Cyrillic

Cyrillic
For Unicode block, see Cyrillic (Unicode block).
Cyrillic
Romanian Cyrillic - Lord's Prayer text.svg
Type Alphabet
Languages

National languages of:
 Belarus
 Bosnia
 Bulgaria
 Kazakhstan
 Kyrgyzstan
 Macedonia
 Mongolia
 Montenegro
 Russia
 Serbia
 Tajikistan
 Ukraine

(see Languages using Cyrillic)
Time period Earliest variants exist circa 940
Parent systems
Sister systems Latin alphabet
Coptic alphabet
Armenian alphabet
Glagolitic alphabet
ISO 15924 Cyrl, 220
  Cyrs (Old Church Slavonic variant)
Direction Left-to-right
Unicode alias Cyrillic
Unicode range U+0400–U+04FF
U+0500–U+052F
U+2DE0–U+2DFF
U+A640–U+A69F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

The Cyrillic script (play /sɨˈrɪlɪk/) or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.[1] It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, of Eastern Europe and Asia, especially those of Slavic origin, and also non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian.

Cyrillic is derived from the Ancient Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Ancient Greek. It is named in honor of the two Eastern Roman Empire brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on. Modern scholars consider that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius (such as Clement of Ohrid).[2][3]

With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek scripts.

Contents

Letters

As the Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, it was adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, discussed below.

The early Cyrillic alphabet
А Б В Г Д Е Ж Ѕ З И І К Л М Н О П Ҁ Р С Т Ѹ
Ф Х Ѡ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ꙑ Ь Ѣ Ꙗ Ѥ Ю Ѧ Ѫ Ѩ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ

Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.

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

Yeri (Ы) was originally a ligature of Yer and I (Ꙑ). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter I: Ꙗ (not ancestor of modern ya, Я, which is derived from Ѧ), Ѥ, Ю (ligature of I and ОУ), Ѩ, Ѭ. Many letters had variant forms and commonly used ligatures, for example И = І = Ї, Ѡ = Ѻ, Оу ⁄ ОУ = Ѹ, ѠТ = Ѿ.

The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from the letters' Greek ancestors.

Cyrillic numerals
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
А В Г Д Е Ѕ З И Ѳ
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
І К Л М Н Ѯ О П Ч
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Р С Т Ѵ Ф Х Ѱ Ѡ Ц

The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet. In accordance with Unicode policy, the standard does not include letterform variations or ligatures found in manuscript sources unless they can be shown to conform to the Unicode definition of a character.

The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language.

Letterforms and typography

The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (still found on many icon inscriptions even today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often shared between adjacent letters.

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of serifs, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type.

Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with exceptions: Cyrillic ⟨а⟩, ⟨е⟩, ⟨р⟩, and ⟨у⟩ adopted Western lowercase shapes, lowercase ⟨ф⟩ is typically designed under the influence of Latin ⟨p⟩, lowercase ⟨б⟩ is a traditional handwritten form), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs.[4]

Comparison of some upright and hand-written letters (Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Em, Te and Tse. Top row is set in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY)

Cyrillic fonts, as well as Latin ones, have roman and italic type (practically all popular modern fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are simply shared by both). However, the native font terminology in Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense.[5] Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns:

  • A roman type is called pryamoy shrift ("upright type")—compare with Normalschrift ("regular type") in German
  • An italic type is called kursiv ("cursive") or kursivniy shrift ("cursive type")—from the German word Kursive, meaning italic typefaces and not cursive writing
  • Cursive handwriting is rukopisniy shrift ("hand-written type") in Russian—in German: Kurrentschrift or Laufschrift, both meaning literally ‘running type’

Similarly to Latin fonts, italic and cursive types of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for hand-written or stylish types) are very different from their upright roman types. In certain cases, the correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic fonts: for example, italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ is the lowercase counterpart of ⟨Т⟩ not of ⟨М⟩.

The standard Cyrillic letters compared to the ones used in Serbian and Macedonian, in regular shape and italic/cursive

As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically sloped oblique type (naklonniy shrift—"sloped," or "slanted type") instead of italic.

