Writing system used for various Eurasian languages
"Cyrillic" and "Cyrillic alphabet" redirect here. For the national variants of the Cyrillic script, see Cyrillic alphabets. For other uses, see Cyrillic (disambiguation).
See also: List of Cyrillic letters and Early Cyrillic alphabet
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Cyrillic script" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR(January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Cyrillic script
1850s Romanian text (Lord's Prayer), written with the Cyrillic script
Script type
Alphabet
Time period
Earliest variants exist c. 893[1] – c. 940
Direction
Left-to-right
Official script
7 sovereign states
Belarus
Bulgaria
Kyrgyzstan
North Macedonia[a]
Russia
Ukraine
Tajikistan
Co-official script in:
6[i] sovereign states and 2* disputed territories
Abkhazia *
Bosnia and Herzegovina[b]
Kosovo *[c]
Kazakhstan[d][citation needed]
Uzbekistan[e]
Mongolia[f]
Montenegro[g]
Serbia[h]
Languages
See Languages using Cyrillic
Related scripts
Parent systems
Egyptian hieroglyphs[4]
Proto-Sinaitic
Phoenician
Greek script augmented by Glagolitic
Early Cyrillic script
Cyrillic script
Child systems
Old Permic script
Sister systems
Armenian
Coptic
Latin
ISO 15924
ISO 15924
Cyrl(220), Cyrillic Cyrs (Old Church Slavonic variant)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Example of the Cyrillic script. Excerpt from the manuscript "Bdinski Zbornik". Written in 1360.[5]
The Cyrillic script (/sɪˈrɪlɪk/sih-RIL-ik), Slavonic script or simply Slavic 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, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages.
As of 2019[update], around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them.[6] 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 alphabets.[7]
The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by the disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius, who had previously created the Glagolitic script. Among them were Clement of Ohrid, Naum of Preslav, Angelar, Sava and other scholars.[8][9][10][11] The script is named in honor of Saint Cyril.
^Auty, R. Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts and Glossary. 1977.
^"Gazetler | TDNG". metbugat.gov.tm. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
^"Gazetler | TDNG". metbugat.gov.tm. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
^Oldest alphabet found in Egypt. BBC. 1999-11-15. Retrieved 2015-01-14.
^"Bdinski Zbornik[manuscript]". lib.ugent.be. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
^List of countries by population
^Orban, Leonard (24 May 2007). "Cyrillic, the third official alphabet of the EU, was created by a truly multilingual European" (PDF). European Union. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
^Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05, s.v. "Cyril and Methodius, Saints"; Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia 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.
^Dvornik, Francis (1956). The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences. p. 179. The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or "modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches and it was in this school that the Glagolitic script was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing, which was more akin to the Greek uncial, simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs.
^Curta (2006), pp. 221–222.
^Hussey, J. M.; Louth, Andrew (2010). "The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire". Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-19-161488-0.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
The Cyrillicscript (/sɪˈrɪlɪk/ sih-RIL-ik), Slavonic script or simply Slavic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It...
Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (Serbian: Српска ћирилица / Srpska ćirilica, pronounced [sr̩̂pskaː tɕirǐlitsa]) is a variation of the Cyrillicscript used to...
The Cyrillicscript had many advantages over the traditional Mongolian script known as Hudum Mongol Bichig. In the traditional Mongolian script, certain...
between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillicscript, which is used for some Slavic languages (such as Russian), and for...
russkaya azbuka, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. It comes from the Cyrillicscript, which was devised in the 9th century...
instead of phonetic symbols. Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillicscript. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century...
Croatian script, Croatian–Bosnian script, Bosnian–Croat Cyrillic, harvacko pismo, arvatica or Western Cyrillic. For other names of Bosnian Cyrillic, see below...
invented and used there before the Cyrillicscript overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then...
languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication...
usually written using a local variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. A variant based on the reformed Russian civil script, first introduced in the late 18th century...
language has been written in various scripts: Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic. The language traditionally used Arabic script, but the official Uzbek government...
Lord's Prayer looked in Cyrillicscript. Transcriptional values correspond to the above table. Early 19th century Romanian Cyrillic alphabet (Alecsandri...
"creation" or wider adoption of the Cyrillicscript, which almost entirely replaced Glagolitic during the Middle Ages. The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the...
script (and, therefore, the Arabic and Hebrew scripts), the Phoenician script also gave rise to the Greek alphabet (and, therefore, both the Cyrillic...
abandoned in the 1930s in favour of Cyrillic. Some post-Soviet Turkic-majority states decided to reintroduce the Latin script in the 1990s, following the 1928...
Three alphabets are used to write Kazakh: the Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic scripts. The Cyrillicscript is used in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. An October 2017...
It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillicscript. It comes from the Cyrillicscript, which was devised in the 9th century for the first...
adaptation" of the Cyrillicscript once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the Permic branch of Finno-Ugric languages). The script was introduced by...
letters of the Cyrillicscript. The definition of a Cyrillic letter for this list is a character encoded in the Unicode standard that a has script property...
question marks, boxes, or other symbols. Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillicscript, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire...
азбука, romanized: Makedonska azbuka), which is an adaptation of the Cyrillicscript, as well as language-specific conventions of spelling and punctuation...
The Cyrillic "double O" looks similar to the Latin-script double-o ligature: ⟨ꝏ⟩. Crossed O also known as Cno (Ꚛ ꚛ) is a variant of the Cyrillic letter...
Mongolian script. In March 2020, the Government of Mongolia announced plans to use the traditional Mongolian script alongside the Cyrillicscript in official...
Global Information
