The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

language, and was historically used for its ancestor,

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

. It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

, which is used for some

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

(such as Russian), and for East European and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

n languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.

History

The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as '' ustav'', was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the

Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

for phonemes not found in Greek. The

Glagolitic script The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saint Cyril, a monk fro ...

was created by the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

monk A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid of his brother Saint Methodius, around 863. Most scholars agree that Cyrillic, on the other hand, was created by Cyril's students at the Preslav Literary School in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books, based on

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

Greek but retaining some Glagolitic letters for sounds not present in Greek. At the time, the Preslav Literary School was the most important early literary and cultural center of the

First Bulgarian Empire The First Bulgarian Empire (; was a medieval state that existed in Southeastern Europe between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. It was founded in 680–681 after part of the Bulgars, led by Asparuh of Bulgaria, Asparuh, moved south to the northe ...

and of all

Slavs The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...

: The earliest Cyrillic texts are found in northeastern Bulgaria, in the vicinity of Preslav—the Krepcha inscription, dating back to 921, and a ceramic vase from Preslav, dating back to 931. Moreover, unlike the other literary centre in the

, the Ohrid Literary School, which continued to use the Glagolitic script well into the 12th century, the School at Preslav was using Cyrillic in the early 900s. The systematization of Cyrillic may have been undertaken at the

Council of Preslav The People's Council of Preslav () took place in 893. It was among the most important events in the history of the First Bulgarian Empire and was a cornerstone of the Christianization of Bulgaria under prince Boris I. Background and sources In 88 ...

in 893, when the Old Church Slavonic or ''Glagolitic Cyrillic'' liturgy was adopted by the

.Auty, R. ''Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts and Glossary.'' 1977.

''Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the
Glagolitic script The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saint Cyril, a monk fro ...
s in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet.''

American scholar Horace Lunt has alternatively suggested that Cyrillics emerged in the border regions of Greek proselytization to the Slavs before it was codified and adapted by some systematizer among the Slavs. The oldest Cyrillic manuscripts look very similar to 9th and 10th century Greek uncial manuscripts, and the majority of uncial Cyrillic letters were identical to their Greek uncial counterparts. The early Cyrillic alphabet was very well suited for the writing of Old Church Slavic, generally following a principle of "one letter for one significant sound", with some arbitrary or phonotactically-based exceptions. Particularly, this principle is violated by certain vowel letters, which represent plus the vowel if they are not preceded by a consonant. It is also violated by a significant failure to distinguish between /ji/ and /jĭ/ orthographically. There was no distinction of capital and lowercase letters, though manuscript letters were rendered larger for emphasis, or in various decorative initial and nameplate forms.Cubberley 1994 Letters served as

numerals A numeral is a figure (symbol), word, or group of figures (symbols) or words denoting a number. It may refer to: * Numeral system used in mathematics * Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English ...

as well as phonetic signs; the values of the numerals were directly borrowed from their Greek-letter analogues. Letters without Greek equivalents mostly had no numeral values, whereas one letter, koppa, had only a numeric value with no phonetic value. Since its creation, the Cyrillic script has adapted to changes in spoken language and developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages. It has been the subject of academic reforms and political decrees. Variations of the Cyrillic script are used to write languages throughout

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

and

. The form of the Russian alphabet underwent a change when Tsar

Peter the Great Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...

introduced the

civil script Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries. Early changes Old East ...

(, or , ), in contrast to the prevailing church typeface, () in 1708. (The two forms are sometimes distinguished as ''paleo-Cyrillic'' and ''neo-Cyrillic''.) Some letters and breathing marks which were used only for historical reasons were dropped. Medieval letterforms used in typesetting were harmonized with Latin typesetting practices, exchanging medieval forms for Baroque ones, and skipping the western European Renaissance developments. The reform subsequently influenced

Cyrillic The Cyrillic 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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

orthographies for most other languages. Today, the early orthography and typesetting standards remain in use only in Slavonic. A comprehensive repertoire of early Cyrillic characters has been included in the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

standard since version 5.1, published April 4, 2008. These characters and their distinctive letterforms are represented in specialized computer fonts for

Slavistics Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...