A boldfaced type is called poluzhirniy shrift ("semi-bold type"), because there existed fully boldfaced shapes which are out of use since the beginning of the 20th century.

A bold italic combination (bold slanted) does not exist for all font families.

In Serbian, as well as in Macedonian,[6] some italic and cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for advertisements, road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. The Cyrillic lowercase ⟨б⟩ has a slightly different design both in the roman and italic types, which is similar to the lowercase Greek letter Delta, ⟨δ⟩.

The following table shows the differences between the upright and italic Cyrillic letters of the Russian alphabet. Italic forms significantly different from their upright analogues, or especially confusing to users of a Latin alphabet, are highlighted.

Also available as a graphical image.
а б в г д е ё ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я
а б в г д е ё ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я

Note: in some fonts or styles lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ (⟨д⟩) may look like Latin ⟨g⟩ and lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ (⟨т⟩) may look exactly like a capital italic ⟨T⟩ (⟨T⟩), only small.

Cyrillic alphabets

Distribution of the Cyrillic script worldwide.
Dark green: Cyrillic is the sole official script.
Medium green: Cyrillic is co-official with Latin. In the cases of Georgia, and Moldova, this is in breakaway regions not recognized by the central government.
Light green: Cyrillic is not official, but is in common use as a legacy script.
Main articles: Cyrillic alphabets, Languages using Cyrillic, List of Cyrillic letters, and Cyrillic digraphs

Among others, Cyrillic is the standard script for writing the following national languages:

Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Ukrainian

Non-Slavic languages: Abkhaz, Bashkir, Aleut (now mostly in church texts), Erzya, Kazakh, Kildin Sami, Komi, Kyrgyz, Mari, Moksha, Mongolian, Ossetic, Romani (some dialects), Sakha (aka, Yakut), Tajik, Tatar, Tlingit (now only in church texts), Tuvan, Udmurt, Yuit (Siberian Yupik), and Yupik (in Alaska).

The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska,[7] Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia, and the Russian Far East.

The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic was Abur, used for the Komi language. Other Cyrillic alphabets include the Molodtsov alphabet for Komi language and various alphabet for Caucasian languages.

Name

Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves, its name denotes homage rather than authorship. The name "Cyrillic" often confuses people who are not familiar with the script's history, because it does not identify a country of origin (contrast with "Greek alphabet"). Some call it the "Russian alphabet" because Russian is the most populous and influential alphabet based on the script. Some Bulgarian intellectuals, notably Stefan Tsanev, have expressed concern over this, and have suggested that the Cyrillic script be called "Bulgarian alphabet" instead, for the sake of historical accuracy.[8]

The Cyrillic script is also known as azbuka, derived from the old names of the first two letters of most Cyrillic alphabets.

History

A page from Azbuka, the first Russian textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic script.
Main article: Early Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script was created in the First Bulgarian Empire[9] and is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Tradition holds that Cyrillic and Glagolitic were formalized either by the two Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki, Saints Cyril and Methodius who brought Christianity to the southern Slavs, or by their disciples.[10][11][12][13] Paul Cubberly posits that while Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire that developed Cyrillic from Greek in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.[9] Later Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples: Russians, Serbs and others, as well as among non-Slavic Vlachs and Moldavians.

Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language, especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. (See Early Cyrillic alphabet.) Hence expressions such as "И is the tenth Cyrillic letter" typically refer to the order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script.

The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century. The literature produced in the Old Bulgarian language soon spread north and became the lingua franca of Eastern Europe, where it came to also be known as Old Church Slavonic.[14][15][16][17][18] The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the following ten centuries, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reforms and political decrees. Today, dozens of languages in Eastern Europe and Asia are written in Cyrillic alphabets.

Relationship to other writing systems

Latin script

A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet, such as Serbian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek and Romanian (Republic of Moldova only). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, official status shifted in some of the former republics from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except Transnistria, where Moldovan Cyrillic is official), Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, but Uzbekistan still uses both systems. The Russian government has mandated that Cyrillic must be used for all public communications in all federal subjects of Russia, to promote closer ties across the federation.[citation needed] This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script (which, in fact, is noted by observers such as Johanna Nichols to be a much better representation of the language),[citation needed] and is still used by many Chechens. Those in the diaspora especially refuse to use the Chechen Cyrillic alphabet, which they associate with Russian imperialism.

