Inventing Cyrillic (2024)

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/inventing-cyrillic

by lermontov • 3 months ago

50 116 3 months ago

Antibabelic7• 3 months ago

Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0]

Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages.

The reason for that is pretty obvious if you look at the Glagolitic letters themselves: they are horrible UX. You need a lot more strokes than for something like Greek or Latin to record the same information. Because Glagolitic was contrived and not polished with use over the centuries, there was very little reason to use it over Greek.

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script

culebron2110• 3 months ago

Interestingly, it was also a derivative of Greek, but the cursive version. It's harder to write, but apart from that, I like it. Ⱂⱃⰺⰲⰵⱅ, ⱂⰺⱎⰺⱅⰵ Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰺⱌⰵⰻ!

Antibabelic7• 3 months ago

This is a novel claim to me. I don't think Glagolitic looks particularly like cursive Greek, and I haven't seen this idea in scholarship. What is your source for it?

matusp• 3 months ago

Cyrillic is probably a successor to Glagolitic. Glagolitic was the first Slavic alphabet, but when they tried to use it in Bulgaria, it had all the UX problems you mentioned. What they did is replace most of the characters with their Greek counterparts, while keeping the Glagolitic writing system and some of the characters with no counterparts. Bulgaria was close to Byzantium, and people were more likely to know and use Greek letters already. Nevertheless, Cyril and Methodius should still get some recognition, as the shape of the letters is not as important as having the system to write down the Slavic language into letters.

elAhmo• 3 months ago

Bosančica, or Bosnian Cycillic is also an interesting take on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic

culebron2110• 3 months ago

This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. This is just false projection of modern politics onto old times. It's shameless propaganda.

In reality, at the time, it was the Eastern Christian church that was more liberal than Rome. Rome insisted every local church make services in Latin, and didn't translate it in the local language.

The Eastern church instead, had the bible in Greek, but allowed to translate it in local languages and make services in them. Initially, those translations were made with Greek letters, which weren't fully reflecting the phonology of Slavic and other languages, so they were extended, which produced Cyrillic.

As I understand, the same way Coptic script in Egypt, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia were made, thanks to Eastern Christian church allowing this.

p.s. Saint Cyril, in fact, invented the Glagolitic script. Cyrillic was named after him, and initially "Cyrillic" alphabet was mostly Greek, plus some characters from Glagolitic, like Ⱎ, ⱍ and ⱑ.

adrian_b3• 3 months ago

Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor.

The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union.

This was very intentional, to make difficult for the younger people to read any books from before the Russian occupation, if they succeeded to find such books.

This was coupled to a system of education were people were taught in schools a falsified history, were the Russian invaders were presented as liberators and where it was claimed that everything good in science and technology had been discovered or invented by some unknown Russians instead of those about whom the Western "imperialists" say that they were the discoverers/inventors.

culebron2110• 3 months ago

Funnily, you don't know or omit the details yourself.

Russian Empire didn't give the conquered nations the alphabet, but USSR did, as part of supporting local nationalists (surprize!). And it first gave them the Latin script.

Secondly, using different scripts for the same language isn't hard. Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin interchangeably, and many people used Latin traslit in computers and phones when their codepages weren't available yet, and it wasn't a big problem. It takes you at most 2 weeks to learn Arabic script without knowing the language, and with own language of slightly older version, it's even easier.

You also suggest Arabic is their "proper" language, but abjad is not suitable for Turkic languages -- there vowels are significant, and many more than the 3 Arabic vowel diacritics. They had actually Turkic runes instead. Why don't you bash Arabic too?

What about Germanic peoples? Was switching to Latin from their runes an evil oppression?

It is military force and administration, that set school curriculum, use a certain script, and teach an edited history. Not the Cyrillic.

cloudie78• 3 months ago

The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union.

Missing context:

What you’re talking about is Likbez - Soviet program to eliminate illiteracy started as soon after the revolution in 1917 that overthrew the tsar as the majority of the population was in fact illiterate, at around 23% or so literacy.

So you’re saying that they re-educated an illiterate population to stop writing in their native alphabet and instead in Cyrillic? In forced re-education camps?

Or am I missing something here?

armenarmen2• 2 months ago

The Communists standardized our (Armenian) spelling a bit but never forced us to get rid of our letters. Likewise with the Georgians.

revengerwizard2• 3 months ago

Cyrillic has been used as a political weapon under the Soviet Union.

