1.
Cyrillic script
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The Cyrillic script /sᵻˈrɪlɪk/ is a writing system used for various alphabets across eastern Europe and north and central Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the alphabet for their national languages. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the official script of the European Union, following the Latin script. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and these additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on, modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great, the new form of letters became closer to the Latin alphabet, several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great. West European typography culture was also adopted, Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri was originally a ligature of Yer and I, iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю, Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, there were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. The letters also had values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order. 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, the Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, Segoe UI is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8, 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 show a tendency to be very tall and narrow. Peter the Great, Czar 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. 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
2.
Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones
3.
A (Cyrillic)
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A is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents a central unrounded vowel /a/, like the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in father. The Cyrillic letter А is romanized using the Latin letter A, the Cyrillic letter А was derived directly from the Greek letter Alpha. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was азъ, meaning I, in the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter А had a value of 1. Through history the Cyrillic letter Aa has had various shapes, but today is standardised on one that looks exactly like the Latin letter Aa, including the italic forms. In most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet – such as Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian – the Cyrillic letter А represents the open central unrounded vowel /a/. In Ingush and Chechen the Cyrillic letter А represents both the open back unrounded vowel /ɑ/ and the mid-central vowel /ə/, in Tuvan the letter can be written as a double vowel. A a, Latin letter A Ă ă, Latin letter A with breve, used in Romanian language, Ä ä, Latin letter A with diaeresis  â, Latin letter A with circumflex, after used in Vietnamese letter 3rd. Α α, Greek letter Alpha Cyrillic characters in Unicode The dictionary definition of А at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of а at Wiktionary
4.
Be (Cyrillic)
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Be is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, like the English pronunciation of ⟨b⟩ in bee and it should not be confused with the Cyrillic letter Ve, which is shaped like Latin capital letter B but represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/. The Cyrillic letter Б is romanized using the Latin letter B, both the Cyrillic letters Be and Ve were derived from the Greek letter Beta. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of the letter Be was бѹкы, in the Cyrillic numeral system, the letter Be had no numeric value because the letter Ve inherited the Greek letter Betas numeric value. The Russian small letter б is similar in shape to the digit 6, in the Serbian and Macedonian alphabets, the lowercase letter б has a different form used in printing, as is shown in the illustration to the side, which shows both the standard and variant forms. Its lowercase form also resembles a lowercase letter B, the letter to which it corresponds in the Latin alphabet. After all, lowercase letter B developed from scribal alterations to the capital letter B, on the World Wide Web, <span lang=sr>б</span> and <span lang=ru>б</span> must give different results. Since Unicode does not provide the difference, OpenType locl support must be present. Programs like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, as well as a few others, starting from CSS3, web authors also have to use this, font-feature-settings, locl. Of course, font families like GNU FreeFont, DejaVu, Ubuntu, Microsoft C* fonts from Windows Vista, the cursive form of the lowercase letter Be resembles the lowercase Greek letter Delta, but they are slightly different in their upper portions. In Russian and Bulgarian, the letter Be generally represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, before a palatalizing vowel, it represents /bʲ/. In Macedonian, the letter represents the sound /b/, but it is in the position of the word, it is pronounced as /p/. In Mari, it may represent either /b/ or the voiced bilabial fricative /β/. Β β, Greek letter Beta В в, Cyrillic letter Ve B b, Latin letter B Ƃ ƃ, Latin letter Ƃ The dictionary definition of Б at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of б at Wiktionary
5.
