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The Cyrillic script / s. Cyrillic fonts. Some call it the 'Russian alphabet' because Russian is the most popular and influential alphabet based on the script. In addition to Latin-based languages, most of our typefaces support also Cyrillic for setting of Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belorussian, Macedonian, but also. The Cyrillic fonts in older formats (Windows Codepage 1251 = older TrueType fonts) can be used to set texts in at least the following languages: Russian, Belarusian, Balkar, Bulgarian, Chechen, Macedonian, Moldovan, Ossetian, Serbian and Ukranian.

Early Cyrillic alphabet
Type
Languages	Old Church Slavonic, Church Slavonic, old versions of many Slavic languages
Time period	from circa 893 in Bulgaria
Egyptian hieroglyphs^[1] Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet (partly Glagolitic alphabet) Early Cyrillic alphabet
Greek alphabet Latin alphabet Coptic alphabet Armenian alphabet
Direction	Varies
ISO 15924	`Cyrs, 221`
U+0400–U+04FFCyrillic U+0500–U+052FCyrillic Supplement U+2DE0–U+2DFFCyrillic Extended-A U+A640–U+A69FCyrillic Extended-B U+1C80–U+1C8FCyrillic Extended-C
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century^[2]^[3]^[4] on the basis of the Greek alphabet^[5]^[6]^[7] The objective was to make it possible to have Christian service in Slavic tongue, instead of in Greek, which locals did not understand, and to bring Bulgarian subjects closer to the cultural influence of Christianity, the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. It was used by Slavic peoples in South East, Central and Eastern Europe.^[8]

It was developed in the Preslav Literary School in the capital city of the First Bulgarian Empire in order to write the Old Church Slavonic language (called also Old Bulgarian).^[9]^[10] The modern Cyrillic script is still used primarily for some Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian, Serbian), and for East European and Asian languages that were under Russian cultural influence during the 20th century.

Among some of the traditionally culturally influential countries using Cyrillic script are Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.

4Gallery

History[edit]

The Cyrillic alphabet on birch bark document № 591 from ancient Novgorod (Russia). Dated to 1025-1050 AD.

A more complete early Cyrillic abecedary (on the top half of the left side), this one written by the boy Onfim between 1240 and 1260 AD (birch bark document № 199).

The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as ustav, was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek.^[11]

The Glagolitic alphabet was created by the monk Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid of his brother Saint Methodius, around 863.^[11] It was an adaptation designed to link the language of their mother, who was of Slavic origin (славянка),^{[citation needed]} and their father, who was the Roman military commander of Thessaloniki, the second most important city of the Byzantine Empire.^{[citation needed]} Cyrillic, on the other hand, was a creation of Cyril's students (most notable of whom was Saint Clement of Ohrid) in the 890s at the Preslav Literary School under Bulgarian Tsar Simeon the Great as a more suitable script for church books, though retaining the original Bulgarian symbols in Glagolitic.^[12] An alternative hypothesis proposes that it emerged in the border regions of Greek proselytization to the Slavs before it was codified and adapted by some systematizer among the Slavs; the oldest Cyrillic manuscripts look very similar to 9th and 10th century Greek uncial manuscripts,^[11] and the majority of uncial Cyrillic letters were identical to their Greek uncial counterparts.^[13] One possibility is that this systematization of Cyrillic was undertaken at the Council of Preslav in 893, when the Old Church Slavonic liturgy was adopted by the Bulgarian Empire.^[13]

The Cyrillic alphabet was very well suited for the writing of Old Church Slavic, generally following a principle of 'one letter for one significant sound', with some arbitrary or phonotactically-based exceptions.^[11] Particularly, this principle is violated by certain vowel letters, which represent [j] plus the vowel if they are not preceded by a consonant.^[11] It is also violated by a significant failure to distinguish between /ji/ and /jĭ/ orthographically.^[11] There was no distinction of capital and lowercase letters, though manuscript letters were rendered larger for emphasis, or in various decorative initial and nameplate forms.^[12] Letters served as numerals as well as phonetic signs; the values of the numerals were directly borrowed from their Greek-letter analogues.^[11] Letters without Greek equivalents mostly had no numeral values, whereas one letter, koppa, had only a numeric value with no phonetic value.^[11]

Since its creation, the Cyrillic script has adapted to changes in spoken language and developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages. It has been the subject of academic reforms and political decrees. Variations of the Cyrillic script are used to write languages throughout Eastern Europe and Asia.

The form of the Russian alphabet underwent a change when Tsar Peter the Great introduced the Civil Script (Russian: гражданский шрифтъ, romanized: graždanskiy šrift, or гражданка, graždanka), in contrast to the prevailing Church Typeface, (Russian: церковнославя́нский шрифтъ, romanized: cerkovnoslavjanskiy šrift) in 1708. Some letters and breathing marks which were only used for historical reasons were dropped. Medieval letterforms used in typesetting were harmonized with Latin typesetting practices, exchanging medieval forms for Baroque ones, and skipping the western European Renaissance developments. The reform subsequently influenced Cyrillic orthographies for most other languages. Today, the early orthography and typesetting standards only remain in use in Church Slavonic.

A comprehensive repertoire of early Cyrillic characters is included in the Unicode since version 5.1 standard, which published on April 4, 2008. These characters and their distinctive letterforms are represented in specialized computer fonts for Slavistics.