Serbia uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, but by Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was made official.[19]

The Zhuang alphabet, used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from the alphabet in 1982 and replaced with Latin letters that closely resembled the letters they replaced.

Romanization

There are various systems for Romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin letters, and transcription to convey pronunciation.

Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:

See also Romanization of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Russian, Macedonian and Ukrainian.

Cyrillization

Representing other writing systems with Cyrillic letters is called Cyrillization.

Computer encoding

Unicode

Further information: Cyrillic (Unicode block)

In Unicode 6.0, letters of Cyrillic, including national and historical alphabets, are represented by four blocks:

The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script.

Unicode as a general rule does not include accented Cyrillic letters. Few exceptions are:

  • combinations that are considered as separate letters of respective alphabets, like Й, Ў, Ё, Ї, Ѓ, Ќ (as well as many letters of non-slavic alphabets);
  • two most frequent combinations orthographically required to distinguish homonyms in Bulgarian and Macedonian: Ѐ, Ѝ;
  • few Old and New Church Slavonic combinations: Ѷ, Ѿ, Ѽ.

To indicate stressed or long vowels, combining diacritical marks can be used after respective letter (for example, U+0301 ́ combining acute accent: ы́ э́ ю́ я́ etc.).

Some languages, including Church Slavonic, are still not fully supported.

Unicode 5.1, released on 4 April 2008, introduces major changes to the Cyrillic blocks. Revisions to the existing Cyrillic blocks, and the addition of Cyrillic Extended A (2DE0...2DFF) and Cyrillic Extended B (A640...A69F), significantly improve support for the early Cyrillic alphabet, Abkhaz, Aleut, Chuvash, Kurdish, and Mordvin.[20]

Other

Punctuation for Cyrillic text is similar to that used in European Latin-alphabet languages.

Other character encoding systems for Cyrillic:

  • CP866 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in MS-DOS also known as GOST-alternative. Cyrillic characters go in their native order, with a "window" for pseudographic characters.
  • ISO/IEC 8859-5 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by International Organization for Standardization
  • KOI8-R – 8-bit native Russian character encoding. Invented in the USSR for use on Soviet clones of American IBM and DEC computers. The Cyrillic characters go in the order of their Latin counterparts, which allowed the text to remain readable after transmission via a 7bit line which removed the senior bit from each byte - the result became a very rough, but readable, Latin transliteration of Cyrillic. Standard encoding of early 90s for UNIX systems and the first Russian Internet encoding.
  • KOI8-U – KOI8-R with addition of Ukrainian letters
  • MIK – 8-bit native Bulgarian character encoding for use in DOS
  • Windows-1251 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in Microsoft Windows. The simplest 8bit Cyrillic encoding - 32 capital chars in native order at 0xc0-0xdf, 32 usual chars at 0xe0-0xff, with rarely used "YO" characters somewhere else. No pseudographics. Former standard encoding in some Linux distributions for Belarusian and Bulgarian, but currently displaced by UTF-8.
  • GOST-main
  • GB 2312 - Principally simplified Chinese encodings, but there are also basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).
  • JIS and Shift JIS - Principally Japanese encodings, but there are also basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).

Keyboard layouts

Each language has its own standard keyboard layout, adopted from typewriters. With the flexibility of computer input methods, there are also transliterating or phonetic/homophonic[21] keyboard layouts made for typists who are more familiar with other layouts, like the common English qwerty keyboard. When practical Cyrillic keyboard layouts or fonts are not available, computer users sometimes use transliteration or look-alike "volapuk" encoding to type languages which are normally written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

See Keyboard layouts for non-Roman alphabetic scripts.

