History UsefulNotes / CyrillicAlphabet

The Slavic world has historically been religiously divided between Rome and Constantinople, and as a result, the choice of alphabet often has religious roots, with Latin characters preferred in majority-Catholic countries and Cyrillic in majority-Orthodox ones. This is most evident in the former Yugoslav territories, where Catholic Croatia and Slovenia and majority-Muslim Bosnia prefer Latin alphabets, while the largely Orthodox Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia use Cyrillic. (Majority-Muslim Kosovo uses Latin for Albanian and Cyrillic for Serbian.) Since Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Slovene all form part of a single West South Slavic dialect continuum, the situation is similar to that of the Hindustani languages, where Hindi is written in Devanagari, Urdu in Perso-Arabic, and dialects from outside South Asia generally use the Latin alphabet. Outside the area, the majority-Catholic countries of Poland[[note]]There is a certain irony in the fact that Polish has possibly the most conservative phonology of all Slavic languages (especially nasal vowels that have disappeared almost everywhere else), and is therefore the closest fit with the original Cyrillic alphabet, but has never used it in any form.[[/note]], the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as Slavic communities (e.g. Sorbian) in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy, use the Latin alphabet, while Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria use Cyrillic. Romania is an exception; they speak a Romance language but are majority Orthodox, and switched from Cyrillic to Latin in the middle of the 19th century, while neighboring (formerly Soviet) Moldova speaks a dialect of Romanian but used Cyrillic up until the breakup of the USSR. Belarus has generally used Cyrillic, but has had significant Polish influence over its history (its western half was part of Poland for much of the 19th and early 20th century) and several forms of Latinized Belarusian exist.

* Northern Russian

!!Bulgarian and North Macedonian

You will sometimes get the words, in either alphabet given those little line accents called "udareniye". These aren't actually used in writing, they're just pronunciation aids.

!!Bulgarian and (Slavic) Macedonian

The Macedonian language, spoken in the [[InsistentTerminology Former Yugoslav]] Republic of Macedonia as well as Slavic-speaking parts of Greece, is a close relative of Bulgarian, having only separated from it in the last century or so. However, because of the Republic's status as the southernmost part of the former Yugoslavia, it uses an alphabet derived more from the Serbian than the Russian.

Cyrillic alphabet comes from the time of the Christianization of UsefulNotes/KievanRus and other Slavs under Byzantine influence. As legend says, it was created by two monks, Cyril and Methodius, to be used as the Slavic peoples' alphabet. In truth, they created the Glagolitic alphabet, which is the early version and looks ''very'' different from the known Cyrillic. The original Cyrillic was actually created by their Bulgarian disciple, Saint Clement of Ohrid (Kliment Ohridski), who created new glyphs based mostly on Greek lettering styles of the era (with some letters drawn from Glagolitic and Coptic) and named it after his teacher Cyril. This original alphabet survives today as the alphabet of ceremonial books in the Russian Orthodox Church (in Russia, it is also used to evoke archaic style and all-Russianness, similar to how Germans use Fraktur or the Japanese use hentaigana). However, the Slavic languages (several of which don't use the Cyrillic alphabet at all; see below) have changed significantly, and today we have several simplified Cyrillic alphabets, each tied to a specific language.

In addition to these, there are several languages in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union that wound up with a Cyrillic orthography because they did not have an alphabet (much like almost all Native American languages have a Latin orthography). Several other nationalities in Russia and the former Soviet Republics (Azeris, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Turkmens, Tatars, Chechens, etc.) had preexisting (usually Perso-Arabic) orthographies replaces with Cyrillic ones during the Soviet era, although most of them outside Russia are phasing them out.

Please note that Czech, Slovak, Polish, Lithuanian, and a lot of other Slavic and other Eastern European languages do ''not'' use Cyrillic alphabet, and sometimes even assuming that they can read it could be offensive.[[note]]During the Tsarist era, the Russians tried to impose a Cyrillic alphabet for Polish and Lithuanian and banned books written in the Latin alphabet in Russian-controlled Poland. The reaction among the Poles and Lithuanians is very negative, to say the least, that the effort was abandoned.[[/note]]

Mongolia's official writing system for the Mongolian language has been the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_writing_systems#Cyrillic_script Cyrillic script since the 1940s]]. Note that the Mongolian language is written in more traditional scripts in other places, such as the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China. In Mongolia itself, the traditional alphabet is being reintroduced mainly for national pride.

Since Romanian evolved among Greek and Slavic influences, the use of the Cyrillic alphabet had a historical precedent; until the 1860s, standard Romanian used its own, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Cyrillic_alphabet somewhat archaic form of Cyrillic]]. The Moldovan form, however, is more of a straight transliteration of the language into Russian Cyrillic with no direct relationship to the original Romanian style. The closely related Aromanian language, spoken mainly in Greece and other countries of the southern Balkans, was written in modifications of the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets until adopting an alphabet loosely based on modern Romanian Latin and Latinized Macedonian in 1997.

UsefulNotes/{{Bulgaria}} was a member of the WarsawPact during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, but is now a member of UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} and UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion (as are the rest of the "buffer states"). It was also the country where the Cyrillic alphabet was created and first taught and used. It is also somewhat mutually intelligible with Russian and uses a pretty similar subset of wider Cyrillic.