Alphabet[edit]

Image	Unicode	Name (Cyrillic)	Name (translit.)	Name (IPA)	Trans.	IPA	Numeric value	Origin	Meaning of name
А а	азъ	azŭ	[azŭ]	a	[a]	1	Greek alpha Α	I
Б б	боукꙑ	buky	[bukɯ]	b	[b]	Greek beta in Thera form	letters
В в	вѣдѣ	vědě	[vædæ]	v	[v]	2	Greek beta Β	know
Г г	глаголи	glagoli	[ɡlaɡoli]	g	[ɡ]^[11]	3	Greek gamma Γ	speak	When marked with a palatalization mark, this letter is pronounced [ɟ]; this only occurs rarely, and only in borrowings.^[11]
Д д	добро	dobro	[dobro]	d	[d]	4	Greek delta Δ	good
Є є	єстъ	estŭ	[jɛstŭ]	e	[ɛ]	5	Greek epsilon Ε	is	Pronounced [jɛ] when not preceded by a consonant.^[11]
Ж ж	живѣтє	živěte	[ʒivætɛ]	ž, zh	[ʒ]	Glagolitic zhivete Ⰶ	live
Ѕ ѕ / Ꙃ ꙃ	ꙃѣло	dzělo	[dzælo]	dz, ʒ,^[11]ẑ	[dz]	6	Greek stigma Ϛ	very	The form ꙃ had the phonetic value [dz] and no numeral value, whereas the form ѕ was used only as a numeral and had no phonetic value.^[11] In many manuscripts з is used instead, suggesting lenition had taken place.^[11]
З з / Ꙁ ꙁ	зємл҄ꙗ	zemlja	[zɛmʎa]	z	[z]	7	Greek zeta Ζ	earth	The first form developed into the second.
И и	ижє	iže	[jiʒɛ]	i	[i]	8	Greek eta Η	which	Pronounced [ji] or [jĭ] when not preceded by a consonant and not the particle ‹i› ('and'); the orthography does not distinguish between [ji] and [jĭ].^[11] Speculatively, this letter might have originally been intended to represent [i] and [ji].^[11]
І і / Ї ї	и	i	[i]	i, ı, ì	[i]	10	Greek iota Ι	and	Pronounced [ji] or [jĭ] when not preceded by a consonant and not the particle ‹i› ('and'); the orthography does not distinguish between [ji] and [jĭ].^[11] Speculatively, this letter might have originally been intended to represent [jĭ].^[11]
К к	како	kako	[kako]	k	[k]	20	Greek kappa Κ	as	When marked with a palatalization mark, this letter is pronounced [c]; this only occurs rarely, and only in borrowings.^[11]
Л л	людиѥ	ljudije	[ʎudijɛ]	l	[l]; sometimes [ʎ]^[11]	30	Greek lambda Λ	people	When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [ʎ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.^[11]
М м	мꙑслитє	myslite	[mɯslitɛ]	m	[m]	40	Greek mu Μ	think
Н н	нашь	našĭ	[naʃĭ]	n	[n]; sometimes [ɲ]^[11]	50	Greek nu Ν	ours	When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю, ѭ, or ꙗ, and sometimes ѣ), this letter is pronounced [ɲ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.^[11]
О о	онъ	onŭ	[onŭ]	o	[o]	70	Greek omicron Ο	he/it
П п	покои	pokoi	[pokojĭ]	p	[p]	80	Greek pi Π	peace/calm
Р р	рьци	rĭci	[rĭtsi]	r	[r]; sometimes [rʲ]^[11]	100	Greek rho Ρ	say	When marked with a palatalization mark or followed by a palatalizing vowel (ю or ѭ), this letter is pronounced [rʲ]; some manuscripts do not mark palatalization, in which case it must be inferred from context.^[11] This palatalization was lost rather early in South Slavic speech.^[11]
С с	слово	slovo	[slovo]	s	[s]	200	Greek lunate sigma Ϲ	word/speech
Т т	тврьдо	tvrĭdo	[tvrĭdo]	t	[t]	300	Greek tau Τ	hard/surely
Оу оу / Ꙋ ꙋ	оукъ	ukŭ	[ukŭ]	u	[u]	400	Greek omicron-upsilon ΟΥ / Ꙋ	learning	The first form developed into the second, a vertical ligature. A less common alternative form was a digraph with izhitsa: Оѵ оѵ.
Ф ф	фрьтъ	frĭtŭ	[frrĭtŭ]	f	[f] or possibly [p]^[11]	500	Greek phi Φ	This letter was not needed for Slavic but used to transcribe Greek Φ and Latin ph and f.^[11] It was probably, but not certainly, pronounced as [f] rather than [p]; however, in some cases it has been found as a transcription of Greek π.^[11]
Х х	хѣръ	xěrŭ	[xærŭ]	kh, x,^[11] h	[x]	600	Greek chi Χ	When marked with a palatalization mark, this letter is pronounced [ç]; this only occurs rarely, and only in borrowings.^[11]