Alphabet

In addition to the basic letters, there were a number of scribal variations, combining ligatures, and regionalisms used (for example, the additional letter ꙉ, which was used officially by the Serbians), all of which varied over time. Versions of this initial alphabet where the letters ҁ and ѿ are omitted are also valid, since ҁ did not have a phonetic value nor an official placement in the alphabet with some putting it between п and р to correspond with the placement of the Greek letter ϙ and other putting it right at the end, and ѿ came later as ligature of ѡ and т. Sometimes the Greek letters that were used in Cyrillic mainly for their numeric value are transcribed with the corresponding Greek letters for accuracy: ѳ = θ, ѯ = ξ, ѵ = υ, ҁ = ϙ, ѱ = ψ, and ѡ = ω.

Numerals, diacritics and punctuation

Each letter had a numeric value also, inherited from the corresponding

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

letter. A

titlo Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic language, Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the , and is a cognate of t ...

over a sequence of letters indicated their use as a number; usually this was accompanied by a dot on either side of the letter. In numerals, the ones place was to the left of the tens place, the reverse of the order used in modern Arabic numerals. Thousands are formed using a special symbol, (U+0482), which was attached to the lower left corner of the numeral. Many fonts display this symbol incorrectly as being in line with the letters instead of subscripted below and to the left of them. Titlos were also used to form abbreviations, especially of

nomina sacra In Christian scribal practice, (singular: , Latin for 'sacred name') is the abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of the Bible. A consists of two or more letters from the original w ...

; this was done by writing the first and last letter of the abbreviated word along with the word's grammatical endings, then placing a titlo above it. Later manuscripts made increasing use of a different style of abbreviation, in which some of the left-out letters were superscripted above the abbreviation and covered with a

pokrytie Pokrytie ( ҇ ) is one of the historic diacritical signs of Cyrillic that was used in Old Church Slavonic, later medieval Cyrillic literary traditions and modern Church Slavonic. It is a modification of titlo adapted for covering (hen ...

diacritic. Several

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s, adopted from Polytonic Greek orthography, were also used, but were seemingly redundant (these may not appear correctly in all web browsers; they are supposed to be directly above the letter, not off to its upper right): : '' trema'', diaeresis (U+0308) : ''varia'' (

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...

), indicating stress on the last syllable (U+0300) : ''oksia'' (

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

), indicating a stressed syllable (

U+0301) : ''

'', indicating

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

s, or letters used as numerals (U+0483) : '' kamora'' ( circumflex accent), indicating palatalization (U+0484); in later Church Slavonic, it disambiguates plurals from homophonous singulars. : ''dasia'' or '' dasy pneuma'', rough breathing mark (U+0485) : ''psili'', ''zvatel'tse'', or '' psilon pneuma'', soft breathing mark (U+0486). Signals a word-initial vowel, at least in later Church Slavonic. : Combined ''zvatel'tse'' and ''varia'' is called ''apostrof''. : Combined ''zvatel'tse'' and ''oksia'' is called ''iso''. : or ''payerok'' (U+A67D, U+033E), indicating an omitted 'jerŭ' (ъ) after a letter.Berdnikov and Lapko 2003, p. 12 Punctuation systems in early Cyrillic manuscripts were primitive: there was no space between words and no upper and lower case, and punctuation marks were used inconsistently in all manuscripts. : ''

ano teleia An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. (space (punctuation), Word-separating ...

'' (U+0387), a middle dot used to separate phrases, words, or parts of words :

Full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...

, used in the same way :

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...

(U+0589), resembling a colon, used in the same way : Georgian paragraph separator (U+10FB), used to mark off larger divisions : triangular colon (U+2056, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions : diamond colon (U+2058, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions : quintuple colon (U+2059, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions :

question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...

(U+037E), similar to a

semicolon The semicolon (or semi-colon) is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as ...

Some of these marks are also used in

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

script. Used only in modern texts :

comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...

