О о O
П п П п Pe
Р р Р р Er
С с С с Es
Т т Т т Te
У у У у U
Ф ф Ф ф Ef
Х х Х х Kha
Ц ц Ц ц Tse
Ч ч Ч ч Che
Ш ш Ш ш Sha
Щ щ Щ щ Shcha
Ь ь Ь ь Soft Sign
Ю ю Ю ю Yu
Я я Я я Ya

The soft sign ь is not a letter representing a sound, but modifies the sound of the preceding letter, indicating palatalisation ('softening'). In some languages, a hard sign ъ or apostrophe ’ negates palatalisation.

Slavic languages

Bulgarian

Further information: Bulgarian language
 The Bulgarian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ж ж З з И и Й й К к
Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х
Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ь ь Ю ю Я я

The Bulgarian alphabet features:

Тhe Bulgarian names for the consonants are [bə], [kə], [lə] etc. with stressed schwa instead of [be], [ka], [el] etc.

Russian

 The Russian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й
К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф
Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

Notes:
  1. In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, still preserved in Bulgarian. See the notes for Bulgarian.
  2. When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with /j/) follows a consonant, the consonant will become palatalised (the /j/ sound will mix with the consonant), and the vowel’s initial /j/ sound will not be heard independently. The Hard Sign will indicate that this does not happen, and the /j/ sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign will indicate that the consonant should be palatised, but the vowel’s /j/ sound will not mix with the palatalization of the consonant. The Soft Sign will also indicate that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatised. Examples: та (ta); тя (tʲa); тья (tʲja); тъя (tja); т (t); ть (tʲ).
Historical letters: before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: Іі (replaced by Ии), Ѳѳ (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), Ѣѣ (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and Ѵѵ (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

Belarusian

 The Belarusian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з І і Й й
К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ў ў
Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

The Belarusian alphabet displays the following features:

Ukrainian

 The Ukrainian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Д д Е е Є є Ж ж З з И и
І і Ї ї Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с
Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ю ю Я я Ь ь

The Ukrainian alphabet displays the following features:

Rusyn

Further information: Rusyn language
The Rusyn language is spoken by the Lemko Rusyns in Transcarpathian Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Serbia.

 The Rusyn alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Д д Е е Є є Ё ё* Ж ж З з
И и I і* Ы ы* Ї ї Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п
Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ
Ю ю Я я Ь ь Ъ ъ*

*Letters not present in Vojvodinian Rusyn alphabet.

Serbian

Further information: Serbian language
 The Serbian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј
К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т
Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш

The Serbian alphabet shows the following features:

Macedonian

 The Macedonian alphabet
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ѓ ѓ Е е Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и
Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с
Т т Ќ ќ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш

Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:

Non-Slavic languages

These alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of them were generated by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, Kerashen Tatars) in 1870s. Later such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those alphabets were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script, etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in late 1930s, all of the Roman-based alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union (with the exception of the Baltic alphabets) were switched over to Cyrillic as well. The Abkhazian alphabet was switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Stalin, Abkhaz also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.

In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to represent local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule (see Russification). Some of Russia's languages have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law (see Tatar alphabet). A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman-based or returning to a former script.

Unlike the Roman alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages by using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets invented in the nineteenth century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Iranian languages

Ossetian
Further information: Ossetic language
The Ossetic language has officially used the Cyrillic alphabet since 1937.

 Ossetian Cyrillic alphabet
А а Ӕ ӕ Б б В в Г г Гъ гъ Д д Дж дж Дз дз Е е Ё ё
Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Къ къ Л л М м Н н О о П п
Пъ пъ Р р С с Т т Тъ тъ У у Ф ф Х х Хъ хъ Ц ц Цъ цъ
Ч ч Чъ чъ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

Tajik alphabet

The Tajik language (or rather the Tajik dialect of Persian) is written using a Cyrillic-based alphabet.

Moldovan

The Moldovan language used the Cyrillic alphabet between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.

Mongolian

The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia), Buryat (around Lake Baikal) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet, which is being slowly reintroduced in Mongolia.

Khalkha
The Cyrillic letters Кк, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat
The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.

Kalmyk
The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = xaʎmag).

Northwest Caucasian languages

Living Northwest Caucasian languages are generally written using adaptions of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Abkhaz

Abkhaz is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia. See Abkhaz alphabet.

Turkic languages

Azerbaijani
The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Azerbaijani language from 1939 to 1991. See Azerbaijani alphabet for discussion.

Bashkir
The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Bashkir language after the winter of 1938.

Chuvash

The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.

Kazakh

Kazakh is also written with the Latin alphabet (in Turkey, but not in Kazakhstan), and modified Arabic alphabet (in China, Iran and Afghanistan).

The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.

Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.

Uzbek
The Cyrillic alphabet is still used most often for the Uzbek language, although the government has adopted a version of the Latin alphabet to replace it. The deadline for making this transition has however been repeatedly changed. The latest deadline was supposed to be 2005, but was shifted once again a few more years. Some scholars are not convinced that the transition will be made at all.

German

When Königsberg (Kaliningrad) was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Second World War, efforts were made to change the writing system used by German-speakers to Cyrillic, the official script of the USSR. A few official documents were planned to be published in this script before German was abandoned entirely in favour of Russian, and the German community continued to use the Roman script.

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:

Serbian is written in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin alphabet for Belarusian, and some non-Slavic languages, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek or Moldavian have confronted permanent romanization after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In Serbian there is a one-to-one correspondence between Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Cyrillic and Ljudevit Gaj's Croatian Gajica (derived from the Czech alphabet. See Serbo-Croatian language#Writing systems.) The Belarusian Latin alphabet is traditionally based on Polish and is called Łacinka, but, because of the political realities in the former USSR, Belarusian is usually romanized by analogy to Russian.

See also:

External links:

Computer encoding

In Unicode, the Cyrillic block extends 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.

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

Other character encoding systems for Cyrillic:

See also

External links

Belarusian Alphabet

General

 

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