Ѡ ѡ	отъ	otŭ	[otŭ]	ō, w, o, ô	[o]	800	Greek omega ω	from	This letter was rarely used, mostly appearing in the interjection 'oh', in the preposition ‹otŭ›, in Greek transcription, and as a decorative capital.^[11]
Ц ц	ци	ci	[tsi]	c	[ts]	900	Glagolitic tsi Ⱌ
Ч ч	чрьвь	črĭvĭ	[tʃrĭvĭ]	č, ch	[tʃ]	90	Glagolitic cherv Ⱍ	worm	This letter replaced koppa as the numeral for 90 after about 1300.^[11]
Ш ш	ша	ša	[ʃa]	š, sh	[ʃ]	Glagolitic sha Ⱎ
Щ щ	ща	šta	[ʃta]	št, sht	[ʃt]	Glagolitic shta Ⱋ	This letter varied in pronunciation from region to region; it may have originally represented the reflexes of [tʲ].^[11] It was sometimes replaced by the digraph шт.^[11] Pronounced [ʃtʃ] in Old East Slavic. Later analyzed as a Ш-Т ligature by folk etymology, but neither the Cyrillic nor the Glagolitic glyph originated as such a ligature.^[11]
Ъ ъ	ѥръ	jerŭ	[jɛrŭ]	ŭ, ъ^[11]	[ŭ] or [ʊ]^[11]	Glagolitic yer Ⱏ^[13]	After č, š, ž, c, dz, št, and žd, this letter was pronounced identically to ь instead of its normal pronunciation.^[11]
Ꙑ ꙑ / Ъи ъи^[11]	ѥрꙑ	jery	[jɛrɯ]	y	[ɯ] or [ɯji] or [ɯjĭ]^[11]	Ъ + І or Ъ + И ligature.	Ꙑ was the more common form; rarely, a third form, ы, appears.^[11]
Ь ь	ѥрь	jerĭ	[jɛrĭ]	ĭ, ь^[11]	[ĭ] or [ɪ]^[11]	Glagolitic yerj Ⱐ^[13]
Ѣ ѣ	ѣть	ětĭ	[jætĭ]	ě	[æ]^[11]	Glagolitic yat Ⱑ^[13]	In western South Slavic dialects of Old Church Slavonic, this letter had a more closed pronunciation, perhaps [ɛ] or [e].^[11] This letter was only written after a consonant; in all other positions, ꙗ was used instead.^[11]
Ꙗ ꙗ	ꙗ	ja	[ja]	ja	[ja]	І-А ligature	This letter was probably not present in the original Cyrillic alphabet.^[13]
Ѥ ѥ	ѥ	je	[jɛ]	je	[jɛ]	І-Є ligature	This letter was probably not present in the original Cyrillic alphabet.^[13]
Ю ю	ю	ju	[ju]	ju	[ju]	І-ОУ ligature, dropping У	There was no [jo] sound in early Slavic, so І-ОУ did not need to be distinguished from І-О. After č, š, ž, c, dz, št, and žd, this letter was pronounced [u], without iotation.
Ѫ ѫ	ѫсъ	ǫsŭ	[ɔ̃sŭ]	ǫ, õ	[ɔ̃]	Glagolitic ons Ⱘ	Called юсъ большой (big yus) in Russian.
Ѭ ѭ	ѭсъ	jǫsŭ	[jɔ̃sŭ]	jǫ, jõ	[jɔ̃]	І-Ѫ ligature	After č, š, ž, c, dz, št, and žd, this letter was pronounced [ɔ̃], without iotation. Called юсъ большой йотированный (iotated big yus) in Russian.
Ѧ ѧ	ѧсъ	ęsŭ	[jɛ̃sŭ]	ę, ẽ	[ɛ̃]	900	Glagolitic ens Ⱔ	Pronounced [jɛ̃] when not preceded by a consonant.^[11] Called юсъ малый (little yus) in Russian.
Ѩ ѩ	ѩсъ	jęsŭ	[jɛ̃sŭ]	ję, jẽ	[jɛ̃]	І-Ѧ ligature	This letter does not exist in the oldest (South Slavic) Cyrillic manuscripts, but only in East Slavic ones.^[11] It was probably not present in the original Cyrillic alphabet.^[13] Called юсъ малый йотированный (iotated little yus) in Russian.
Ѯ ѯ	ѯи	ksi	[ksi]	ks	[ks]	60	Greek xi Ξ	These two letters were not needed for Slavic but were used to transcribe Greek and as numerals.
Ѱ ѱ	ѱи	psi	[psi]	ps	[ps]	700	Greek psi Ψ
Ѳ ѳ	фита	fita	[fita]	θ, th, T, F	[t], or possibly [θ]	9	Greek theta Θ	This letter was not needed for Slavic but was used to transcribe Greek and as a numeral. It seems to have been generally pronounced [t], as the oldest texts sometimes replace instances of it with т.^[11] Normal Old Church Slavonic pronunciation probably did not have a phone [θ].^[11]
Ѵ ѵ	ижица	ižica	[jiʒitsa]	ü, v, ỳ	[i], [y], [v]	400	Greek upsilon Υ	small yoke	This letter was used to transcribe Greek upsilon and as a numeral. It also formed part of the digraph оѵ.
Ҁ ҁ	копа	kopa	[kopa]	q	no sound value	90	Greek koppa Ϙ	This letter had no phonetic value, and was only used as a numeral. After about 1300, it was replaced as a numeral by črĭvĭ.^[11]

