Cyrillic alphabet (Кириллица)

Origin

The Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril, a missionary from Byzantium. It was invented sometime during the 10th century AD, possibly by St. Kliment of Ohrid, to write the Old Church Slavonic language. The Cyrillic alphabet achieved its current form in 1708 during the reign of Peter the Great. Four letters were eliminated from the alphabet in a 1917/18 reform.

The Cyrillic alphabet has been adapted to write over 50 different languages, mainly in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. In many cases additional letters are used, some of which are adaptations of standard Cyrillic letters, while others are taken from the Greek or Latin alphabets.

Development of the Cyrillic alphabet

10th century version, as used to write Old Church Slavonic

1708 version

The letters in blue had fallen out of use by the 1800 century. The letters in red were eliminated in the 1918 reform.

1918 version

The names of the letters are in Russian.

Languages written with the Cyrillic alphabet

Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Archi, Avar, Azeri, Balkar, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Buryat, Chechen, Chukchi, Church Slavonic, Chuvash, Dargwa, Dungan, Erzya, Even, Evenki, Gagauz, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Komi, Koryak, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Laz, Lak, Lezgi, Lingua Franca Nova, Macedonian, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian, Nanai, Nenets, Nivkh, Old Church Slavonic, Ossetian, Russian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovio, Tabassaran, Tajik, Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvan, Tsez, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Votic, Yakut, Yukaghir, Yupik

Links

Further information about the history of the Cyrillic alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet

Free Cyrillic fonts
http://cirilica.com/cirilica/Strane/fontovi/fontovi01.html
http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/russian.html
http://www.brama.com/compute/index.html
http://www.funet.fi/pub/culture/russian/comp/fonts/ttf
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~aatseel/fonts/wincyrillic.html
http://www.davidzbiral.webzdarma.cz/cyrillicof.htm

ALPHABETUM is a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient languages that includes Old and Modern Cyrillic, Old Church Slavonic, and many other ancient scripts
http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

Other alphabets

Armenian, Avestan, Bassa (Vah), Beitha Kukju, Coptic, Cyrillic, Elbsan, Etruscan, Fraser, Georgian (Asomtavruli & Nuskha-khucuri), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hungarian Runes, Irish, Kayah Li, Korean, Latin, Lycian, Lydian, Manchu, Meroïtic, Mongolian, N'Ko, Ogham, Old Church Slavonic, Oirat Clear Script, Old Italic, Old Permic, Orkhon, Pollard Miao, Runic, Santali, Somali, Sutton SignWriting, Tai Dam, Thaana, Uyghur

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