The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. The systematization of Cyrillic may have been undertaken at the Council of Preslav in 893. It is used to write the Church Slavonic language, and was historically used for its ancestor, Old Church Slavonic.
It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillic script, which is used for some Slavic languages (such as Russian), and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.
History
The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as , was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for phonemes not found in Greek.
The Glagolitic script was created by the Byzantine monk Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid of his brother Saint Methodius, around 863. At the time, the Preslav Literary School was the most important early literary and cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs: and a ceramic vase from Preslav, dating back to 931. The systematization of Cyrillic may have been undertaken at the Council of Preslav in 893, when the Old Church Slavonic or Glagolitic Cyrillic liturgy was adopted by the First Bulgarian Empire.<blockquote>Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet.</blockquote>American scholar Horace Lunt has alternatively suggested that Cyrillics 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, Letters served as numerals as well as phonetic signs; the values of the numerals were directly borrowed from their Greek-letter analogues.
|File:Birch bark alphabet of Novgorod.jpg|The Cyrillic alphabet on birch bark document № 591 from ancient Novgorod (Russia). Dated to 1025–1050 AD.
|File:Bb199.gif|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).
Alphabet
{| class="wikitable Unicode"
|- valign=bottom
! Image
! Unicode
! Name<br>(Cyrillic)
! Name<br>(translit.)
! Name<br>(IPA)
! Trans.
! IPA
! Numeric value
! Origin
! Meaning of name
! Notes
|-
| style="background: white;" | 40px
| А а
|
| azŭ
|
| a
|
| 1
| Greek alpha Α
| I
|
|-
| style="background: white;" | 40px
| Б б
|
| buky
|
| b
|
|
| Greek beta in Thera form
| letters
|
|-
| style="background: white;" | 40px
| В в
|
| vědě
|
| v
|
| 2
| Greek beta Β
| know
|
|-
| style="background: white;" | 40px
| Г г
|
| glagoli
|
| g
| In many manuscripts з is used instead, suggesting lenition had taken place.), all of which varied over time.
Versions of this initial alphabet where the letters ҁ and ѿ are omitted are also valid, since ҁ did not have a phonetic value nor an official placement in the alphabet with some putting it between п and р to correspond with the placement of the Greek letter ϙ and other putting it right at the end, and ѿ came later as ligature of ѡ and т. The Greek letters that were used in Cyrillic mainly for their numeric value are sometimes transcribed with the corresponding Greek letters for accuracy: ѳ = θ, ѯ = ξ, ѵ = υ, ҁ = ϙ, ѱ = ψ, and ѡ = ω.
Numerals, diacritics and punctuation
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.
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.