See also

References

  1. ^ Paul Cubberley (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets" and later finalized and spread by disciples Kliment and Naum in Ohrid and Preslav schools of Tsar Boris' Bulgaria. In Daniels and Bright, eds. The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
  2. ^ http://www.ohridnews.com/index.php?servis=7wonders
  3. ^ <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cyrillic.htm
  4. ^ Bringhurst (2002) writes "in Cyrillic, the difference between normal lower case and small caps is more subtle than it is in the Latin or Greek alphabets,..." (p 32) and "in most Cyrillic faces, the lower case is close in color and shape to Latin small caps" (p 107).
  5. ^ Name ital'yanskiy shrift (Italian font) in Russian refers to a particular font family [1], whereas rimskiy shrift (roman font) is just a synonym for Latin font, Latin alphabet.
  6. ^ Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE, Janko Stamenovic (collection of selected commented answers received in Unicode mailing list (unicode@unicode.org) between 29.12.1999 and 17.01.2000).
  7. ^ "Orthodox Language Texts", Retrieved 2011-06-20
  8. ^ Tsanev, Stefan. Български хроники, том 4 (Bulgarian Chronicles, Volume 4), Sofia, 2009, p.165
  9. ^ a b Paul Cubberley (1996) "The Slavic Alphabets" and later finalized and spread by disciples Kliment and Naum in Ohrid and Preslav schools of Tsar Boris' Bulgaria. In Daniels and Bright, eds. The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
  10. ^ Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05, s.v. "Cyril and Methodius, Saints"; Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica Incorporated, Warren E. Preece - 1972, p.846, s.v., "Cyril and Methodius, Saints" and "Eastern Orthodoxy, Missions ancient and modern"; Encyclopedia of World Cultures, David H. Levinson, 1991, p.239, s.v., "Social Science"; Eric M. Meyers, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, p.151, 1997; Lunt, Slavic Review, June, 1964, p. 216; Roman Jakobson, Crucial problems of Cyrillo-Methodian Studies; Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky, A Handbook of Slavic Studies, p.98; V. Bogdanovich, History of the ancient Serbian literature, Belgrade, 1980, p.119
  11. ^ The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05, O.Ed. Saints Cyril and Methodius "Cyril and Methodius, Saints) 869 and 884, respectively, “Greek missionaries, brothers, called Apostles to the Slavs and fathers of Slavonic literature."
  12. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, Major alphabets of the world, Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets, 2008, O.Ed. "The two early Slavic alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic, were invented by St. Cyril, or Constantine (c. 827–869), and St. Methodii (c. 825–884). These men from Thessaloniki who became apostles to the southern Slavs, whom they converted to Christianity."
  13. ^ Kazhdan, Alexander P. (1991). The Oxford dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 507. ISBN 0-19-504652-8. "Constantine (Cyril) and his brother Methodius were the sons of the droungarios Leo and Maria, who may have been a Slav." 
  14. ^ "On the relationship of old Church Slavonic to the written language of early Rus'" Horace G. Lunt; Russian Linguistics, Volume 11, Numbers 2-3 / January, 1987
  15. ^ Schenker, Alexander (1995). The Dawn of Slavic. Yale University Press. pp. 185–186, 189–190. 
  16. ^ Lunt, Horace. Old Church Slavonic Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 3–4. 
  17. ^ Wien, Lysaght (1983). Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian)-Middle Greek-Modern English dictionary. Verlag Bruder Hollinek. 
  18. ^ Benjamin W. Fortson. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, p. 374
  19. ^ http://www.srbija.gov.rs/cinjenice_o_srbiji/ustav_odredbe.php?id=217
  20. ^ n3194r-cyrillic
  21. ^ http://Phonetic.WinRus.com

