A report on Cyrillic script and Slavic languages

Example of the Cyrillic script. Excerpt from the manuscript "Bdinski Zbornik". Written in 1360.

Ethnographic Map of Slavic and Baltic Languages

View of the cave monastery near the village of Krepcha, Opaka Municipality in Bulgaria. Here is found the oldest Cyrillic inscription, dated 921.

A page from Азбука (Букварь) (ABC (Reader)), the first Russian language textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet.

Baška tablet, 11th century, Krk, Croatia.

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

14th-century Novgorodian children were literate enough to send each other letters written on birch bark.

Letters Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Me, Te, Tse, Be and Ve in upright (printed) and cursive (handwritten) variants. (Top is set in Georgia font, bottom in Odessa Script.)

10th–11th century Codex Zographensis, canonical monument of Old Church Slavonic

Map and tree of Slavic languages, according to Kassian and A. Dybo

Alternate variants of lowercase (cursive) Cyrillic letters: Б/б, Д/д, Г/г, И/и, П/п, Т/т, Ш/ш.
Default Russian (Eastern) forms on the left.
Alternate Bulgarian (Western) upright forms in the middle.
Alternate Serbian/Macedonian (Southern) italic forms on the right.
See also:
Cyrillic cursive.svg Special Cyrillics BGDPT.svg

Map of all areas where the Russian language is the language spoken by the majority of the population.

The Cyrillic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia and is used as the national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia.

- Cyrillic script

The most obvious differences between the East, South, and West Slavic branches are in the orthography of the standard languages: West Slavic languages (and Western South Slavic languages – Croatian and Slovene) are written in the Latin script, and have had more Western European influence due to their proximity and speakers being historically Roman Catholic, whereas the East Slavic and Eastern South Slavic languages are written in Cyrillic and, with Eastern Orthodox or Uniate faith, have had more Greek influence.

- Slavic languages

7 related topics with Alpha

Slavs

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Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group.

The origin and migration of Slavs in Europe between the 5th and 10th centuries AD:

Terracotta tile from the 6th–7th century AD found in Vinica, North Macedonia depicts a battle scene between the Bulgars and Slavs with the Latin inscription BOLGAR and SCLAVIGI

Slavic tribes from the 7th to 9th centuries AD in Europe

Great Moravia was one of the first major Slavic states, 833–907 AD

Seal from the pan-Slavic Congress held in Prague, 1848

The "Zbruch Idol" preserved at the Kraków Archaeological Museum

First Bulgarian Empire, the Bulgars were a Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribe that became Slavicized in the 7th century AD

East Slavic languages
Russian
Belarusian
Ukrainian
Rusyn

Slavs in the US and Canada by area:
20–35%
14–20%
11–14%
8–11%
5–8%
3–5%
0–3%

The percentage of ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states according to last censuses
90.0%-100.0%
80.0%-89.9%
65.0%-79.9%
50.0%-64.9%
35.0%-49.9%
20.0%-34.9%
10.0%-19.9%
5.0%-9.9%
2.0%-4.9%
0.0%-1.9%

They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages.

Bulgaria was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world.

Old Church Slavonic

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Example of the Cyrillic alphabet: excerpt from the manuscript "Bdinski Zbornik" written in Old Slavonic, 1360

A page from the Gospel of Miroslav, Serbian medieval manuscript, a 12th-century Byzantine-Slavonic book, National Library of Serbia.

The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy in Great Moravia (1912), by Alphonse Mucha, The Slav Epic

"Simeon I of Bulgaria, the Morning Star of Slavonic Literature". (1923), by Alphonse Mucha, The Slav Epic

Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic was the first Slavic literary language.

Both schools originally used the Glagolitic alphabet, though the Cyrillic script developed early on at the Preslav Literary School, where it superseded Glagolitic as official in Bulgaria in 893.

Russian language

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East Slavic language mainly spoken across Russia.

Competence of Russian in countries of the former Soviet Union (except Russia), 2004

Percentage of people in Ukraine with Russian as their native language (according to a 2001 census) (by region)

A page from Azbuka (Alphabet book), the first East Slavic printed textbook. Printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574 in Lviv. This page features the Cyrillic script.

This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter П.

The Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest East Slavic book known, one of many medieval illuminated manuscripts preserved in the Russian National Library.

It is the most spoken Slavic language, and the most spoken native language in Europe, as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia.

Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds.

