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Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking cou ...
into (a version of) the
Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking coun ...
. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad hoc fashion, the term "cyrillization" usually refers to a consistent system applied, for example, to transcribe names of German, Chinese, or English people and places for use in
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * Som ...
, Serbian, Macedonian or Bulgarian newspapers and books. Cyrillization is analogous to
romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, an ...
, when words from a non-
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...
-using language are rendered in the Latin alphabet for use (e.g., in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...
,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
, or
Francophone literature Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. The existence of a plurality of literatures in the French language has been recognised, although the autonomy of these literatures is less defined than the plurality of literat ...
.) Just as with various Romanization schemes, each Cyrillization system has its own set of rules, depending on: * The source language or writing system (English, French, Arabic,
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of North India, northern, Central India, centr ...
,
Kazakh Kazakh, Qazaq or Kazakhstani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Kazakhstan *Kazakhs, an ethnic group *Kazakh language *The Kazakh Khanate * Kazakh cuisine * Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan *Qazax, Azerbaijan *Kazakh Uyezd, administrative dis ...
in
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
, Chinese, Japanese, etc.), * The destination language or writing system (
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * Som ...
, Bulgarian,
Kazakh Kazakh, Qazaq or Kazakhstani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Kazakhstan *Kazakhs, an ethnic group *Kazakh language *The Kazakh Khanate * Kazakh cuisine * Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan *Qazax, Azerbaijan *Kazakh Uyezd, administrative dis ...
in Cyrillic, etc.), * the goals of the systems: ** to render occasional foreign words (mostly personal and place names) for use in newspapers or on maps; ** to provide a practical approximate
phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
in a phrasebook or a
bilingual dictionary A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one la ...
; ** or to convert a language to a Cyrillic writing system altogether (e.g., Dungan,
Kazakh Kazakh, Qazaq or Kazakhstani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Kazakhstan *Kazakhs, an ethnic group *Kazakh language *The Kazakh Khanate * Kazakh cuisine * Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan *Qazax, Azerbaijan *Kazakh Uyezd, administrative dis ...
) * Linguistic and/or political inclinations of the designers of the system (see, for example, the use—or disuse—of the letter Ґ for rendering the "G" of foreign words in
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * Som ...
). When the source language uses a fairly phonetic spelling system (e.g., Spanish, Turkish), a Cyrillization scheme may often be adopted that almost amounts to a
transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
, i.e., using a mapping scheme that simply maps each letter of the source alphabet to some letter of the destination alphabet, sometimes augmented by position-based rules. Among such schemes are several schemes universally accepted in
Eastern Slavic languages The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siber ...
: *
Cyrillization of Chinese The Cyrillization of Chinese (''Hanyu Cyril Pinyin'') is the transcription of Chinese characters into the Cyrillic alphabet. The Palladius System is the official Russian standard for transcribing Chinese into Russian, with variants existing f ...
* Cyrillization of Manchu * Cyrillization of Kurdish *
Cyrillization of Esperanto Esperanto is written in a Latin-script alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented by punctuation marks and by various logograms, such as the digits 0–9, currency signs such as $ € ¥ £ ₷, and mathem ...
* Cyrillization of French * Cyrillization of German * Cyrillization of Italian * Cyrillization of Portuguese *
Cyrillization of Spanish Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad h ...
*
Cyrillization of Greek Cyrillization of Greek refers to the transcription or transliteration of text from the Greek alphabet to the Cyrillic script. Modern Greek to Russian The following system has been used for Cyrillization of Modern Greek into Russian. See also * ...
* Cyrillization of Japanese - e.g. Polivanov system * Cyrillization of Korean * Cyrillization of Arabic *
Cyrillization of Hindi Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad ...
*
Cyrillization of Polish The Cyrillization of Polish has been practised in many forms and began in the mid-19th century in the Russian Empire. Between 1772 and 1815, the Russian Empire seized about four fifths of Poland-Lithuania, where Polish was the leading official lang ...
Similarly, simple schemes are widely used to render words from Latin-script languages into Cyrillic-script languages. When the source language does not use a particularly phonetic writing system—most notably English and French—its words are typically rendered in Russian, Ukrainian, or other Cyrillic-based languages using an approximate phonetic transcription system, which aims to allow the Cyrillic readers to approximate the sound of the source language as much as it is possible within the constraints of the destination language and its orthography. Among the examples are the ''Practical transcription of English into Russian'' (russian: Правила англо-русской практической транскрипции), which aims to render English words into Russian based on their sounds, and ''Transliteration of foreign words by a Cyrillic alphabet'' ( :uk:Транслітерація іншомовних слів кирилицею) and ''Cyrillization of the English language'' ( :uk:Кирилізація англійської мови) in the case of Ukrainian. While this scheme is mostly accepted by a majority of Russian and Ukrainian authors and publishers, transcription variants are not uncommon. A
transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
system for the Bulgarian Cyrillization of English has been designed by the Bulgarian linguist
Andrey Danchev Andrey Danchev ( bg, Андрей Данчев) () was a Bulgarian linguist, Anglicist and Americanist who worked for the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University. Danchev was the author of a widely accepted system for th ...
. Similarly, phonetic schemes are widely adopted for Cyrillization of French, especially considering the fairly large number of French loanwords that have been borrowed into Russian.


See also

* Транскрибиране на български език - ''Transcription into the Bulgarian'' * Транскрипция - the articles on ''Transcription'' in the Russian Wikipedia ** Rules for practical English-Russian transcription ** Transcription of German into Cyrillic * Транскрипція - the articles on ''Transcription'' in the Ukrainian Wikipedia ** Cyrillization of English ** Transliteration of English and German words by a Cyrillic alphabet * Македонска транскрипција на странските јазици - ''Macedonian transcription of foreign languages'' *
Volapuk encoding Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems.


References

* A. Danchev, Bulgarian transcription of English names, Narodna Prosveta, Sofia, 1982 (in Bulgarian) * R.S. Gilyrevsky (Гиляревский Р. С.), editor: "Practical Transcription of Personal and Family Names" (''Практическая транскрипция фамильно-именных групп.'') Moscow, Fizmatliz, 2004. . — (covers 6 European languages, as well as Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, and Japanese) ** same, 2nd edition; Moscow, Nauka, 2006, 526. . (11 European languages, as well as Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, Hindi, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese) * R.S. Gilyrevsky (Гиляревский Р. С.), B.A. Starostin (Старостин Б. А.) "Foreign Names in the Russian Text: A Handbook" (''Иностранные имена и названия в русском тексте: Справочник''). 3rd edition. Moscow, Vysshaya Shkola, 1985. * D.I. Ermolovich (Ермолович Д. И.) "Personal Names at the Junction of Languages and Cultures" (''Имена собственные на стыке языков и культур''). Moscow, R. Valent, 2001. . (23 languages) * D.I. Ermolovich (Ермолович Д. И.) "Personal Names: Theory and Practice of Interlanguage Transmission at the Junction of Languages and Cultures" (''Имена собственные: теория и практика межъязыковой передачи на стыке языков и культур''. Moscow, R. Valent, 2005. . * R.A. Lidin (Лидин Р. А). "Foreign family names and personal names. Spelling and pronunciation. Practical transcription into Russian: Dictionary Handbook" (''Иностранные фамилии и личные имена. Написание и произношение. Практическая транскрипция на русский язык: Словарь-справочник'') Moscow, Vneshsigma, 1998. . {{Cultural assimilation
Transliteration