For example, in soviet Moldova it was mandatory to learn to read and write cyrillic at schools. They effectively wanted to eradicate the local language and culture in favor of russian.

culebron2110• 3 months ago

No, you're wishfully thinking. What made people absorb the Soviet version of history and politics, was school curriculum, and central TV, and teaching Russian to keep them in orbit. Cyrillic alone won't allow this.

nomorewords• 3 months ago

Didn't Romania use Cyrillic at a point in time?

BAHKA2• 2 months ago

Being a person grew up in Soviet Moldova I can't stop laughing at the nonsence you have just produced. In 1980s we had two types of schools - those with education in Russian and those with education in Moldavian language. "Russian" schools had obligatory 4 academic hours for Moldavian language classes, "Moldavian" schools had same amount of hours for Russian language classes. All banners, all documents, everything was written in two languages - it was OBLIGATORY. There was no single official document without two language versions of the same text. And btw, educate yourself - first alphabet of Medieval Moldova was... CYRILLIC!

When Moldova Adopted CyrillicMedieval Era: The Cyrillic script arrived between the 9th and 10th centuries. It was introduced alongside Christianity, primarily through the influence of the First Bulgarian Empire. This script became the official writing system for the Principality of Moldavia when it was founded in the 14th century.

Oldest Romanian document was written in Cyrillic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter

necovek9• 3 months ago

This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics — some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead).

None of the interesting bits of Cyrillic invention are covered, like how the original Slavic script was Glagolitic as the sibling mentioned, and only evolved into modern Cyrillic much later. Or how there was no lowercase until a few centuries ago, especially with the reform of Peter the Great.

With Slavic people, it's also worth noting that "Slav" actually means "word" or "letter" (of an alphabet), so legibility was part of the identity. In contrast, most Slavic people call Germans a variation of "Nemci", or mutes (those who cannot speak) — notably, most except Russians who call them Germans. Again, likely to distance themselves from the negative connotation with their aspiring historical partners.

orbital-decay2• 3 months ago

No idea where you're getting it from, Germans are Nemci in Russian as well. It's rather "unable to speak the language", meant for all foreigners but later stuck to Germans, presumably because German traders were the most common foreigners.

mootothemax3• 3 months ago

Germans are Nemci in Russian as well

I wanted to check; are you implying that Russian is not a Slavic language?

necovek9• 3 months ago

Apologies, it was mostly from running across different Russian maps with Германия that I took it as such (in Serbian it is Немачка). I stand corrected!

Nem/нем literally means "mute" in Serbian, perhaps it's a latter evolution per region either way.

Antibabelic7• 3 months ago

"Slav" deriving from the Slavic term for "word" is something of a false etymology that was invented in the 19th century. It is implausible on philological grounds: you'd expect a different vowel in this word if this were the case, and the suffix *-ninъ is only otherwise used in terms derived from place names.

It is more likely[0] that the term derives from some toponym. This is in line with how tribal names tend to work in Europe and is not problematic in terms of historical linguistics, however it gives less fuel to romantic nationalism and armchair speculations about national "identities" or "mindsets".

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[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...

mootothemax3• 3 months ago

The irony for me being that when I was first learning Polish and looking for any and all mnemonics - “ah, that word is the number nine, and that one is ten because it has an s in the middle and that’s next to t for ten in the alphabet”-levels of desperate - the false etymology helped me set word, słowo, in my head, and the rather delightful dosłownie, literally / to the word, has remained ever since.

(tho while on the subject, it’s hard to beat wieloryb as a wonder that I don’t want to know the true etymology of ever because if there’s even a chance that the word for whale derived from the words great as-in-size + fish, I want to hang on to it forever)

acadapter• 3 months ago

False etymology? You can roll back sound changes further to *ḱlew- in Proto-Indo-European

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

rich_sasha• 3 months ago

Dunno. A nice parallel fact is that the word for "Germans" in at least a few Slavic languages literally means "mutes" - the ones who don't speak.

So you'd have the Slavs - the people of word - and the Germans - the mutes.

pavel_lishin2• 3 months ago

I always thought it was probable that it came from the same root as the word for "glory" - слава - as in, we're the glorious people.

troupo7• 3 months ago

is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics

Take a look at the Cyrillic section of Unicode to see your trivially provable claim being trivially disproven. You'll see all the same digraphs, glyphs, accents, graves etc. as used in Latin scripts.