South Slavic languages and dialects

Serbo-Croatian standard languages
Serbian
(Slavonic-Serbian)

ShtokavianEastern Herzegovinian
Zeta-Raška
Smederevo–Vršac
- Užican)

Serbo-Croatian accents

Church Slavonic (Old)

Dialects
- Torlakian)

Serbian–Bulgarian–Macedonian

Croatian–Slovenian

Bulgarian–Macedonian

Modern

Historical

^a Includes Banat Bulgarian alphabet.

In addition to the basic letters, there were a number of scribal variations, combining ligatures, and regionalisms used, all of which varied over time.

Numerals, diacritics and punctuation[edit]

Each letter had a numeric value also, inherited from the corresponding Greek letter. A titlo over a sequence of letters indicated their use as a number; usually this was accompanied by a dot on either side of the letter.^[11] In numerals, the ones place was to the left of the tens place, the reverse of the order used in modern Arabic numerals.^[11] Thousands are formed using a special symbol, ҂ (U+0482), which was attached to the lower left corner of the numeral.^[11] Many fonts display this symbol incorrectly as being in line with the letters instead of subscripted below and to the left of them.

Titlos were also used to form abbreviations, especially of nomina sacra; this was done by writing the first and last letter of the abbreviated word along with the word's grammatical endings, then placing a titlo above it.^[11] Later manuscripts made increasing use of a different style of abbreviation, in which some of the left-out letters were superscripted above the abbreviation and covered with a pokrytie diacritic.^[11]

Several diacritics, adopted from Polytonic Greek orthography, were also used, but were seemingly redundant^[11] (these may not appear correctly in all web browsers; they are supposed to be directly above the letter, not off to its upper right):

ӓtrema, diaeresis (U+0308)

а̀varia (grave accent), indicating stress on the last syllable (U+0300)

а́oksia (acute accent), indicating a stressed syllable (Unicode U+0301)

а҃titlo, indicating abbreviations, or letters used as numerals (U+0483)

а҄kamora (circumflex accent), indicating palatalization^{[citation needed]} (U+0484); in later Church Slavonic, it disambiguates plurals from homophonous singulars.

а҅dasia or dasy pneuma, rough breathing mark (U+0485)

а҆psili, zvatel'tse, or psilon pneuma, soft breathing mark (U+0486). Signals a word-initial vowel, at least in later Church Slavonic.

а҆̀ Combined zvatel'tse and varia is called apostrof.

а҆́ Combined zvatel'tse and oksia is called iso.

Punctuation systems in early Cyrillic manuscripts were primitive: there was no space between words and no upper and lower case, and punctuation marks were used inconsistently in all manuscripts.^[11]

·ano teleia (U+0387), a middle dot used to separate phrases, words, or parts of words^[11]

.Full stop, used in the same way^[11]

։Armenianfull stop (U+0589), resembling a colon, used in the same way^[11]

჻Georgian paragraph separator (U+10FB), used to mark off larger divisions

⁖ triangular colon (U+2056, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions

⁘ diamond colon (U+2058, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions

⁙ quintuple colon (U+2059, added in Unicode 4.1), used to mark off larger divisions

;Greekquestion mark (U+037E), similar to a semicolon

Some of these marks are also used in Glagolitic script.

Used only in modern texts

Jun 22, 2009 - On June 2009, PC User magazine Australia offered UltraISO v9 full version to its readers. Do take note that this registration details will NOT work on the trial installer that is downloadable from UltraISO's website. Actually the registration details above can be generated via. Kode registrasi ultraiso. Registration name: Home Registration code: 4BA9-0D54-214A-C938 Registration name: Heinzdieter Beckmann Jr Registration code: 641D-D430-88E6-A656.

,comma (U+002C)

.full stop (U+002E)

!exclamation mark (U+0021)

Gallery[edit]

Old Bulgarian examples[edit]

Pictures of Old Bulgarian manuscripts and inscriptions
Bulgar translation of Manasses chronicle

Medieval Greek Uncial manuscripts from which early Cyrillic letter forms take their shapes[edit]

Pictures of uncial lectionaries
ℓ179 Old Testament, Genesis
ℓ183 folio 2
ℓ296 folio 6 verso

Early Cyrillic manuscripts[edit]

Pictures of Old Church Slavonic weekly gospels (aprakos)
Andronikov Gospels
The material was previously available for mail order (in 2003). See but was subsequently withdrawn, possibly to encourage in-person attendance. According to the source, these are three practices loosely based on meditations Ole Nydahl claims were given to him by Lamas of the Karma Kagyu tradition.

References[edit]

^Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. 'First Alphabet Found in Egypt', Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
^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 glagolitic writing 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.
^Florin Curta (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge University Press. pp. 221–222. ISBN978-0-521-81539-0.
^J. M. Hussey, Andrew Louth (2010). 'The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire'. Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN978-0-19-161488-0.
^Mauricio Borrero, 'Russia', p. 123
^World Cultures Through Art Activities, Dindy Robinson, p. 115
^Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets, George L. Campbell, p. 42
^'Cyrillic alphabet'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 16 May. 2012
^The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Oxford History of the Christian Church, J. M. Hussey, Andrew Louth, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN0191614882, p. 100.
^Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks, Florin Curta, Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN0521815398, pp. 221-222.
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^g^hⁱ^j^k^l^mⁿ^o^p^q^r^s^t^u^v^w^x^y^z^aa^ab^ac^ad^ae^af^ag^ah^ai^aj^ak^al^am^an^ao^ap^aq^ar^as^at^au^av^aw^ax^ay^az^ba^bb^bc^bd^be^bf^bg^bh^bi^bjLunt, Horace G. Old Church Slavonic Grammar, Seventh Edition, 2001.
^ ^a^bCubberley 1994
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^g^hAuty, R. Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts and Glossary. 1977.

