Inventing Cyrillic
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
It fails to mention the fact that, if you compare the earliest forms of Cyrillic to the contemporary Byzantine Greek alphabet, it's 100% identical to the Greek alphabet. The only difference is that Cyrillic added a few letters for Slavic sounds originally not found in Greek: sh, ch, nasal sounds, etc. Cyrillic was originally nothing more than the Greek alphabet with extra characters. Cyrillic and Greek diverged from each other much later, for purely technical reasons (e.g. letter H in cursive was often written as И and later became the norm).
So I'm not sure what the point of the article is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script:
Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet.[10]
For example, consider alphabet ordering. Even if you totally invent a new script for aesthetic purposes, you may want to keep the letter ordering from your home alphabet just for simplicity. Other invented scripts like Georgian and Armenian, also retain the Greek alphabet ordering. Does that indicate origin/inspiration? Can the ordering be something that was added on later when the need of a stable ordering of words for building lexicons and teaching people was recognized?
The Greek alphabet ordering ascends to the Phoenician alphabet ordering, which has inherited it from the Proto-Sinaic alphabet[0]. It remains a vexing enigma – why letters were originally arranged in the order that we know today.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Lett...
Cyrillic is much more suited for Slavic languages, but of course there is so much historical baggage there that it’ll never happen. Cyrillic is a civilization-level thing tied to a lot of cultural elements, not merely a different set of symbols.
What will be interesting to see is if Bulgaria, Serbia, and Ukraine continue to use Cyrillic or gradually switch to Latin.
Serbia would probably switch first, though. When I was there a half decade ago, Latin and Cyrillic were used interchangeably. But it’s my understanding that Latin is much more popular amongst the young.
Again, I didn’t say it will happen, just that it seems conceivable to me.
These sarcastic replies are so tiresome and intellectually uncurious.
Try reading the comment again.
Turkey switched lots of things as a deliberate act of cutting off with its past, including form of government, constitution, and legitimacy model, and after losing wars and territories for centuries. The fact that you disregard the context to arrive at the desired conclusion might have something to do with the intellectual difficulties you find yourself in.
Atatürk also commented on one occasion that the symbolic meaning of the reform was for the Turkish nation to "show with its script and mentality that it is on the side of world civilisation".[26] The second president of Turkey, İsmet İnönü further elaborated the reason behind adopting a Latin alphabet: "The alphabet reform cannot be attributed to ease of reading and writing. That was the motive of Enver Pasha. For us, the big impact and the benefit of an alphabet reform was that it eased the way to cultural reform. We inevitably lost our connection with Arabic culture."
However it died out.
And although I have only visited Bulgaria and not lived there, I do live in a neighboring country and see how much Western culture / EU culture dominates the local youth culture.
On the institutional level, it would likely take the efforts of an Ataturk-like figure that wants to tie Bulgaria more to the West.
Particularly in Bulgaria, the youth is dominated by western culture only at the surface level. It’s in their consumption patterns, the outfit and the slang. Apart from that, it’s not a western culture by a long shot. The competitive individualism is not there. The family is expected to give a good and steady start to their children, at the cost of the comfort of the parents. The national symbols like the alphabet are encoded and institutionalised through the educational system. For example, all schools are marching through cities on the 24th of May, to celebrate the alphabet and enlightenment (просвета) in general.
I said it was plausible that Bulgaria could switch to the Latin alphabet in a long time. The word plausible implies that it could happen, but is not guaranteed, or even likely. It is conceivable, it is a possible future. It doesn’t mean I think it will absolutely happen.
The reasons I think this switch is plausible are:
- the growing adoption of Western and EU Latin-based culture amongst the youth. The government and institutional power structures in Bulgaria are still largely populated by people who are over 35 years old. In 50 years, this won’t be the case, and the people filling the jobs will have been influenced by Latin-alphabet culture for decades.