External links

Letters of the Cyrillic alphabet (see also Cyrillic digraphs)
А
A		 Б
Be		 В
Ve		 Г
Ge		 Ґ
Ge upturn		 Д
De		 Ђ
Dje		 Ѓ
Gje		 Е
Ye		 Ё
Yo		 Є
Ye
Ж
Zhe		 З
Ze		 Ѕ
Dze		 И
I		 І
Dotted I		 Ї
Yi		 Й
Short I		 Ј
Je		 К
Ka		 Л
El		 Љ
Lje
М
Em		 Н
En		 Њ
Nje		 О
O		 П
Pe		 Р
Er		 С
Es		 Т
Te		 Ћ
Tshe		 Ќ
Kje		 У
U
Ў
Short U		 Ф
Ef		 Х
Kha		 Ц
Tse		 Ч
Che		 Џ
Dzhe		 Ш
Sha		 Щ
Shcha		 Ъ
Hard sign (Yer)		 Ы
Yery		 Ь
Soft sign (Yeri)
Э
E		 Ю
Yu		 Я
Ya
Cyrillic non-slavic letters
Ӏ
Palochka		 Ә
Cyrillic Schwa		 Ғ
Ayn		 Ҙ
Bashkir Dhe		 Ҫ
Bashkir The		 Ҡ
Bashkir Qa		 Қ
Ka with
descender		 Ң
Ng		 Ө
Barred O		 Ү
Straight U		 Ұ
Straight U with stroke
Һ
He
Cyrillic archaic letters
Ꙗ
A iotified		 Ѥ
E iotified		 Ѧ
Yus small		 Ѫ
Yus big		 Ѩ
Yus small iotified		 Ѭ
Yus big iotified		 Ѯ
Ksi		 Ѱ
Psi		 Ѳ
Fita		 Ѵ
Izhitsa		 Ѷ
Izhitsa okovy
Ҁ
Koppa		 Ѹ
Uk		 Ѡ
Omega		 Ѿ
Ot		 Ѣ
Yat
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History
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  • Æ (Cyrillic) — Cyrillic alphabet navbox Heading=Cyrillic ligature AE uuc=04D4|ulc=04D5Unicode|Ӕ Unicode|ӕ is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet now used in Ossetic to represent the near open front unrounded vowel IPA|/æ/. Ossetic earlier used the Latin alphabet …   Wikipedia

  • Cyrillic — ► ADJECTIVE ▪ denoting the alphabet used for Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and some other Slavic languages, ultimately derived from Greek uncials. ► NOUN ▪ the Cyrillic alphabet. ORIGIN named after the 9th century Greek missionary St… …   English terms dictionary

  • Cyrillic — 1842, in reference to the Slavic alphabet, from St. Cyril, 9c. apostle of the Slavs, who supposedly invented it. The alphabet replaced earlier GLAGOLITIC (Cf. Glagolitic). The name Cyril is L.L. Cyrillus, from Gk. Kyrillos, lit. lordly, masterful …   Etymology dictionary

  • Cyrillic — [sə ril′ik] adj. designating or of the Slavic alphabet traditionally attributed to Saint Cyril, 9th cent. apostle to the Slavs: in modified form, it is still used in Russia, Bulgaria, and other Slavic countries …   English World dictionary

  • Cyrillic — [[t]sɪrɪ̱lɪk[/t]] also cyrillic 1) ADJ: ADJ n The Cyrillic alphabet is the alphabet that is used to write some Slavonic languages, such as Russian and Bulgarian. 2) N UNCOUNT Cyrillic is the Cyrillic alphabet. ...signs written in Cyrillic …   English dictionary

  • Cyrillic — 1. noun /səˈrɪ.lɪk/ An alphabet devised for writing the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language, and its adaptations used for several Slavic and other languages of Eastern Europe and Asia. Syn …   Wiktionary

  • Cyrillic —    The oldest manuscripts in Church Slavonic (q.v.) are in two different scripts, Glagolitic (q.v.) and Cyrillic. Cyril and Methodios (q.v.) invented the former, but the latter script, which incorrectly bears Cyril s name, is thought to be an… …   Historical dictionary of Byzantium

  • Cyrillic — adjective Cyrillic writing is written in the alphabet used for Russian, Bulgarian, and other Slavonic languages: a Cyrillic typewriter …   Longman dictionary of contemporary English

  • Cyrillic — /səˈrɪlɪk/ (say suh rilik) adjective of or relating to the Cyrillic alphabet. {from Cyril + ic. See Cyrillic alphabet} …  

  • Cyrillic — adjective Etymology: Saint Cyril, reputed inventor of the Cyrillic alphabet Date: 1813 of, relating to, or constituting an alphabet used for writing Old Church Slavic and for Russian and a number of other languages of eastern Europe and Asia …   New Collegiate Dictionary

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