Sources[edit]

Berdnikov, Alexander and Olga Lapko, ''Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic in TEX and Unicode''., EuroTEX ’99 Proceedings, September 1999
Birnbaum, David J., 'Unicode for Slavic Medievalists'(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on August 3, 2004., September 28, 2002
Cubberley, Paul (1996) 'The Slavic Alphabets'. In Daniels and Bright, below.
Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-507993-0.
Everson, Michael and Ralph Cleminson, ''Final proposal for encoding the Glagolitic script in the UCS', Expert Contribution to the ISO N2610R'(PDF)., September 4, 2003
Franklin, Simon. 2002. Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-511-03025-8.
Iliev, I. Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet. Plovdiv. 2012/Иван Г. Илиев. Кратка история на кирилската азбука. Пловдив. 2012. Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet
Lev, V., 'The history of the Ukrainian script (paleography)', in Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1. University of Toronto Press, 1963, 1970, 1982. ISBN0-8020-3105-6
Simovyc, V., and J. B. Rudnyckyj, 'The history of Ukrainian orthography', in Ukraine: a concise encyclopædia, volume 1 (op cit).
Zamora, J., Help me learn Church Slavonic
Azbuka, Church Slavonic calligraphy and typography.
Obshtezhitie.net, Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts and early printed books.

External links[edit]

Church Slavonic Typography in Unicode (Unicode Technical Note no. 41), 2015-11-04, accessed 2016-02-23.

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'Cyrillic' and 'Cyrillic alphabet' redirect here. For national variants of the Cyrillic script, see Cyrillic alphabets. For other uses, see Cyrillic (disambiguation).

Cyrillic
Type
Languages	National script of: Kosovo (Serbian language) Crimea (Cyrillic) Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina (also Latin) Bulgaria (from c.893) Kazakhstan (until 2025)^[1] Kyrgyzstan Mongolia (also Mongolian script) South Ossetia Montenegro (also Latin) North Macedonia Russia Serbia (also Latin) Tajikistan Transnistria (de jure part of Moldova) Ukraine (see Languages using Cyrillic)
Earliest variants exist c.893^[2]-c.940
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs^[3] Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Greek Cyrillic
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	`Cyrl, 220` `Cyrs` (Old Church Slavonic variant)
Cyrillic
U+0400–U+04FFCyrillic U+0500–U+052FCyrillic Supplement U+2DE0–U+2DFFCyrillic Extended-A U+A640–U+A69FCyrillic Extended-B U+1C80–U+1C8FCyrillic Extended-C
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Cyrillic script (/sɪˈrɪlɪk/) is a writing system used for various alphabets across Eurasia, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and North Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic alphabet developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire.^[4]^[5]^[6] It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, especially those of Orthodox Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 250 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them.^[7] With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following Latin and Greek.^[8]

Cyrillic is derived from the Greekuncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. 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,^[9]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, who had recently returned from his Grand Embassy in western Europe. The new letterforms became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great (such as Я, which was inspired by the Latin R). West European typography culture was also adopted.^[10]

6Relationship to other writing systems
7Computer encoding

Letters[edit]

Cyrillic script spread throughout the East Slavic and some 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, discussed hereafter.

The early Cyrillic alphabet^[11]^[12]
А	Б	В	Г	Д	Е	Ж	Ѕ^[13]	Ꙁ	И	І	К	Л	М	Н	О	П	Р	С	Т	ОУ^[14]	Ф
Х	Ѡ	Ц	Ч	Ш	Щ	Ъ	ЪІ^[15]	Ь	Ѣ	Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ю	Ѫ	Ѭ	Ѧ	Ѩ	Ѯ	Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ҁ^[16]

Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.

A page from the Church Slavonic Grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky (1619)

Yeri (Ы) was originally a ligature of Yer and I (Ъ + І = Ы). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І: Ꙗ (not an ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from Ѧ), Ѥ, Ю (ligature of І and ОУ), Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, as were typographical variants like О = Ѻ. There were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ.

The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from the letters' Greek ancestors.

Cyrillic numerals
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
А	В	Г	Д	Є	Ѕ	З	И	Ѳ
10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90
І	К	Л	М	Н	Ѯ	Ѻ	П	Ч (Ҁ)
100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900
Р	С	Т	Ѵ	Ф	Х	Ѱ	Ѿ	Ц

The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from those of modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include glyphs sufficient to reproduce the alphabet. In accordance with Unicode policy, the standard does not include letterform variations or ligatures found in manuscript sources unless they can be shown to conform to the Unicode definition of a character.

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, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8.^{[citation needed]}