- The population decline of the country is going to present serious issues. Some of the solutions to it will probably be closer integration to the EU, which almost entirely uses the Latin alphabet. Also factor in the Bulgarian diaspora which is growing up in Latin-language places elsewhere in the EU.
- The current geopolitical situation, wherein future Bulgarians may (again, plausibly) want to distance themselves from the Russian-dominated Orthodoxy world, of which the Cyrillic alphabet is still a fairly strong connection. Also consider that Orthodoxy itself is in decline, and so having this connection might not be that important to the Bulgarians of 2074. I foresee a similar thing amongst the youth in Poland and Catholicism.
Between the existence of Austria-Hungary empire, when the Latin alphabet was very relevant for all the Balkans, and the end of WW2, when the Cyrillic became much more relevant for them is just 1945-1918=27 years.
The growing adoption of "Latin-based culture" is not interfering with the usage of Bulgarian. Bilinguality is the norm for the newer generations. More than a decade ago in the pre-Unicode world, writing emails and communication in Bulgarian with Latin letters was acceptable because of encoding issues. Nowadays, it is no longer the norm, is frowned upon and is even ridiculed.
There is a considerable part of the intellectual elite that is pro-Western and seeks further integration with the west. They are perfectly fine with the alphabet and switching it is not on their agenda. These are, for example, professors, philosophers and linguists from Sofia university.
Turkmenistan of all places is currently undergoing a gradual switch to Latin, which has happened in fits and starts with various mandates to do so, and then to stop doing so. But the culture seems pretty undeniably to be trending to romanization.
In Europe, Polish and Irish are two examples of a language with extensive contrastive palatalization which uses the Latin alphabet, and they're probably among the least readable/elegant writing systems in Europe.
Sure, many languages have palatalized consonants, influenced by surrounding phonetic context (such as, vowel harmony in Turkic makes surrounding consonants "softer" too).
The true "contrastive palatalization" I was referring to is about having minimal pairs where words have totally different meanings based on whether the consonants are palatalized or not.
For example, in Russian (where I specify the palatalization of a preceding consonant with ʲ):
mer "a mayor"
mʲer "of measures"
mʲerʲ "measure!" (imperative)
What do you mean? It's a set of symbols. No different from any other set, except potentially in size. What would a "natural fit" between a script and a language look like?
Arabic script? Turkic languages have lots of vowels, which are very important, and a lot less fricative consonants. You must add a lot of "diacritics" (points above or below).
Latin adapted for Turkish has same issues: a lot of diacritics, and also the infamous i/I distinction (like peek & pick in English) that causes typos.
Cyrillic for Turkic languages simply introduced more letters. For example, in Kazakh the vowels а, о, у, э, е, ы were extended with ә, ө, ұ, ү, і. Consonants got their fricative counterparts: к, г => қ, ғ. The only inconvenience I see is Latin "h" (e.g. жиhаз, furniture) which can't be capitalized -- it will collide with Cyrirllic Н (N). I actually find it easier to transcribe German in Kazakh letters than in pure Russian ones.
The flip side is you need a bigger keyboard, the number row gets used for letters too.
In Kazakhstan, the transition to Latin lost traction even in the state organs: every legal document is written in Cyrillic. In Uzbekistan the attempt was made ~25 years ago, IIRC, and still even state organs print a lot in Cyrillic. They allowed writing in both systems as legally equal for 10 years, but had to extend the transition period for another 20, IIRC.
So supposing it's the cultural trend is quite disputable -- I'd say only nationalists with decolonization agenda may want it (but then why not the old Arabic writing system?). The majority doesn't care nor want to switch.
The point is more that there are many obvious political reasons why a future Ukraine might go down this path.
Some Ukrainian writers used Latin script for their works in 19 century, so at least there’s a precedent.
That's not true. Depends on the language, of course, but at least in Russian there are definitely more than one way to express many sounds using different letters. For example, there is no difference in pronunciation between "ёлка" and "йолка", although only one of them is accepted as correct
Same thing would still be true with cyrylic I believe.
