Cyrillic alphabets

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 Byzantine 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.

Some of these are illustrated below; for others, and for more detail, see the links. Sounds are transcribed in the IPA. While these languages largely have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian is pronounced in a number of words, an orthographic relic from when they were pronounced (e.g. его ''yego'' 'him/his', is pronounced rather than ).

Spellings of names transliterated into the Roman alphabet may vary, especially й (''y''/''j''/''i''), but also г (''gh''/''g''/''h'') and ж (''zh''/''j'').

Unlike the Latin script, which is usually adapted to different languages by adding diacritical marks/supplementary glyphs (such as accents, umlauts, fadas, tildes and cedillas) to standard Roman letters, by assigning new phonetic values to existing letters (''e.g.'' , whose original value in Latin was /k/, represents /ts/ in West Slavic languages, /ʕ/ in Somali, /t͡ʃ/ in many African languages and /d͡ʒ/ in Turkish), or by the use of digraphs (such as , , and ), the Cyrillic script is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. However, in some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Bulgarian and Bosnian Sephardim without Hebrew typefaces occasionally printed Judeo-Spanish in Cyrillic.

Spread

Non-Slavic alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of these alphabets were developed by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural ( Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, and Kerashen Tatars) in the 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 languages 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 the late 1930s, all of the Latin alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched to Cyrillic as well ( Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were occupied and annexed by Soviet Union in 1940, and were not affected by this change). The Abkhazian and Ossetian languages were switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, both 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 write local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to either a Roman-based orthography or a return to a former script.

Common letters

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

}, '. Both mean "short i".
,
, -
, К к
, ''К к''
, Ka
,
, -
, Л л
, ''Л л''
, El
,
, -
, М м
, ''М м''
, Em
,
, -
, Н н
, ''Н н''
,
,
, -
, О о
, ''О о''
, O
,
, -
, П п
, ''П п''
, Pe
,
, -
, Р р
, ''Р р''
,
,
, -
, С с
, ''С с''
, Es
,
, -
, Т т
, ''Т т''
, Te
,
, -
, У у
, ''У у''
, U
,
, -
, Ф ф
, ''Ф ф''
,
,
, -
, Х х
, ''Х х''
,
,
, -
, Ц ц
, ''Ц ц''
,
,
, -
, Ч ч
, ''Ч ч''
,
,
, -
, Ш ш
, ''Ш ш''
,
,
, -
, Щ щ
, ''Щ щ''
,
,
, -
, Ь ь
, ''Ь ь''
, , Small yer, '
,
, -
, Э э
, ''Э э''
, E
,
, -
, Ю ю
, ''Ю ю''
,
,
, -
, Я я
, ''Я я''
,
,

Slavic languages

Cyrillic alphabets used by Slavic languages can be divided into two categories:
* East South Slavic languages and East Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian and Russian, share common features such as Й, ь, and я.
* West South Slavic languages, such as all varieties of Serbo-Croatian, share common features such as Ј and љ.

East Slavic

Russian

* Yo (Ё ё)
* The Hard Sign¹ (Ъ ъ) indicates no palatalization²
* Yery (Ы ы) indicates (an allophone of )
* E (Э э)
* Ж and Ш indicate sounds that are retroflex

Notes:
#In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, which is still preserved as a distinct vowel in Bulgarian (which represents it with ''ъ'') and Slovene (which is written in the Latin alphabet and writes it as ''e''), but only in some places in the word.
#When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with ) follows a consonant, the consonant is palatalized. The Hard Sign indicates that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign indicates that the consonant should be palatalized in addition to a preceding the vowel. The Soft Sign also indicates that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatalized. Examples: та (); тя (); тья (); тъя (); т (); ть ().

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 displays the following features:
* He (Г г) represents a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/.
* Yo (Ё ё)
* I (І і), also known as the ''dotted I'' or ''decimal I'', resembles the Latin letter I. Unlike Russian and Ukrainian, "И" is not used.
** Short I (Й й), however, uses the base И glyph.
* Short U (Ў ў) is the letter У with a breve and represents , or like the ''u'' part of the diphthong in ''loud''. The use of the breve to indicate a semivowel is analogous to the Short I (Й).
* A combination of Sh and Ch (ШЧ шч) is used where those familiar only with Russian and or Ukrainian would expect Shcha (Щ щ).
* Yery (Ы ы)
* E (Э э)
* An apostrophe (’) is used to indicate depalatalization of the preceding consonant. This orthographical symbol used instead of the traditional Cyrillic letter Yer (Ъ), also known as the hard sign.
* The letter combinations Dzh (Дж дж) and Dz (Дз дз) appear after D (Д д) in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. These digraphs represent consonant clusters Дж  and Дз  correspondingly.
* Before 1933, the letter Ґ ґ (Ge) was used.