Slavic Cyrillic letters
А A	Б Be	В Ve	Г Ge	Ґ Ghe upturn	Д De	Ђ Dje	Ѓ Gje	Е Ye	Ё Yo	Є Ukrainian Ye	Ж Zhe
З Ze	З́ Zje	Ѕ Dze	И I	І Dotted I	Ї Yi	Й Short I	Ј Je	К Ka	Л El	Љ Lje	М Em
Н En	Њ Nje	О O	П Pe	Р Er	С Es	С́ Sje	Т Te	Ћ Tshe	Ќ Kje	У U	Ў Short U
Ф Ef	Х Kha	Ц Tse	Ч Che	Џ Dzhe	Ш Sha	Щ Shcha	Ъ Hard sign (Yer)	Ы Yery	Ь Soft sign (Yeri)	Э E	Ю Yu
Я Ya
Examples of non-Slavic Cyrillic letters (see List of Cyrillic letters for more)
Ӑ A with breve	Ә Schwa	Ӕ Ae	Ғ Ghayn	Ҕ Ge with middle hook	Ӻ Ghayn with hook	Ӷ Ge with descender	Ӂ Zhe with breve	Ӝ Zhe with diaeresis	Ӡ Abkhazian Dze	Ҡ Bashkir Qa	Ҟ Ka with stroke
Ӊ En with tail	Ң En with descender	Ӈ En with hook	Ҥ En-ghe	Ө Oe	Ҩ O-hook	Ҏ Er with tick	Ҫ The	У̃ U with tilde	Ӯ U with macron	Ӱ U with diaeresis	Ӳ U with double acute
Ү Ue	Ҳ Kha with descender	Ӽ Kha with hook	Ӿ Kha with stroke	Һ Shha (He)	Ҵ Te Tse	Ҷ Che with descender	Ӌ Khakassian Che	Ҹ Che with vertical stroke	Ҽ Abkhazian Che	Ҍ Semisoft sign	Ӏ Palochka
Cyrillic letters used in the past
Ꙗ A iotified	Ѥ E iotified	Ѧ Yus small	Ѫ Yus big	Ѩ Yus small iotified	Ѭ Yus big iotified	Ѯ Ksi	Ѱ Psi	Ꙟ Yn	Ѳ Fita	Ѵ Izhitsa	Ѷ Izhitsa okovy
Ҁ Koppa	ОУ Uk	Ѡ Omega	Ѿ Ot	Ѣ Yat

Letterforms and typography[edit]

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 (still found on many icon inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters.

Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms (ru) in the early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of serifs, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type.

Letters Ge, De, I, I kratkoye, Me, Te, Tse, Be and Ve in upright (printed) and cursive (handwritten) variants. (Top is set in Georgia font, bottom in Odessa Script.)

Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with exceptions: Cyrillic ⟨а⟩, ⟨е⟩, ⟨і⟩, ⟨ј⟩, ⟨р⟩, and ⟨у⟩ adopted Western lowercase shapes, lowercase ⟨ф⟩ is typically designed under the influence of Latin ⟨p⟩, lowercase ⟨б⟩, ⟨ђ⟩ and ⟨ћ⟩ are traditional handwritten forms), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs.^[17]

Cyrillic fonts, as well as Latin ones, have roman and italic types (practically all popular modern fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are simply shared by both). However, the native font terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words 'roman' and 'italic' in this sense.^[18] Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns:

Cyrillic letters in cursive

Roman type is called pryamoy shrift ('upright type')—compare with Normalschrift ('regular type') in German
Italic type is called kursiv ('cursive') or kursivniy shrift ('cursive type')—from the German word Kursive, meaning italic typefaces and not cursive writing
Cursive handwriting is rukopisniy shrift ('handwritten type') in Russian—in German: Kurrentschrift or Laufschrift, both meaning literally 'running type'

As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically sloped oblique type (naklonniy shrift—'sloped', or 'slanted type') instead of italic.

Similarly to Latin fonts, italic and cursive types of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for handwritten or stylish types) are very different from their upright roman types. In certain cases, the correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic fonts: for example, italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ is the lowercase counterpart of ⟨Т⟩ not of ⟨М⟩.

A boldfaced type is called poluzhirniy shrift ('semi-bold type'), because there existed fully boldfaced shapes that have been out of use since the beginning of the 20th century. A bold italic combination (bold slanted) does not exist for all font families.

In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian,^[19] some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different to resemble more to the handwritten letters. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized among languages and there are no officially recognized variations.^[20]

The following table shows the differences between the upright and italic Cyrillic letters of the Russian alphabet. Italic forms significantly different from their upright analogues, or especially confusing to users of a Latin alphabet, are highlighted.

Also available as a graphical image.
а	б	в	г	д	е	ё	ж	з	и	й	к	л	м	н	о	п	р	с	т	у	ф	х	ц	ч	ш	щ	ъ	ы	ь	э	ю	я
а	б	в	г	д	е	ё	ж	з	и	й	к	л	м	н	о	п	р	с	т	у	ф	х	ц	ч	ш	щ	ъ	ы	ь	э	ю	я

Note: in some fonts or styles, lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ (⟨д⟩) may look like Latin ⟨g⟩ and lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ (⟨т⟩) may look exactly like a capital italic ⟨T⟩ (⟨T⟩), only smaller.

Distribution of the Cyrillic script worldwide:

Cyrillic is the sole official script.

Cyrillic is co-official with another alphabet. In the cases of Moldova and Georgia, this is in breakaway regions not recognized by the central government.

Cyrillic is not official, but is in common use as a legacy script.

Cyrillic alphabets[edit]

Main article: Cyrillic alphabets

Among others, Cyrillic is the standard script for writing the following languages:

Slavic languages: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbo-Croatian (for Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin), Ukrainian
Non-Slavic languages: Abkhaz, Aleut (now mostly in church texts), Bashkir, Chuvash, Erzya, Kazakh (to be replaced by Latin script by 2025^[1]), Kildin Sami, Komi, Kyrgyz, Dungan, Mari, Moksha, Mongolian, Ossetic, Romani (some dialects), Sakha/Yakut, Tajik, Tatar, Tlingit (now only in church texts), Tuvan, Udmurt, Yuit (Siberian Yupik), and Yupik (in Alaska).

The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska,^[21]Slavic Europe (except for Western Slavic and some Southern Slavic), the Caucasus, Siberia, and the Russian Far East.