It's also easy to see it easily disproven if you look at all the languages USSR forced cyrillic alphabet on.

Antibabelic7• 3 months ago

To be fair, the parent post was clearly talking about Slavic languages, not "all the languages USSR forced cyrillic alphabet on", which were not Slavic and which required significant modifications to the alphabet.

ceedaxp• 3 months ago

Most of the extra glyphs are for non-Slavic (Turk languages of Central Asia and Siberia). You see the same (and worse) in Latin Unicode pages — just look at how many variations of vowels 'a', 'i', or 'e' you have, consonants like 'c', 'z', 's'…

Tade0• 3 months ago

some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead

That's not the reason. The real reason is how those regions were Christianised - Cyril and Methodius created the first version of what would later evolve into cyrilic script and they were sent by Constantinople, while missionaries sent by Rome would use latin script.

tkot2• 3 months ago

it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics — some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead

I've heard this claim many times but never the reasoning behind it - by what metric is "ш" superior to "š" and so on?

necovek9• 3 months ago

It's less pronounced with diacritics, but enter Unicode normal forms: you can represent š either as š, or s followed by a diacritic. When you want to compare two strings, you have to normalize them to ensure you are comparing apples to apples. I can guarantee most software is broken in that regard. For Cyrillic, it just works.

With digraphs (lj, nj, dž + sometimes dj for đ too), it's even worse. Even capitalization is ambiguous: sometimes it's Lj and other times it's LJ. Then you have words like konjugacija where nj is not a digraph.

Interestingly — and not many know this — Unicode includes separate codepoints for all of the digraphs too. While well-intentioned, it only makes the problem worse.

Digraphs are especially sucky when you try sorting strings in a phonebook order as LJ comes after L, so you've got ...LI, LK..., LZ, LJA... With exceptions, it is even worse.

konart4• 3 months ago

Slavic people call Germans a variation of "Nemci", or mutes (those who cannot speak) — notably, most except Russians who call them Germans.

last time I checked we also call them "немцы" (Nemci and sounds exactly the same)

gostsamo• 3 months ago

Slav comes from slovo == слово which means word or speech, a.k.a slavs are people who can talk to each other which is a pattern in many other ethnic groups about differentiating between themselves and outsiders. Немци or mutes are those who cannot speak the language.

axegon_• 3 months ago

The article feels like AI hallucinated slop. Just a quick scroll through the page:

* Sviatoslav was not a local ruler - he ruled Kievan Rus' 1500km north-east and he remained a pagan until his death, even if his mother had converted to Christianity.

* Sviatoslav was born nearly 60 years after both Cyril and Methodius had died.

* In 890 Boris was no longer in power but his firs son, who coincidentally tried to reverse the Christianity conversion and was kicked off the throne a few years later.

* " Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021" check the date.

AndriyKunitsyn3• 3 months ago

The author had an agenda to push, and they generated a load of slop to support it. Obviously, the usage of Latin alphabet today is also a political tool to support the Roman Empire. Carthago Delenda Est!

_hao3• 3 months ago

Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School.

On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's influence to bitch, moan and subjugate ever since. Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.

lovegrenoble7• 3 months ago

> Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet

The wording is entirely accurate, since even during the Roman Empire, the region where Sts. Cyril and Methodius were later born and worked was known as Macedonia. And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts.

148 years ago, in December 1877, Russian troops dealt a severe insult to the Bulgarian people by driving the civilized and enlightened Turkish troops out of Sofia and literally forcing the rebellious Bulgarians to accept their hated independence.

The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.

Antibabelic7• 3 months ago

And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts.

This doesn't follow. People deny historical fact all the time.

wqweto• 3 months ago

The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.

You cannot expect eternal gratitude esp. when Russian Empire is constantly trying to influence its "vasals" using local puppets. Now is about time for you to fcuk off I would say -- we don't want to have anything in common with you people.

paganel• 3 months ago

I'm Romanian, so I geographically sit between the Bulgarian and the Russian cultural spaces, have to say that Bulgaria back in the '80s (grew up as a kid just across the Danube from Silistra during those years) was very much under Soviet/Russian influence, at least culturally, that's what partially made it more "evolved" compared to us here in Romania. Can't and won't speak about the post-Cold War years because I eventually moved from my home-town and it would get too political, just wanted to say that there are a lot more things that the Bulgarians and Russians share compared to the things that they don't share, again, at least from a cultural pov.