Ukrainian

The Ukrainian alphabet displays the following features:

* Ve (В) represents (which may be pronounced in a word final position and before consonants).
* He (Г, г) represents a voiced glottal fricative, ().
* Ge (Ґ, ґ) appears after He, represents . It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was removed in Soviet Ukraine in 1933–1990, so it may be missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)
*E (Е, е) represents .
* Ye (Є, є) appears after E, represents .
*E, И (И, и) represent if unstressed.
* I (І, і) appears after Y, represents .
* Yi (Ї, ї) appears after I, represents .
* Yy (Й, й) represents .
* Shcha (Щ, щ) represents .
*An apostrophe (’) is used to mark nonpalatalization of the preceding consonant before Ya (Я, я), Yu (Ю, ю), Ye (Є, є), Yi (Ї, ї).
*As in Belarusian Cyrillic, the sounds , are represented by digraphs Дж and Дз respectively.

Rusyn

The Rusyn language is spoken by the Carpatho-Rusyns in Carpathian Ruthenia, Slovakia, and Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Croatia and Serbia.

The Rusyn Alphabet makes the Following Rules:

Є (Ё)

І (Ы)

Щ (Ѣ)

Ь (Э)

Ъ is the Last Letter.

Ї = /ɪ̈/

Є = /ɪ̈ɛ/

Ѣ = /jɨ/

*Letters absent from Pannonian Rusyn.

South Slavic

Bosnian

Bulgarian

The Bulgarian alphabet features:
* The Bulgarian names for the consonants are , , etc. instead of , , etc.
* Е represents and is called "е" .
* The sounds () and () are represented by дж and дз respectively.
* Yot (Й, й) represents .
* Щ represents () and is called "щъ" ().
* Ъ represents the vowel , and is called "ер голям" ('big er'). In spelling however, Ъ is referred to as where its official label "ер голям" (used only to refer to Ъ in the alphabet) may cause some confusion. The vowel Ъ is sometimes approximated to the ( schwa) sound found in many languages for easier comprehension of its Bulgarian pronunciation for foreigners, but it is actually a back vowel, not a central vowel.
* Ь is used on rare occasions (only after a consonant ndbefore the vowel "о"), such as in the words 'каньон' (canyon), 'шофьор' (driver), etc. It is called "ер малък" ('small er').
The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.

It has been used in Bulgaria (with modifications and exclusion of certain archaic letters via spelling reforms) continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic script overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then much bigger territory of Bulgaria (including most of today's Serbia), North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece (Macedonia region), Romania and Moldova, officially from 893. It was also transferred from Bulgaria and adopted by the East Slavic languages in Kievan Rus' and evolved into the Russian alphabet and the alphabets of many other Slavic (and later non-Slavic) languages. Later, some Slavs modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language varieties.

Croatian

Historically, the Croatian language briefly used the Cyrillic script in areas with large Croatian language or Bosnian language populations.

Serbian

South Slavic Cyrillic alphabets (with the exception of Bulgarian) are generally derived from Serbian Cyrillic. It, and by extension its descendants, differs from the East Slavic ones in that the alphabet has generally been simplified: Letters such as Я, Ю, and Ё, representing /ja/, /ju/, and /jo/ in Russian, respectively, have been removed. Instead, these are represented by the digraphs , , and , respectively. Additionally, the letter Е, representing in Russian, is instead pronounced or , with being represented by . Alphabets based on the Serbian that add new letters often do so by adding an acute accent over an existing letter.

The Serbian alphabet shows the following features:

* E represents .
* Between Д and E is the letter Dje (Ђ, ђ), which represents , and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards.
* Between И and К is the letter Je (Ј, ј), represents , which looks like the Latin letter J.
* Between Л and М is the letter Lje (Љ, љ), representing , which looks like a ligature of Л and the Soft Sign.
* Between Н and О is the letter Nje (Њ, њ), representing , which looks like a ligature of Н and the Soft Sign.
* Between Т and У is the letter Tshe (Ћ, ћ), representing and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top at half of the vertical line.
* Between Ч and Ш is the letter Dzhe (Џ, џ), representing , which looks like Tse but with the descender moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.
* Ш is the last letter.
* Certain letters are handwritten differently, as seen in the adjacent image.

Macedonian

The Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:

* Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), which looks like the Latin letter S and represents .
* Dje (Ђ ђ) is replaced by Gje (Ѓ ѓ), which represents (voiced palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents instead, like Dje. It is written in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.
* Tshe (Ћ ћ) is replaced by Kje (Ќ ќ), which represents ( voiceless palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents instead, like Tshe. It is written in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.
* Lje (Љ љ) often represents the consonant cluster instead of .
* Certain letters are handwritten differently, as seen in the adjacent image.

Montenegrin

The Montenegrin alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:

* Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter З́, which represents (voiced alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written or .
* Between Es (С с) and Te (Т т) is the letter С́, which represents (voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written or .
* The letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), from Macedonian, is used in scientific literature when representing the phoneme, although it is not officially part of the alphabet. A Latin equivalent was proposed that looks identical to Ze (З з).

Uralic languages

Uralic languages using the Cyrillic script (currently or in the past) include:
* Finnic: Karelian until 1921 and 1937–1940 ( Ludic, Olonets Karelian); Veps; Votic
*Kildin Sami in Russia (since the 1980s)
* Komi (Zyrian

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