Compare for example, Kuznetsov (fairly easy to say in English) vs. Kwiatkowski (ported directly from Polish.)
The Polish "chrząszcz" vs. the Cyrillic "xрущ" vs. its usual transliteration into English as "khrusch".
Tiếng Việt hay Việt ngữ là một ngôn ngữ thuộc...
I'm not sure what you mean. Using Cyrillic would make it more unintelligible.
Korean Hangeul is the gold standard here. Letter shapes represent their articulation and harmony and modify in regular ways to represent related pronunciations. You find similar observations in the writing systems for Arabic, Hindi, and Chinese. In the case of Cyrillic, it's that vowels come in soft and hard pairs.
Perhaps it's bias, but the Latin alphabet seems unopinionated by comparison. It has a good spread of characters for consonants and vowels and is amenable to diacritics or even novel characters. The only thing it's seriously lacking is a good way to transcribe tones. Chinese characters are great for writing a language with a near-1:1 morpheme:syllable correspondence, but its adaptation to write Japanese was famously clumsy.
First and foremost they are honoured as “equal to the apostles, enlighteners of the Slavs” as they were first and foremost missionaries. That the article calls them “diplomats” before even mentioning their mission work is already rather telling. Of course being sent somewhere by an emperor on the request of a duke will inevitably entail some diplomatic work, but that was hardly the point.
But I think it’s hard to overstate also the benefit the Slavic people saw in having Christianity in a language they understood as well as the benefit of having their religion and all the necessary literary tradition that comes with it being broadly compatible with the spoken vernacular.
After joining EU and NATO. No army. No agriculture. No serious manufacturing capability. Corruption. Crime. Failing infrastructure. And now fractured energy sector. The cheap IT labor and political mafia money laundering keeps the illusion a float.
Lost identity and culture. 500 years under Ottoman Empire. 45 under Soviets (statistically economy and population growth in the period). And 34 under Britain and USA (total failure and no sovereignty).
Cyrillic alphabet is the most phonetically accurate, they have a letter for every sound you make with your mouth. One sad story for the country founded in 681 b.c.
The First Bulgarian Empire (Church Slavonic: блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, romanized: blŭgarĭsko tsěsarǐstvije; Bulgarian: Първо българско царство) was a medieval state that existed in Southeastern Europe between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. It was founded in 680–681 after part of the Bulgars, led by Asparuh, moved south to the northeastern Balkans.
Surviving and thriving are two separate states, often incompatible, and Bulgaria is a champion of the first.
Incidentally, the first writing system (Glagolithic) didn't stick nearly as well as the subsequent iteration (Cyrillic) because the latter was so much closer to Greek, and every educated person already knew how to read/write Greek so it was a much easier sell. Regardless, this invention and its promotion was very much a planned and well-understood Byzantine project.
> Thus Bardas founded the Magnaura School with seats for philosophy, grammar, astronomy and mathematics, supported scholars like Leo the Mathematician and promoted the missionary activities of Cyril and Methodius to Greater Moravia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_the_Mathematician https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_VII_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photios_I_of_Constantinople
(these further cite primary sources)
To put it in a perspective, imagine what tone would a piece on the day of Arabic writing have.
Adding some more historical context, check the bulgarian kingdom end of IX, beginning of X century. It is mentioned in the article, but not expanded to what degree the state invested in adopting, adapting, and spreading the new alphabet.
1. East-West opposition back 1000 years ago was 100% religious matter, the schism between East and West Christian churches.
2. The stance of Putin and some politicians against the West nowadays.
Spreading the alphabet back then meant spreading it in clerical writing. IIRC, Catholic church back then required doing services in Latin, while Constantinople allowed it in local languages -- hence the need for translation and that's why Cyrillic developed from Greek, the primary language and writing system of the East church.
I don't see what Putin has to do with this at all.
And in this regard, the west should be happy: Russia has poor culture of spreading its education. In Central Asia, Turkey has put a lot more effort in building and financing its schools and universities, where they teach English and Turkish. Putin's Russia is just ridiculous in this sense: it keeps "Houses of Friendship" with balalaikas, bear mascots and free vodka on holidays.
One of my friends hitch-hiked from Russia to Iran in the mid-2010s. Despite the countries being sorta friends, he had to speak with the local in broken English, not Russian. That's just ridiculous. Another friend hitchiked to Tajikistan, and there they do learn Russian at schools and can have a bare minimum of a conversation.
Some Central European countries adopted the Latin script as a part of their alignment with Rome, and thus making a stronger political alignment.
Scripts and languages are very powerful political tools. In many cases what script a language uses is not a coincidence but a result of conscious choices and policies at some point.
Also, this would mean that countries using latin, like Indonesia, should be more pro-Western. I guess there might be a correlation, but a tiny one.
Although, same script does help readability and translating things, I'm sure current emphasis on Cyrillic by Russian government (while I lived in Russia, I haven't noticed it at all) is just because it's another occasion to remind the narratives. Not because it's such a super powerful tool. At least, in Russia, in late 80s early 90s, pro-Western narratives spread easily, despite everything.
It's a mix of accurate and inaccurate. It is based on a 1000 years old anti-western politics, but also anti-Eastern politics. And it didn't just get lucky, but there was a massive, massive effort on part of the First Bulgarian Empire to spread it via missionaries and the like, which is what set the foundations for its later use up North, where later the Russian Empire became a thing and so on ...
We nowadays instead perceive the question like whether or not a whole country will 99% literacy should switch writing system.
Quite laughable for anyone who knows a bit about the Cyrillic alphabet and the history of Eastern Europe.
* The original alphabet, called glagolic, namely this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script#/media/File:... - is not in use anymore, and have hardly been in use even at the time of its creation.
* There is this argument whether Saints Cyril and Methodius were of Greek/Bulgarian/Macedonian origin, but the fact is that what is in use now as the Cyrillic was formalized in Pliska - the then-capital of Bulgaria during this same Boris ruler. The Pliska Literary school - this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preslav_Literary_School - developed what is nowadays known as old-Bulgarian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preslav_Literary_School#/media...
now we read from wikipedia this thing:
"Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet."
So you see, this thing, which is the Cyrillic alphabet was developed in area that is indisputably the Bulgarian kingdom. Which is this blob https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Southeas... comprising significant part of present day Northen Macedonia, and much of the geographical Macedonian area, half of it falls in present day Greece. Later this also includes Ochrid - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Ri....
* Finally this argument of rulers in Bulgaria speaking Turkish is very funny, given the fact that Bulgarians list tribes such as trace, proton-bulgarians and slavs as ancestors, and not the turks. The names of rules before Boris are Asparuh, Krum, Kahn Omurtag, Khan Tervel...etc. none sound Turkish to me, for all I care there may be something persian in the ancestry, which explains why so many Bulgarians look Iran so often.
And if you have reached reading here, take a look at this coptic alphabet from ... 2cent AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_script and try to convince me scholars in Pliska didn't use it as foundation for cyrrilic. Many believe the actual cyrillic, used today, was influnced by the greek alphabet, but given the fact that this all was done by church people it gives some impression it was this Coptic Orthodox script, rather than Greek alphabet at the time which influenced the change. Which was done by Clement of Ohrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Ohrid and his fellow scholars.
Finally, I really dispose such arguments of whether Nikola Tesla, for example, was Slavic himself, or Serbian or Croatian or whether, which you can find in history books. The fact that Tesla took American citizenship and his work flourished in the U.S.A. (because it was not possible to do so in Serbia/Croatia!) gives to the fact that the environment where genius works may be more important than his origins.