Also, ever since reading about Sviatoslav I's [1] assault on Silistra at the end of the 900s I've always wondered how history would have unfolded had he managed to solidly set foot here at the Lower Danube, I think that Russia, Bulgaria (and current Ukraine and Romania) wouldn't have been the same, maybe Europe as a whole wouldn't have been the same.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sviatoslav_I

adrian_b3• 3 months ago

While the Russian army was the main force in the war against the Turkish empire, in the beginning it was close to losing the war, so it had to request help from the Romanian Principates.

Only the combined Russian-Romanian forces have succeeded to defeat the Turkish army, so Russia does not have alone the merit for making Bulgaria independent.

Moreover, Bulgaria was very lucky that Romania was interposed between it and Russia.

Otherwise, after the Russian victory Bulgaria would not have stayed independent but it would have been incorporated in the Russian Empire, with bad consequences for them. The Russian Empire already had a long series of wars with the Turkish Empire, during which various territories had been transferred from the Turkish Empire to the Russian Empire. Russia did not start any of those wars to make independent countries, but only to grab land from the Turkish Empire.

Before the war, Russia actually secretly hoped to also incorporate Romania in the Russian Empire, but this could not be accomplished because of their initial defeats by the Turkish army, so after they were forced to request Romanian help they had to treat them as allies, so they could not fulfill their initial plans. Thus after the war both Romania and Bulgaria became independent of both neighboring empires.

In comparison with the Russian Empire, the Turkish Empire can be considered, as you say, more "civilized and enlightened", so this is not successful sarcasm.

The Turkish Empire imposed heavy tributes, i.e. heavy taxes in the dependent territories, but otherwise there was little discrimination between citizens based on nationality and little interference with local customs, culture or religion. This was very different from the Russification policies applied in the Tsarist Empire and then in its successor, the Soviet Union. People of many nationalities have maintained their identity for centuries under Turkish occupation, while others have lost theirs after a few decades of Russian occupation.

kgeist2• 3 months ago

Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture

As someone who lived in Russia for 36 years (also studied linguistics there), it's my first time hearing this.

Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.

To be honest, I only heard Bulgarians and North Macedonians pay attention to things like this ("actually, it was Macedonia, not Bulgaria" and vice versa). I googled a bit, and I guess you refer to a single case in 2017 when Putin said Cyrillic comes from Macedonia during a meeting with Macedonian president (usual boring diplomatic smalltalk) and Bulgaria got offended and there were multiple angry statements and posts from ordinary Bulgarians and their government :) And that makes you conclude Russians hate that Bulgaria invented Cyrillic? More like it's Bulgaria which has insecurity issues. A few years earlier during a state visit to Bulgaria Russia's patriarch said Cyrillic comes from Bulgaria. I'm sure that time Macedonia was the one offended. It has nothing to do with Russia, it's your usual purely regional Bulgaria vs. Macedonia thing.

dryarzeg• 3 months ago

Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021

Just what type of slop this one is? It was not "just after the invasion", it was ~7 months before the invasion. At least if I understand correctly that the start of Russo-Ukrainian war is called "invasion" here.

zby• 3 months ago

"In the 890s, having recently converted to Orthodox Christianity, Boris ensured his church would be independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople." --- I thought Orthodox Christianity was created by the Great Schism in 1054.

bulgarboris2• 3 months ago

The orthodox would argue that it was catholicism that was created by the great schism. But for both sides the actual date of the schism matters little, the divide between east and west was already forming long before then. Tsar Boris the 1st actually sent letters to the pope in Rome and the patriarch in Constantinople asking both of them for Christian teaching, it's debated wether he did this cynically or innocently, but either way he was "playing both sides" even before the schism, if anything he accelerated it somewhat.