Ve (Cyrillic)
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Ve is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/, like ⟨v⟩ in very, the capital letter Ve looks the same as the capital Latin letter B but is pronounced differently. Ve is romanized usually by the Latin letter V but sometimes the Latin letter W, both Ve and the Cyrillic letter Be were derived from the Greek letter Beta, which already represented /v/ in Greek by the time that the Cyrillic alphabet was created. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was вѣдѣ, meaning I know, in the Cyrillic numeral system, it had the value of 2. In Russian and Bulgarian, Ve generally represents /v/, but at the end of a word or before voiceless consonants, before a palatalizing vowel, it represents /vʲ/. In standard Ukrainian pronunciation, Ve represents a sound like the English W when in the final position. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see words ending in ⟨в⟩ transcribed to end in ⟨w⟩, for example, Владислав = Vladyslaw for Vladislav. Additionally, some Ukrainians also use this pronunciation in words where the letter is preceded by a consonant. In the Eastern Ukraine, the letter Ve may represent a voiceless, for example, the standard Ukrainian pronunciation of the word сказав is /skazaw/. However in the Eastern Ukraine one is likely to hear the Russified, in Belarusian, the letter Ve represents only the sound /v/. In the word final position, or if directly proceeded by a consonant, it mutates to the letter Short U, E. g. the Belarusian noun language is мова, but the adjectival form is моўны, and the genitive plural of the noun is моў. In Serbian, the letter Ve represents only the sound /v/, in Macedonian the letter is used for the sound /v/, but if the letter appears at the end of the word then it is pronounced as /f/. An example of this is the word бев, in Slovene and Tuvan, it is used for /ʋ/. In Mongolian and Kalmyk, it is used for /w/
6.
Ge (Cyrillic)
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Ghe or Ge is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is also known in some languages as He and it commonly represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/, like ⟨g⟩ in go. It is generally romanized using the Latin letter G, but to romanize Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, the Cyrillic letter Ghe was derived directly from the Greek letter Gamma, but the lowercase form is a small version of the capital letter. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was глаголи, meaning speak, in the Cyrillic numeral system, it had a numerical value of 3. In standard Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian the letter Ghe represents a velar plosive /ɡ/ but is devoiced to word-finally or before a voiceless consonant. In standard Russian, Ghe represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ but is devoiced to word-finally or before a voiceless consonant and it represents /ɡʲ/ before a palatalizing vowel. In the Southern Russian dialect, the sound becomes the velar fricative /ɣ/, sometimes, the sound is the glottal fricative /ɦ/ in the regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine. It is acceptable, for people, to pronounce certain Russian words with, Бог, богатый, благо. The sound is considered nonstandard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. Бог is always pronounced in the nominative case, in the Russian nominal genitive ending -ого, -его, Ghe represents, including in the word сегодня. It represents a voiceless in front of Ka in two Russian words, namely, мягкий and лёгкий, and their derivatives. The Latin letter H of words of Latin, Greek, English or German origin is usually transliterated into Russian with Ghe rather than Kha, hero → герой, hamburger → гамбургер, Haydn → Гайдн. That can occasionally cause ambiguity, as for example English Harry and Gary/Garry would be spelled the same in Russian, nevertheless, in newer loanwords, Kha is often used. In Ukrainian represents a glottal fricative, a breathy voiced counterpart of the English. In Belarusian, the letter corresponds to velar fricative /ɣ/ and it soft counterpart /ɣʲ/, in Ukrainian and Belarusian, a voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ is present only in loanwords and is written with the Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn in Ukrainian and with the digraph кг in Belarusian. In both languages, the letter is called He and transliterated with H rather than with G, in many non-Slavic languages it can represent both /g/ and /ʁ~ɣ/
7.
Ghe with upturn
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Ghe with upturn is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is used in Ukrainian, Rusyn and also in some variants of Urum, in these alphabets its usually called Ge, while the other letter — ‹Г г› — is called He. In Unicode this letter is called Ghe with upturn, the letterform of this letter is based on the letterform of the letter ‹Г г›, but its handwritten and italic lowercase forms do not follow the italic modification of ‹Г г›. It represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/, like the pronunciation of ‹g› in go, Ghe with upturn is romanized using the Latin letter G. The common Slavic voiced velar plosive is represented in most Cyrillic orthographies by ‹Г›, in Ukrainian, however, around the early 13th century, the sound lenited to the voiced velar fricative, and around the 16th century, debuccalized to the voiced glottal fricative. The phoneme continued to be represented by ‹Г›, called ге he in Ukrainian, within a century after this sound change began, was re-introduced from Western European loanwords. Since then, it has been represented by several different notations in writing, in early Belarusian and Ukrainian orthographies, Latin ‹g› or the Cyrillic digraph ‹кг› were sometimes used for the sound of Latin ‹g› in assimilated words. The first text to consequently employ the letter ‹ґ› was the 16th-century Peresopnytsia Gospel, later, distinguishing of the sound and using the digraph gradually disappeared from Belarusian orthography. As far as linguistic studies are concerned, the letter ‹ґ› was first introduced into the Slavic alphabet in 1619 by Meletius Smotrytsky in his Slavic Grammar, later, for an identical purpose, it was saved in the new orthography of Ukrainian. The letter ‹ґ› was officially eliminated from the Ukrainian alphabet in the Soviet orthographic reforms of 1933, its function being subsumed into that of the letter ‹г›, however, ‹ґ› continued to be used by Ukrainians in Galicia and in the Ukrainian diaspora worldwide. It was reintroduced to Soviet Ukraine in a 1990 orthographic reform under glasnost, in Belarusian, the plosive realization of the Proto-Slavic voiced velar plosive has been preserved root-internally in the consonant clusters ‹зг›, ‹жг›, ‹дзг›, and ‹джг›. It is present in loanwords such as ганак, гузік. However, consensus on this has never reached, and the letter has never been part of standard Belarusian alphabet. Regular uppercase and lowercase forms of this letter look similarly corresponding regular uppercase and lowercase forms of the Гг letter, handwritten uppercase and lowercase forms of this letter are displayed at the image to the left. Г г, Cyrillic letter Ghe Γ γ, Greek letter Gamma G g, Latin letter G Bušlakoŭ, Juraś, Vincuk Viačorka, Źmicier Sańko, “Да рэформы беларускай азбукі”, у, Працы акадэмічнае конфэрэнцыі па рэформе беларускага правапісу і азбукі. “On the Chronology of H and the New G in Ukrainian”, in, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol 1, no 2, “Гук «ґ» у беларускай мове”, у, Ян Станкевіч, Збор твораў у двух тамах. ISBN 985-6599-46-6 The dictionary definition of Ґ at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of ґ at Wiktionary
8.
De (Cyrillic)
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De is a letter of the Cyrillic script. De commonly represents the voiced dental plosive /d/, like the pronunciation of ⟨d⟩ in admit, De is romanized using the Latin letter D. The Cyrillic letter De was derived from the Greek letter Delta, in the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was добро, meaning good. In the Cyrillic numeral system, De had a value of 4, the major graphic difference between De and its modern Greek equivalent lies in the two descenders below the lower corners of the Cyrillic letter. The descenders were borrowed from a Byzantine uncial shape of uppercase Delta, De, like the Cyrillic letter El, has two typographical variants, an older variant where its top is pointed, and a modern one where it is square. Nowadays, almost all books and magazines are printed with fonts with the variant of the letter. In italic type, the lowercase form looks more like the lowercase Latin ⟨d⟩, southern typography may prefer a variant that looks like a lowercase Latin ⟨g⟩. Cursive lowercase De has the two shapes, but with a different distribution, for example, the g-shaped variant is a standard for Russian schools. The cursive form of capital De looks like Latin D as the version is not comfortable enough to be written quickly. The Serbian cursive form is closer to the shape of digit 2 and it most often represents the voiced dental plosive /d/. However, word-finally and before consonants, it represents a voiceless. Before a palatalizing vowel, it represents /dʲ/
9.
Dje
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Dje is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Dje is the letter of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, used in Serbo-Croatian to represent the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate /dʑ/. Dje corresponds to the Latin letter D with stroke in Gajs Latin alphabet of Serbo-Croatian and is so transliterated, when strokes are unavailable, it is transliterated as ⟨Dj dj⟩. Dje was constructed by request of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, there were several proposed shapes of the letter. The variant now in use was designed by Lukijan Mušicki, it was designed by modification of the letter Ћ, the new letter was adopted in Karadžićs 1818 dictionary and thus entered widespread usage
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