The Slavic world has historically been religiously divided between Rome and Constantinople, and as a result, the choice of alphabet often has religious roots, with Latin characters preferred in majority-Catholic countries and Cyrillic in majority-Orthodox ones. This is most evident in the former Yugoslav territories, where Catholic Croatia and Slovenia and majority-Muslim Bosnia prefer Latin alphabets, while the largely orthodox Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia use Cyrillic. (Majority-Muslim Kosovo uses Latin for Albanian and Cyrillic for Serbian.) Since Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Slovene all form part of a single West South Slavic dialect continuum, the situation is similar to that of the Hindustani languages, where Hindi is written in Devanagari, Urdu in Perso-Arabic, and dialects from outside South Asia generally use the Latin alphabet. Outside the area, the majority-Catholic countries of Poland[[note]]There is a certain irony in the fact that Poland has possibly the most conservative phonology of all Slavic languages (especially nasal vowels that have disappeared almost everywhere else), and is therefore the closest fit with the original Cyrillic alphabet, but has never used it in any form.[[/note]], the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as Slavic communities (e.g. Sorbian) in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy, use the Latin alphabet, while Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria use Cyrillic. Romania is an exception; they speak a Romance language but are majority Orthodox, and switched from Cyrillic to Latin in the middle of the 19th century, while neighboring (formerly Soviet) Moldova speaks a dialect of Romanian but used Cyrillic up until the breakup of the USSR. Belarus has generally used Cyrillic, but has had significant Polish influence over its history (its western half was part of Poland for much of the 19th and early 20th century) and several forms of Latinized Belarusian exist.

While Cyryllic was and still remains one of the world's most influential writing systems, the past two hundred years haven't been easy for it, with more and more Cyryllic-based languages opting for switching to the Latin alphabet instead, which is widely seen as facilitating international communication to a much larger degree and, sometimes, better fit to render their respective phonologies, with Romanian (in the 19th century in Romania proper and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in Moldova as well) or Azeri being the prime examples of this trend. Aside from that, Latin has become the co-official alphabet in all the Serbo-Croatian-speaking republics of former Yugoslavia (whereas Croatia and Slovenia use Latin-based ones exclusively) and in both Belarus and Ukraine there is a never-ending talk of a possibility to introduce a Latin alphabet or maybe even replacing the Cyryllic one with it altogether (albeit the chances of it coming into fruition anytime soon are rather slim). It's telling that the Soviet Union ''itself'' considered dropping the Cyryllic as a remnant of the ''ancien regime'' immediately following the revolution and had the Communist Party not changed their mind at the right moment, it's very likely that by today the entire alphabet would have fallen into worldwide disuse. Needless to say, ''introducing'' the Cyryllic to any non-Cyryllic-using language isn't considered an option anywhere.

A fun thing: despite the name, in most of the UsefulNotes/{{Belarus}}, Russian is the native language. Most people speak it both at home and in official settings, Belarusian (or B(y)elorussian, the more Russified spelling used during the Soviet era), being now mostly associated with poor farmers and the like, despite the government stating that both languages are official. In fact, up until the beginning of the 20th century Belarusian wasn't considered a language on its own at all, but was seen as a particularly rustic (and Polonized) dialect of Russian. One of the constant points of ridicule about Belarus' president Alexander Lukashenko is that being a country bumpkin he speaks neither Russian, nor Belarusian, but rather a common pidgin known as ''trasyanka'', which is widespread in the rural areas. Since the beginning of the 20th century Belarusian nationalists try to reinvent it as an elite language, but given that their chief activity seems to be more [[WeAreStrugglingTogether squabbling with each other]], the result is nowhere in sight, and their involvement actually seems to make the situation worse: now there are two separate literary dialects, and ''three'' writing systems, two using Cyrillic and a third using Latin.

Mongolia's official writing system for the Mongolian language has been Cyrillic script since the 1940s. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_writing_systems#Cyrillic_script). Note that the Mongolian language is written in more traditional scripts in other places, such as the Inner Mongolia region of China. In Mongolia itself, the traditional alphabet is being reintroduced mainly for national pride.

Dungan is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken by ethnic Chinese Muslims in Russia and other former Soviet lands, and is written in basically Russian Cyrillic. It's a fairly obscure language, but it's of great interest to Sino-Tibetan linguists because of how the shift from hanzi to alphabetic characters affected the assimilation of loanwords compared with standard Mandarin.

Please note that Czech, Slovak, Polish, Lithuanian, and a lot of other Slavic and other Eastern European languages do ''not'' use Cyrillic alphabet, and sometimes even assuming that they can read it could be offensive.[[note]]During the Tsarist era, the Russians tried to impose a Cyrillic alphabet of Polish and Lithuanian and banned books written in the Latin alphabet in Russian-contolled Poland. The reaction among the Poles and Lithuanians is very negative, to say the least, that the effort was abandoned.

Please note that Czech, Slovak, Polish, Lithuanian, and a lot of other Slavic and other Eastern European languages do ''not'' use Cyrillic alphabet, and sometimes even assuming that they can read it could be offensive.

The major difference of Cyrillic from Latin script is that some Cyrillic letters change the way the previous letter is pronounced (which is actually quite common in various scripts using Latin too, but as they are much more varied, hardly anyone notices), but all changes are somehow systematic -- unlike, say, as it it in English.[[note]]Note that this paragraph actually describes writing system of ''Russian'', other languages might differ significantly[[/note]]. There are a few exceptions from pronouncing rules, but even they may still be pronounced as written without misunderstanding.