dotemacs• 3 months ago

I don't know if you are trolling or what, but you win at the internets today

kgeist2• 3 months ago

If you look at the earliest versions of Cyrillic, it's basically identical, in shape and form, to the variant of the Greek alphabet used in the Byzantine Empire at the time, they just added letters for the sounds not found in Greek, like ts, ch, sh, zh. "Invention" is a stretch. I'm not sure why the article spins a political angle so much, it's the same as West Europeans adapting Latin for their needs, except they usually preferred digraphs for non-Latin sounds while Slavs decided to use special characters instead. Cyrillic and Greek alphabets later diverged to look more different from one another, but it was much later.

konart4• 3 months ago

Most of the article feels like a straw man made from a very old birch bark.

bulgarboris2• 3 months ago

For people who don't get the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Sla...

secondary_op• 3 months ago

Wouldn't trust anything about medieval or cultural from someone in general and in this case _mirelaivanova_ who is touched by oxford group think, who is abandon twitter in favor of bluesky, who talks about "the uses and possibilities of the gender theory in the study of medieval world" https://youtu.be/dK9qpHIWXRs?t=118

watwut• 2 months ago

Oh yeah, abandoning nazi groupthing site for the one where you dont get that crap and choose your own feed is clear sign of something bad.

And yes, gender theory has uses in medieval world study. After all, medieval women existed.

cynicalsecurity• 3 months ago

Poles and Czechs are happy they dodged that bullet.

AndriyKunitsyn3• 3 months ago

And I'm happy that they are happy, but Czech keyboards have so many letters they have to use the number row, and Polish words, as beautiful as they are, have a lot of digraphs.

LfLxfxxLxfxx2• 3 months ago

and even a tetragraph: szcz=щ

d_silin2• 3 months ago

Cyrillic letters can be used to spice up English. Imagine having just one letter for "ch", "sh" and "th"!

"She relaxed in the chair under a tree's shade"

"Шe relaxed in фe чair under a tree's шade"

pavel_lishin2• 3 months ago

But ф is absolutely not the sound that "th" makes.

In fact, in Russian, at least, we don't have a "th" sound.

But this is better than using Д in place of "A".

d_silin2• 3 months ago

Yeah, it is just фe most aesфetically pleasing letter for фis case.

LfLxfxxLxfxx2• 3 months ago

Actually, for most of its existence, Cyrillic has had a θ (theta) like in Greek, used only in loanwords and pronounced either as ф (f) or т (t) because the th sound is not part of Slavic phonetics. θ was dropped fairly recently - in the 20th century.

tliltocatl2• 3 months ago

It absolutely doesn't as pronounced now, yet Thomas is Фома, Theodor is Феодор, etc. Just like Hertz is Герц, even through Г and H are as far from each other as one can get.

Rendello• 2 months ago

You might enjoy Reddit's "constructed orthography" subreddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/conorthography/top/

Or you can take the plunge and make your own complete script:

https://old.reddit.com/r/neography/top/

And if you're still not satisfied and want to spend the rest of your life making a language that no one else will care to learn:

https://old.reddit.com/r/conlangs/

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 3 months ago

So far not mentioned are a few Hebpew letters incorporated into Cyrillic (sh, ts, ch) somebody handier with Unicode can post them

nikolay2• 3 months ago

The Greekification and Russification of history is disgusting! Cyril and Methodius were Bulgarian; there's plenty of evidence about it, and they created the Glagolic alphabet, while the Cyrillic alphabet is 100% Bulgarian-made without any doubt. Not to mention that Old Bulgarian was the official language in Russia for a while - all this confirmed by honest Russian scholars. But, hey, can the Soviets allow a small country like Bulgaria to be so important for its culture, right? But it's disgusting how "Orthodox" nations are being so nationalistic, love to erase, and rewrite history. That's not Orthodoxy!

Do you know that the first concentration camp in Europe was actually in Greece [0], and Bulgarian priests were put in it and died? So Orthodox, right?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri

jltsiren2• 3 months ago

Cyril and Methodius were Roman citizens, as was their father. Whatever ethnic roots they had was a secondary concern, much in the same way as it is in the US today.

nikolay2• 2 months ago

People always try to think about the past in today's terms. No, it was's anything like today's America and Roman citizenship wasn't anything like today's citizienship of a country either. Ethnicity did matter more back then than it does today. Tell me, what did "Greek" mean back then and did it mean anything and were they Greeks? If it's the citizenship that matters, why so many Roman citizens presented as "Greeks" today?

Inventing Cyrillic (2024)

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