Bulgarian language

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South Slavic language spoken in Southeastern Europe, primarily in Bulgaria.

Map of the Bulgarian dialects within Bulgaria

Extent of Bulgarian dialects according to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences shown encompassing the Eastern South Slavic dialects. Subregions are differentiated by pronunciation of man and tooth.

Areas of Eastern South Slavic languages.

The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages; changes include the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article and the lack of a verb infinitive.

Until 1945, Bulgarian orthography did not reveal this alternation and used the original Old Slavic Cyrillic letter yat (Ѣ), which was commonly called двойно е (dvoyno e) at the time, to express the historical yat vowel or at least root vowels displaying the ya – e alternation.

Classification of Macedonian within the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family

Macedonian language

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Macedonian (македонски јазик, translit.

Krste Petkov Misirkov (pictured) was the first to outline the distinctiveness of the Macedonian language in his book Za makedonckite raboti (On the Macedonian Matters), published in 1903.

Macedonian police car, with the Macedonian word Полиција (Policija), for "police".

It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch.

It is written using an adapted 31-letter version of the Cyrillic script with six original letters.

Saint George's Cathedral, Istanbul, Turkey

Eastern Orthodox Church

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Second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members.

Christ Pantocrator, sixth century, Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai; the oldest known icon of Christ, in one of the oldest monasteries in the world

Emperor Constantine presents a representation of the city of Constantinople as tribute to an enthroned Mary and baby Jesus in this church mosaic (Hagia Sophia, c. 1000)

An icon of Saint John the Baptist, 14th century, North Macedonia

Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325) holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.

Hagia Sophia, the largest church in the world and patriarchal basilica of Constantinople for nearly a thousand years, later converted into a mosque, then a museum, then back to a mosque.

The baptism of Princess Olga in Constantinople, a miniature from the Radzivill Chronicle

Latin Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Orthodox controlled Byzantine Empire, in 1204.

Timeline showing the main autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches, from an Eastern Orthodox point of view, up to 2021

Canonical territories of the main autocephalous and autonomous Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions as of 2020

Percentage distribution of Eastern Orthodox Christians by country

Our Lady of Tinos is the major Marian shrine in Greece.

The Theotokos of Vladimir, one of the most venerated of Orthodox Christian icons of the Virgin Mary

Last Judgment: 12th-century Byzantine mosaic from Torcello Cathedral

David glorified by the women of Israel from the Paris Psalter, example of the Macedonian art (Byzantine) (sometimes called the Macedonian Renaissance)

Chanters singing on the kliros at the Church of St. George, Patriarchate of Constantinople

An illustration of the traditional interior of an Orthodox church.

Shards of pottery vases on the street, after being thrown from the windows of nearby houses. A Holy Saturday tradition in Corfu.

Eucharistic elements prepared for the Divine Liturgy

The wedding of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Eastern Orthodox subdeacon being ordained to the diaconate. The bishop has placed his omophorion and right hand on the head of the candidate and is reading the Prayer of Cheirotonia.

The consecration of the Rt Rev. Reginald Heber Weller as an Anglican bishop at the Cathedral of St. Paul the Apostle in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, with the Rt. Rev. Anthony Kozlowski of the Polish National Catholic Church and Saint Tikhon, then Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska (along with his chaplains Fr. John Kochurov and Fr. Sebastian Dabovich) of the Russian Orthodox Church present

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 2014

The Constantinople Massacre of April 1821: a religious persecution of the Greek population of Constantinople under the Ottomans. Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople was executed.

The Pan-Orthodox Council, Kolymvari, Crete, Greece, June 2016

Patriarchate of Peć in Kosovo, the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church from the 14th century when its status was upgraded into a patriarchate

Traditional Paschal procession by Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church

Greek Orthodox massacred during the Greek Genocide in Smyrna in 1922.

The Bulgarian and all the Slavic churches use the title Pravoslavie (Cyrillic: Православие), meaning "correctness of glorification", to denote what is in English Orthodoxy, while the Georgians use the title Martlmadidebeli.

A major event in this effort was the development of the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria, at the Preslav Literary School in the ninth century; this script, along with the liturgical Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian, were declared official in Bulgaria in 893.

Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (The Gospel of Miroslav), a manuscript, c. 1186

Serbian language

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Standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs.

Most Serbian words are of native Slavic lexical stock, tracing back to the Proto-Slavic language.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Serbian, written in the Cyrillic script: