5 ms·

Inventing Cyrillic (2024)

50 points by lermontov 6mo ago

Antibabelic 6mo ago
Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0] Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages. The reason for that is pretty obvious if you look at the Glagolitic letters themselves: they are horrible UX. You need a lot more strokes than for something like Greek or Latin to record the same information. Because Glagolitic was contrived and not polished with use over the centuries, there was very little reason to use it over Greek. ----- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script
- culebron21 6mo ago
  Interestingly, it was also a derivative of Greek, but the cursive version. It's harder to write, but apart from that, I like it. Ⱂⱃⰺⰲⰵⱅ, ⱂⰺⱎⰺⱅⰵ Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰺⱌⰵⰻ!
  - Antibabelic 6mo ago
    This is a novel claim to me. I don't think Glagolitic looks particularly like cursive Greek, and I haven't seen this idea in scholarship. What is your source for it?
    - culebron21 6mo ago
      Селищев А.М. Старославянский язык, 1951, страница 39 https://maxbooks.ru/images/slavimg/52.jpg https://maxbooks.ru/images/slavimg/52.jpg Selischev A.M. Old Slavonic Language, 1951. Page 39. https://www.academia.edu/126241874/%D0%90_%D0%9C_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA_%D0%A7%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C_1_%D0%92%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%A4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0 https://www.academia.edu/126241874/%D0%90_%D0%9C_%D0%A1%D0%B... (PDF downloadable)
      - Antibabelic 6mo ago
        I guess I don't see this idea around because it wasn't good enough to survive the early 1950s? I am looking at the tables, and while I can see the resemblance in some places, it's quite a significant stretch in others. The fact that the Glagolitic and Greek examples are cherry-picked from different manuscripts with different styles doesn't help.
        culebron21 6mo ago
        Oh, I see. Good point, thanks.
- matusp 6mo ago
  Cyrillic is probably a successor to Glagolitic. Glagolitic was the first Slavic alphabet, but when they tried to use it in Bulgaria, it had all the UX problems you mentioned. What they did is replace most of the characters with their Greek counterparts, while keeping the Glagolitic writing system and some of the characters with no counterparts. Bulgaria was close to Byzantium, and people were more likely to know and use Greek letters already. Nevertheless, Cyril and Methodius should still get some recognition, as the shape of the letters is not as important as having the system to write down the Slavic language into letters.
- elAhmo 6mo ago
  Bosančica, or Bosnian Cycillic is also an interesting take on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic
culebron21 6mo ago
This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. This is just false projection of modern politics onto old times. It's shameless propaganda. In reality, at the time, it was the Eastern Christian church that was more liberal than Rome. Rome insisted every local church make services in Latin, and didn't translate it in the local language. The Eastern church instead, had the bible in Greek, but allowed to translate it in local languages and make services in them. Initially, those translations were made with Greek letters, which weren't fully reflecting the phonology of Slavic and other languages, so they were extended, which produced Cyrillic. As I understand, the same way Coptic script in Egypt, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia were made, thanks to Eastern Christian church allowing this. p.s. Saint Cyril, in fact, invented the Glagolitic script. Cyrillic was named after him, and initially "Cyrillic" alphabet was mostly Greek, plus some characters from Glagolitic, like Ⱎ, ⱍ and ⱑ.
- adrian_b 6mo ago
  Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. This was very intentional, to make difficult for the younger people to read any books from before the Russian occupation, if they succeeded to find such books. This was coupled to a system of education were people were taught in schools a falsified history, were the Russian invaders were presented as liberators and where it was claimed that everything good in science and technology had been discovered or invented by some unknown Russians instead of those about whom the Western "imperialists" say that they were the discoverers/inventors.
  - culebron21 6mo ago
necovek 6mo ago
This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics — some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead). None of the interesting bits of Cyrillic invention are covered, like how the original Slavic script was Glagolitic as the sibling mentioned, and only evolved into modern Cyrillic much later. Or how there was no lowercase until a few centuries ago, especially with the reform of Peter the Great. With Slavic people, it's also worth noting that "Slav" actually means "word" or "letter" (of an alphabet), so legibility was part of the identity. In contrast, most Slavic people call Germans a variation of "Nemci", or mutes (those who cannot speak) — notably, most except Russians who call them Germans. Again, likely to distance themselves from the negative connotation with their aspiring historical partners.
- orbital-decay 6mo ago
  No idea where you're getting it from, Germans are Nemci in Russian as well. It's rather "unable to speak the language", meant for all foreigners but later stuck to Germans, presumably because German traders were the most common foreigners.
  - mootothemax 6mo ago
    > Germans are Nemci in Russian as well I wanted to check; are you implying that Russian is not a Slavic language?
    - orbital-decay 6mo ago
      No, GP is saying that Russian uses the Latin root for Germans, I'm saying it doesn't. (it does for Germany though: "Germaniya").
      - 6mo ago
axegon_ 6mo ago
The article feels like AI hallucinated slop. Just a quick scroll through the page: * Sviatoslav was not a local ruler - he ruled Kievan Rus' 1500km north-east and he remained a pagan until his death, even if his mother had converted to Christianity. * Sviatoslav was born nearly 60 years after both Cyril and Methodius had died. * In 890 Boris was no longer in power but his firs son, who coincidentally tried to reverse the Christianity conversion and was kicked off the throne a few years later. * " Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021" check the date.
- bulgarboris 6mo ago
  [dead]
- AndriyKunitsyn 6mo ago
  The author had an agenda to push, and they generated a load of slop to support it. Obviously, the usage of Latin alphabet today is also a political tool to support the Roman Empire. Carthago Delenda Est!
_hao 6mo ago
Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School. On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's influence to bitch, moan and subjugate ever since. Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.
- lovegrenoble 6mo ago
  >> Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet The wording is entirely accurate, since even during the Roman Empire, the region where Sts. Cyril and Methodius were later born and worked was known as Macedonia. And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts. 148 years ago, in December 1877, Russian troops dealt a severe insult to the Bulgarian people by driving the civilized and enlightened Turkish troops out of Sofia and literally forcing the rebellious Bulgarians to accept their hated independence. The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.
  - Antibabelic 6mo ago
    > And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts. This doesn't follow. People deny historical fact all the time.
    - konart 6mo ago
      No they don't. I fact this is one of the first "fun facts" you learn in school course of russian history. Come on...
dryarzeg 6mo ago
> Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021 Just what type of slop this one is? It was not "just after the invasion", it was ~7 months before the invasion. At least if I understand correctly that the start of Russo-Ukrainian war is called "invasion" here.
zby 6mo ago
"In the 890s, having recently converted to Orthodox Christianity, Boris ensured his church would be independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople." --- I thought Orthodox Christianity was created by the Great Schism in 1054.
- dotemacs 6mo ago
  I don't know if you are trolling or what, but you win at the internets today
- bulgarboris 6mo ago
  The orthodox would argue that it was catholicism that was created by the great schism. But for both sides the actual date of the schism matters little, the divide between east and west was already forming long before then. Tsar Boris the 1st actually sent letters to the pope in Rome and the patriarch in Constantinople asking both of them for Christian teaching, it's debated wether he did this cynically or innocently, but either way he was "playing both sides" even before the schism, if anything he accelerated it somewhat.
kgeist 6mo ago
If you look at the earliest versions of Cyrillic, it's basically identical, in shape and form, to the variant of the Greek alphabet used in the Byzantine Empire at the time, they just added letters for the sounds not found in Greek, like ts, ch, sh, zh. "Invention" is a stretch. I'm not sure why the article spins a political angle so much, it's the same as West Europeans adapting Latin for their needs, except they usually preferred digraphs for non-Latin sounds while Slavs decided to use special characters instead. Cyrillic and Greek alphabets later diverged to look more different from one another, but it was much later.
konart 6mo ago
Most of the article feels like a straw man made from a very old birch bark.
- bulgarboris 6mo ago
  For people who don't get the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Slavic_manuscripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Sla...
secondary_op 6mo ago
Wouldn't trust anything about medieval or cultural from someone in general and in this case _mirelaivanova_ who is touched by oxford group think, who is abandon twitter in favor of bluesky, who talks about "the uses and possibilities of the gender theory in the study of medieval world" https://youtu.be/dK9qpHIWXRs?t=118 https://youtu.be/dK9qpHIWXRs?t=118
- watwut 6mo ago
  Oh yeah, abandoning nazi groupthing site for the one where you dont get that crap and choose your own feed is clear sign of something bad. And yes, gender theory has uses in medieval world study. After all, medieval women existed.
cynicalsecurity 6mo ago
Poles and Czechs are happy they dodged that bullet.
- AndriyKunitsyn 6mo ago
  And I'm happy that they are happy, but Czech keyboards have so many letters they have to use the number row, and Polish words, as beautiful as they are, have a lot of digraphs.
  - LfLxfxxLxfxx 6mo ago
    and even a tetragraph: szcz=щ
d_silin 6mo ago
Cyrillic letters can be used to spice up English. Imagine having just one letter for "ch", "sh" and "th"! "She relaxed in the chair under a tree's shade" "Шe relaxed in фe чair under a tree's шade"
- pavel_lishin 6mo ago
  But ф is absolutely not the sound that "th" makes. In fact, in Russian, at least, we don't have a "th" sound. But this is better than using Д in place of "A".
  - d_silin 6mo ago
    Yeah, it is just фe most aesфetically pleasing letter for фis case.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - LfLxfxxLxfxx 6mo ago
    Actually, for most of its existence, Cyrillic has had a θ (theta) like in Greek, used only in loanwords and pronounced either as ф (f) or т (t) because the th sound is not part of Slavic phonetics. θ was dropped fairly recently - in the 20th century.
  - tliltocatl 6mo ago
    It absolutely doesn't as pronounced now, yet Thomas is Фома, Theodor is Феодор, etc. Just like Hertz is Герц, even through Г and H are as far from each other as one can get.
    - armenarmen 6mo ago
      That h -> г always confused me when “Х” is right there
      - tliltocatl 6mo ago
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6mo ago
So far not mentioned are a few Hebpew letters incorporated into Cyrillic (sh, ts, ch) somebody handier with Unicode can post them
nikolay 6mo ago
The Greekification and Russification of history is disgusting! Cyril and Methodius were Bulgarian; there's plenty of evidence about it, and they created the Glagolic alphabet, while the Cyrillic alphabet is 100% Bulgarian-made without any doubt. Not to mention that Old Bulgarian was the official language in Russia for a while - all this confirmed by honest Russian scholars. But, hey, can the Soviets allow a small country like Bulgaria to be so important for its culture, right? But it's disgusting how "Orthodox" nations are being so nationalistic, love to erase, and rewrite history. That's not Orthodoxy! Do you know that the first concentration camp in Europe was actually in Greece [0], and Bulgarian priests were put in it and died? So Orthodox, right? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri
- jltsiren 6mo ago
  Cyril and Methodius were Roman citizens, as was their father. Whatever ethnic roots they had was a secondary concern, much in the same way as it is in the US today.
  - nikolay 6mo ago
    People always try to think about the past in today's terms. No, it was's anything like today's America and Roman citizenship wasn't anything like today's citizienship of a country either. Ethnicity did matter more back then than it does today. Tell me, what did "Greek" mean back then and did it mean anything and were they Greeks? If it's the citizenship that matters, why so many Roman citizens presented as "Greeks" today?
    - jltsiren 6mo ago
      Greek identity is a 19th century creation. People of the East Roman Empire, as well as their descendants in the Ottoman Empire, considered themselves Romans. To them, Greeks (or Hellenes) were the pagans who lived in the region in the distant past. Around the Greek War of Independence, Greek identity started slowly gaining ground. First among the educated elites, partly due to Western philhellenism, and later among the common people. You can still probably find some older people in rural Greece who consider themselves both Greek and Roman. As for ancient Rome, it's pretty famous for elevating citizenship over ethnicity. Much in the same way as the US, and unlike most other modern countries. Assimilating conquered peoples and turning them into Romans was a major factor in their success. Other empires that built themselves around a dominant ethnic group were more short-lived. They had to rely excessively on the favored ethnicity for their military needs. Eventually that ethnic group was depleted due to constant wars, and someone else took over.

50 points by lermontov 6mo ago

Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0] Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages. The reason for that is pretty obvious if you look at the Glagolitic letters themselves: they are horrible UX. You need a lot more strokes than for something like Greek or Latin to record the same information. Because Glagolitic was contrived and not polished with use over the centuries, there was very little reason to use it over Greek. ----- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script

culebron21 6mo ago
Interestingly, it was also a derivative of Greek, but the cursive version. It's harder to write, but apart from that, I like it. Ⱂⱃⰺⰲⰵⱅ, ⱂⰺⱎⰺⱅⰵ Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰺⱌⰵⰻ!
- Antibabelic 6mo ago
  This is a novel claim to me. I don't think Glagolitic looks particularly like cursive Greek, and I haven't seen this idea in scholarship. What is your source for it?
  - culebron21 6mo ago
    Селищев А.М. Старославянский язык, 1951, страница 39 https://maxbooks.ru/images/slavimg/52.jpg https://maxbooks.ru/images/slavimg/52.jpg Selischev A.M. Old Slavonic Language, 1951. Page 39. https://www.academia.edu/126241874/%D0%90_%D0%9C_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA_%D0%A7%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C_1_%D0%92%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%A4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0 https://www.academia.edu/126241874/%D0%90_%D0%9C_%D0%A1%D0%B... (PDF downloadable)
    - Antibabelic 6mo ago
      I guess I don't see this idea around because it wasn't good enough to survive the early 1950s? I am looking at the tables, and while I can see the resemblance in some places, it's quite a significant stretch in others. The fact that the Glagolitic and Greek examples are cherry-picked from different manuscripts with different styles doesn't help.
      - culebron21 6mo ago
        Oh, I see. Good point, thanks.
matusp 6mo ago
Cyrillic is probably a successor to Glagolitic. Glagolitic was the first Slavic alphabet, but when they tried to use it in Bulgaria, it had all the UX problems you mentioned. What they did is replace most of the characters with their Greek counterparts, while keeping the Glagolitic writing system and some of the characters with no counterparts. Bulgaria was close to Byzantium, and people were more likely to know and use Greek letters already. Nevertheless, Cyril and Methodius should still get some recognition, as the shape of the letters is not as important as having the system to write down the Slavic language into letters.
elAhmo 6mo ago
Bosančica, or Bosnian Cycillic is also an interesting take on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic

culebron21 6mo ago

This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. This is just false projection of modern politics onto old times. It's shameless propaganda. In reality, at the time, it was the Eastern Christian church that was more liberal than Rome. Rome insisted every local church make services in Latin, and didn't translate it in the local language. The Eastern church instead, had the bible in Greek, but allowed to translate it in local languages and make services in them. Initially, those translations were made with Greek letters, which weren't fully reflecting the phonology of Slavic and other languages, so they were extended, which produced Cyrillic. As I understand, the same way Coptic script in Egypt, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia were made, thanks to Eastern Christian church allowing this. p.s. Saint Cyril, in fact, invented the Glagolitic script. Cyrillic was named after him, and initially "Cyrillic" alphabet was mostly Greek, plus some characters from Glagolitic, like Ⱎ, ⱍ and ⱑ.

adrian_b 6mo ago
Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. This was very intentional, to make difficult for the younger people to read any books from before the Russian occupation, if they succeeded to find such books. This was coupled to a system of education were people were taught in schools a falsified history, were the Russian invaders were presented as liberators and where it was claimed that everything good in science and technology had been discovered or invented by some unknown Russians instead of those about whom the Western "imperialists" say that they were the discoverers/inventors.
- culebron21 6mo ago

necovek 6mo ago

This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics — some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead). None of the interesting bits of Cyrillic invention are covered, like how the original Slavic script was Glagolitic as the sibling mentioned, and only evolved into modern Cyrillic much later. Or how there was no lowercase until a few centuries ago, especially with the reform of Peter the Great. With Slavic people, it's also worth noting that "Slav" actually means "word" or "letter" (of an alphabet), so legibility was part of the identity. In contrast, most Slavic people call Germans a variation of "Nemci", or mutes (those who cannot speak) — notably, most except Russians who call them Germans. Again, likely to distance themselves from the negative connotation with their aspiring historical partners.

orbital-decay 6mo ago
No idea where you're getting it from, Germans are Nemci in Russian as well. It's rather "unable to speak the language", meant for all foreigners but later stuck to Germans, presumably because German traders were the most common foreigners.
- mootothemax 6mo ago
  > Germans are Nemci in Russian as well I wanted to check; are you implying that Russian is not a Slavic language?
  - orbital-decay 6mo ago
    No, GP is saying that Russian uses the Latin root for Germans, I'm saying it doesn't. (it does for Germany though: "Germaniya").
    - 6mo ago

axegon_ 6mo ago

The article feels like AI hallucinated slop. Just a quick scroll through the page: * Sviatoslav was not a local ruler - he ruled Kievan Rus' 1500km north-east and he remained a pagan until his death, even if his mother had converted to Christianity. * Sviatoslav was born nearly 60 years after both Cyril and Methodius had died. * In 890 Boris was no longer in power but his firs son, who coincidentally tried to reverse the Christianity conversion and was kicked off the throne a few years later. * " Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021" check the date.

bulgarboris 6mo ago
[dead]
AndriyKunitsyn 6mo ago
The author had an agenda to push, and they generated a load of slop to support it. Obviously, the usage of Latin alphabet today is also a political tool to support the Roman Empire. Carthago Delenda Est!

_hao 6mo ago

Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School. On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's influence to bitch, moan and subjugate ever since. Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.

lovegrenoble 6mo ago
>> Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet The wording is entirely accurate, since even during the Roman Empire, the region where Sts. Cyril and Methodius were later born and worked was known as Macedonia. And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts. 148 years ago, in December 1877, Russian troops dealt a severe insult to the Bulgarian people by driving the civilized and enlightened Turkish troops out of Sofia and literally forcing the rebellious Bulgarians to accept their hated independence. The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.
- Antibabelic 6mo ago
  > And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts. This doesn't follow. People deny historical fact all the time.
  - konart 6mo ago
    No they don't. I fact this is one of the first "fun facts" you learn in school course of russian history. Come on...

dryarzeg 6mo ago

> Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021 Just what type of slop this one is? It was not "just after the invasion", it was ~7 months before the invasion. At least if I understand correctly that the start of Russo-Ukrainian war is called "invasion" here.

zby 6mo ago

"In the 890s, having recently converted to Orthodox Christianity, Boris ensured his church would be independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople." --- I thought Orthodox Christianity was created by the Great Schism in 1054.

dotemacs 6mo ago
I don't know if you are trolling or what, but you win at the internets today
bulgarboris 6mo ago
The orthodox would argue that it was catholicism that was created by the great schism. But for both sides the actual date of the schism matters little, the divide between east and west was already forming long before then. Tsar Boris the 1st actually sent letters to the pope in Rome and the patriarch in Constantinople asking both of them for Christian teaching, it's debated wether he did this cynically or innocently, but either way he was "playing both sides" even before the schism, if anything he accelerated it somewhat.

kgeist 6mo ago

If you look at the earliest versions of Cyrillic, it's basically identical, in shape and form, to the variant of the Greek alphabet used in the Byzantine Empire at the time, they just added letters for the sounds not found in Greek, like ts, ch, sh, zh. "Invention" is a stretch. I'm not sure why the article spins a political angle so much, it's the same as West Europeans adapting Latin for their needs, except they usually preferred digraphs for non-Latin sounds while Slavs decided to use special characters instead. Cyrillic and Greek alphabets later diverged to look more different from one another, but it was much later.

konart 6mo ago

Most of the article feels like a straw man made from a very old birch bark.

bulgarboris 6mo ago
For people who don't get the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Slavic_manuscripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Sla...

secondary_op 6mo ago

Wouldn't trust anything about medieval or cultural from someone in general and in this case _mirelaivanova_ who is touched by oxford group think, who is abandon twitter in favor of bluesky, who talks about "the uses and possibilities of the gender theory in the study of medieval world" https://youtu.be/dK9qpHIWXRs?t=118 https://youtu.be/dK9qpHIWXRs?t=118

watwut 6mo ago
Oh yeah, abandoning nazi groupthing site for the one where you dont get that crap and choose your own feed is clear sign of something bad. And yes, gender theory has uses in medieval world study. After all, medieval women existed.

cynicalsecurity 6mo ago

Poles and Czechs are happy they dodged that bullet.

AndriyKunitsyn 6mo ago
And I'm happy that they are happy, but Czech keyboards have so many letters they have to use the number row, and Polish words, as beautiful as they are, have a lot of digraphs.
- LfLxfxxLxfxx 6mo ago
  and even a tetragraph: szcz=щ

d_silin 6mo ago

Cyrillic letters can be used to spice up English. Imagine having just one letter for "ch", "sh" and "th"! "She relaxed in the chair under a tree's shade" "Шe relaxed in фe чair under a tree's шade"

pavel_lishin 6mo ago
But ф is absolutely not the sound that "th" makes. In fact, in Russian, at least, we don't have a "th" sound. But this is better than using Д in place of "A".
- d_silin 6mo ago
  Yeah, it is just фe most aesфetically pleasing letter for фis case.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- LfLxfxxLxfxx 6mo ago
  Actually, for most of its existence, Cyrillic has had a θ (theta) like in Greek, used only in loanwords and pronounced either as ф (f) or т (t) because the th sound is not part of Slavic phonetics. θ was dropped fairly recently - in the 20th century.
- tliltocatl 6mo ago
  It absolutely doesn't as pronounced now, yet Thomas is Фома, Theodor is Феодор, etc. Just like Hertz is Герц, even through Г and H are as far from each other as one can get.
  - armenarmen 6mo ago
    That h -> г always confused me when “Х” is right there
    - tliltocatl 6mo ago

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6mo ago

So far not mentioned are a few Hebpew letters incorporated into Cyrillic (sh, ts, ch) somebody handier with Unicode can post them

nikolay 6mo ago

The Greekification and Russification of history is disgusting! Cyril and Methodius were Bulgarian; there's plenty of evidence about it, and they created the Glagolic alphabet, while the Cyrillic alphabet is 100% Bulgarian-made without any doubt. Not to mention that Old Bulgarian was the official language in Russia for a while - all this confirmed by honest Russian scholars. But, hey, can the Soviets allow a small country like Bulgaria to be so important for its culture, right? But it's disgusting how "Orthodox" nations are being so nationalistic, love to erase, and rewrite history. That's not Orthodoxy! Do you know that the first concentration camp in Europe was actually in Greece [0], and Bulgarian priests were put in it and died? So Orthodox, right? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri

jltsiren 6mo ago
Cyril and Methodius were Roman citizens, as was their father. Whatever ethnic roots they had was a secondary concern, much in the same way as it is in the US today.
- nikolay 6mo ago
  People always try to think about the past in today's terms. No, it was's anything like today's America and Roman citizenship wasn't anything like today's citizienship of a country either. Ethnicity did matter more back then than it does today. Tell me, what did "Greek" mean back then and did it mean anything and were they Greeks? If it's the citizenship that matters, why so many Roman citizens presented as "Greeks" today?
  - jltsiren 6mo ago
    Greek identity is a 19th century creation. People of the East Roman Empire, as well as their descendants in the Ottoman Empire, considered themselves Romans. To them, Greeks (or Hellenes) were the pagans who lived in the region in the distant past. Around the Greek War of Independence, Greek identity started slowly gaining ground. First among the educated elites, partly due to Western philhellenism, and later among the common people. You can still probably find some older people in rural Greece who consider themselves both Greek and Roman. As for ancient Rome, it's pretty famous for elevating citizenship over ethnicity. Much in the same way as the US, and unlike most other modern countries. Assimilating conquered peoples and turning them into Romans was a major factor in their success. Other empires that built themselves around a dominant ethnic group were more short-lived. They had to rely excessively on the favored ethnicity for their military needs. Eventually that ethnic group was depleted due to constant wars, and someone else took over.