The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic was Abur, used for the Komi language. Other Cyrillic alphabets include the Molodtsov alphabet for the Komi language and various alphabets for Caucasian languages.

Name[edit]

Cyrillic Script Monument in Antarctica

Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves, its name denotes homage rather than authorship. The name 'Cyrillic' often confuses people who are not familiar with the script's history, because it does not identify a country of origin (in contrast to the 'Greek alphabet'). Among the general public, it is often called 'the Russian alphabet,' because Russian is the most popular and influential alphabet based on the script. Some Bulgarian intellectuals, notably Stefan Tsanev, have expressed concern over this, and have suggested that the Cyrillic script be called the 'Bulgarian alphabet' instead, for the sake of historical accuracy.^[22]

In Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Serbian, the Cyrillic alphabet is also known as azbuka, derived from the old names of the first two letters of most Cyrillic alphabets (just as the term alphabet came from the first two Greek letters alpha and beta).

History[edit]

Main article: Early Cyrillic alphabet

A page from Азбука (Читанка) (ABC (Reader)), the first Ruthenian language textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet.

Egyptian hieroglyphs 32 c.BCE

Hieratic 32 c. BCE
- Demotic 7 c. BCE
  - Meroitic 3 c. BCE
Proto-Sinaitic 19 c. BCE
- Ugaritic 15 c. BCE
- Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. BCE
  - Ge’ez 5–6 c. BCE
- Canaanite-Phoenician alphabet 12 c. BCE
  - Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. BCE
    - Samaritan 6 c. BCE
  - Libyco-Berber 3 c. BCE
  - Paleohispanic (semi-syllabic) 7 c. BCE
  - Aramaic 8 c. BCE
    - Kharoṣṭhī 4 c. BCE
    - Brāhmī 4 c. BCE
      - Brahmic family(see) E.g.
        Tibetan 7 c. CE
        ʼPhags-pa script 13 c. CE
        Devanagari 10 c. CE
        Canadian syllabics 1840 CE
    - Hebrew 3 c. BCE
    - Pahlavi 3 c. BCE
      - Avestan 4 c. CE
    - Palmyrene 2 c. BCE
    - Syriac 2 c. BCE
      - Nabataean 2 c. BCE
        Arabic 4 c. CE
        N'Ko 1949 CE
      - Sogdian 2 c. BCE
        Orkhon (old Turkic) 6 c. CE
        Old Hungarian c. 650 CE
        Old Uyghur
        Mongolian 1204 CE
    - Mandaic 2 c. CE
  - Greek 8 c. BCE
    - Etruscan 8 c. BCE
      - Latin 7 c. BCE
        Cherokee (syllabary; letter forms only) c. 1820 CE
      - Runic 2 c. CE
      - Ogham (origin uncertain) 4 c. CE
    - Coptic 3 c. CE
    - Gothic 3 c. CE
    - Armenian 405 CE
    - Georgian (origin uncertain) c. 430 CE
    - Glagolitic 862 CE
    - Cyrillic c. 940 CE
      - Old Permic 1372 CE

Mesopotamian cuneiform 32 c. BCE

Ugaritic (shape influenced) 15 c. BCE
Old Persian cuneiform (apparently inspired) 525 BCE

Indus script 26 c. BCE

Cretan hieroglyphs (possible ancestor of Linear A) 21 c. BCE

Linear A 18 c. BCE
- Linear B 15 c. BCE
- Cypro-Minoan syllabary 16 c. BCE
  - Cypriot syllabary 11 c. BCE

Chinese Characters 13 c. BCE

Chinese family (see) E.g.
- Kana 800 CE
- Chữ Nôm 13 c. CE
- Zhuyin 1913 CE

Mesoamerican family (see) E.g.

Maya script 3 c. BCE

Ogham (origin uncertain) 4 c. CE

Dongba symbols 10 c. CE

Hangul 1443 CE

Yi script 15 c. CE (syllabic version established in 1974)

Thaana 18 c. CE (derived from Brahmi numerals)

Osmanya alphabet 1920s CE

Santali alphabet (or Ol Chiki script) 1925 CE

Borama alphabet 1933 CE

Kaddare script (resembling Osmanya script and Brahmi script.) 1952 CE

The Cyrillic script was created in the First Bulgarian Empire.^[23] Its first variant, the Early Cyrillic alphabet, was created at the Preslav Literary School. It is derived from the Greek uncial script letters, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Tradition holds that Cyrillic and Glagolitic were formalized either by Saints Cyril and Methodius who brought Christianity to the southern Slavs, or by their disciples.^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27] Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students in the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon the Great that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.^[23] Later Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic Vlachs.

Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language, especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. Hence expressions such as 'И is the tenth Cyrillic letter' typically refer to the order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script.

The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century. The literature produced in the Old Bulgarian language soon spread north and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where it came to also be known as Old Church Slavonic.^[28]^[29]^[30]^[31]^[32] The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the course of the following millennium, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reform and political decrees. A notable example of such linguistic reform can be attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić who updated the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by removing certain graphemes no longer represented in the vernacular, and introducing graphemes specific to Serbian (i.e. Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to the reform. Today, many languages in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia are written in Cyrillic alphabets.