(U+002C) :

(U+002E) :

exclamation mark The exclamation mark (also known as exclamation point in American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show wikt:emphasis, emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks ...

(U+0021)

Gallery

Old Bulgarian examples

File:Codex_Suprasliensis.jpg, Codex Suprasliensis File:Ivan_ALexander_and_his_family_Tetraevangelia.jpg, Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander File:Bulgar_Translation_Of_Manasses_Chronicle.png, Bulgar translation of Manasses chronicle File:Tomb_stone_of_Mostich_Boyla.jpg, Mostich tomb stone

Medieval Greek
Uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...
manuscripts from which early Cyrillic letter forms take their shapes

File:Codex_Colbertinus_700.jpg, ℓ ''1'' File:Lectionary_5_(GA)%2C_f.115r.jpg, ℓ ''5'' File:Codex_Harcleianus.PNG, ℓ ''150'' File:Lectionary 152 K051435.JPG, ℓ ''152'' File:Lectionary_179_(Gen_1).JPG, ℓ ''179'' Old Testament, Genesis File:Lectionary_183_folio_2.JPG, ℓ ''183'' folio 2 File:Lectionary_269_(Matth._8%2C32-9%2C1.9).JPG, ℓ ''269'' File:Lectionary 296 f.6v.JPG, ℓ ''296'' folio 6 verso

Early Cyrillic manuscripts

aprakos)" widths="100px" heights="100px" perrow="7"> File:Ostromir_Gospel_4.jpg, Ostromir Gospels File:Scepkin1903Sava142ob.jpg,

Sava's book Sava's book (; ) is a 129-folio Early Cyrillic alphabet, Cyrillic Old Church Slavonic Old_Church_Slavonic#Canon, canon evangeliary, written in the 11th century. The original 126 parchment folios are of Bulgarian provenance, being bound into a larg ...

File:Khitrovo_Gospels_05.jpg, Khitrovo Gospels File: Miroslav's_Gospel_001.jpg,

Miroslav Gospel Miroslav Gospel (, ) is a 362-page Serbian illuminated manuscript Gospel Book on parchment with very rich decorations. It is one of the oldest surviving documents written in the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic. The gospel is considered a ...

File: Archangel_Gospel_03.jpg, Arkhangelsk Gospel File: Pogod 18 list 19 ob mt18-15 18-20 mt4-23 4-24.jpg, File:Andronikovo_Gospel_158rev.jpg, Andronikov Gospels

References

Sources

* Berdnikov, Alexander and Olga Lapko, , ''EuroTEX '99 Proceedings'', September 1999 * Birnbaum, David J., , September 28, 2002 * Cubberley, Paul (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets". In Daniels and Bright, below. * Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. (1996). ''The World's Writing Systems.'' Oxford University Press. . * Everson, Michael and Ralph Cleminson, , September 4, 2003 * Franklin, Simon. 2002. ''Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300.'' Cambridge University Press. . *Iliev, I. Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet. Plovdiv. 2012/Иван Г. Илиев. Кратка история на кирилската азбука. Пловдив. 2012
Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet
* Lev, V., "The history of the Ukrainian script (paleography)", in ''Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1''.

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

Press, 1963, 1970, 1982. * Simovyc, V., and J. B. Rudnyckyj, "The history of Ukrainian orthography", in ''Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1'' (''op cit''). * Zamora, J.,
Help me learn Church Slavonic
'
Azbuka
Church Slavonic calligraphy and typography.
Obshtezhitie.net
Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts and early printed books.

External links

* ttp://ponomar.net/cu_support.html Slavonic Computing Initiative
churchslavonic – Typesetting documents in Church Slavonic language using Unicode

fonts-churchslavonic – Fonts for typesetting in Church Slavonic language

Church Slavonic Typography in Unicode
(Unicode Technical Note no. 41), 2015-11-04, accessed 2023-01-04. {{DEFAULTSORT:Early Cyrillic Alphabet Cyrillic alphabets Preslav Literary School History of writing 9th-century establishments in Europe Western calligraphy Golden Age of Bulgaria Medieval scripts Eastern Orthodox Christian culture