Relationship to other writing systems[edit]

Latin script[edit]

A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Serbian and Romanian (in the Republic of Moldova until 1989, in Romania throughout the 19th century). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except the breakaway region of Transnistria, where Moldovan Cyrillic is official), Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. Uzbekistan still uses both systems, and Kazakhstan has officially begun a transition from Cyrillic to Latin (scheduled to be complete by 2025). The Russian government has mandated that Cyrillic must be used for all public communications in all federal subjects of Russia, to promote closer ties across the federation.^{[citation needed]} This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used by many Chechens. Those in the diaspora especially refuse to use the Chechen Cyrillic alphabet, which they associate with Russian imperialism.

Map of European countries by script of national language.

Alphabets in Europe

Greek & Latin

Latin and Cyrillic

Georgian

Standard Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to the Serbian constitution;^[33] however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity.^[34]

The Zhuang alphabet, used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from the alphabet in 1982 and replaced with Latin letters that closely resembled the letters they replaced.

Romanization[edit]

There are various systems for Romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin letters, and transcription to convey pronunciation.

Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:

Scientific transliteration, used in linguistics, is based on the Bosnian and Croatian Latin alphabet.
The Working Group on Romanization Systems^[35] of the United Nations recommends different systems for specific languages. These are the most commonly used around the world.
ISO 9:1995, from the International Organization for Standardization.
American Library Association and Library of Congress Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets (ALA-LC Romanization), used in North American libraries.
BGN/PCGN Romanization (1947), United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use).
GOST 16876, a now defunct Soviet transliteration standard. Replaced by GOST 7.79, which is ISO 9 equivalent.
Various informal romanizations of Cyrillic, which adapt the Cyrillic script to Latin and sometimes Greek glyphs for compatibility with small character sets.

See also Romanization of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Russian, Macedonian and Ukrainian.

Cyrillization[edit]

Representing other writing systems with Cyrillic letters is called Cyrillization.

Computer encoding[edit]

Unicode[edit]

Main article: Cyrillic script in Unicode

As of Unicode version 12.0, Cyrillic letters, including national and historical alphabets, are encoded across several blocks:

Cyrillic: U+0400–U+04FF
Cyrillic Supplement: U+0500–U+052F
Cyrillic Extended-A: U+2DE0–U+2DFF
Cyrillic Extended-B: U+A640–U+A69F
Cyrillic Extended-C: U+1C80–U+1C8F
Phonetic Extensions: U+1D2B, U+1D78
Combining Half Marks: U+FE2E–U+FE2F

The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script.

Unicode as a general rule does not include accented Cyrillic letters. A few exceptions include:

combinations that are considered as separate letters of respective alphabets, like Й, Ў, Ё, Ї, Ѓ, Ќ (as well as many letters of non-Slavic alphabets);
two most frequent combinations orthographically required to distinguish homonyms in Bulgarian and Macedonian: Ѐ, Ѝ;
a few Old and New Church Slavonic combinations: Ѷ, Ѿ, Ѽ.

To indicate stressed or long vowels, combining diacritical marks can be used after the respective letter (for example, U+0301◌́COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT: ы́ э́ ю́ я́ etc.).

Some languages, including Church Slavonic, are still not fully supported.^{[citation needed]}

Unicode 5.1, released on 4 April 2008, introduces major changes to the Cyrillic blocks. Revisions to the existing Cyrillic blocks, and the addition of Cyrillic Extended A (2DE0 .. 2DFF) and Cyrillic Extended B (A640 .. A69F), significantly improve support for the early Cyrillic alphabet, Abkhaz, Aleut, Chuvash, Kurdish, and Moksha.^[36]

Other[edit]

Punctuation for Cyrillic text is similar to that used in European Latin-alphabet languages.

Other character encoding systems for Cyrillic:

Russian Font Free Download

CP866 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in MS-DOS also known as GOST-alternative. Cyrillic characters go in their native order, with a 'window' for pseudographic characters.
ISO/IEC 8859-5 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by International Organization for Standardization
KOI8-R – 8-bit native Russian character encoding. Invented in the USSR for use on Soviet clones of American IBM and DEC computers. The Cyrillic characters go in the order of their Latin counterparts, which allowed the text to remain readable after transmission via a 7-bit line that removed the most significant bit from each byte—the result became a very rough, but readable, Latin transliteration of Cyrillic. Standard encoding of early 1990s for Unix systems and the first Russian Internet encoding.
KOI8-U – KOI8-R with addition of Ukrainian letters.
MIK – 8-bit native Bulgarian character encoding for use in MicrosoftDOS.
Windows-1251 – 8-bit Cyrillic character encoding established by Microsoft for use in Microsoft Windows. The simplest 8-bit Cyrillic encoding—32 capital chars in native order at 0xc0–0xdf, 32 usual chars at 0xe0–0xff, with rarely used 'YO' characters somewhere else. No pseudographics. Former standard encoding in some GNU/Linux distributions for Belarusian and Bulgarian, but currently displaced by UTF-8.
GOST-main.
GB 2312 – Principally simplified Chinese encodings, but there are also the basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).
JIS and Shift JIS – Principally Japanese encodings, but there are also the basic 33 Russian Cyrillic letters (in upper- and lower-case).

Keyboard layouts[edit]

See also: Keyboard layouts for non-Latin alphabetic scripts

Each language has its own standard keyboard layout, adopted from typewriters. With the flexibility of computer input methods, there are also transliterating or phonetic/homophonic keyboard layouts made for typists who are more familiar with other layouts, like the common English QWERTY keyboard. When practical Cyrillic keyboard layouts or fonts are unavailable, computer users sometimes use transliteration or look-alike 'volapuk' encoding to type in languages that are normally written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Notes[edit]