History of the formation of the Russian alphabet. The history of the origin of the Russian alphabet

01.04.2024

“Where does the Motherland begin,” as the old and soulful song says? And it starts small: with love for the native language, with the alphabet. Since childhood, we have all become accustomed to a certain type of letters in the Russian alphabet. And as a rule, we rarely think about when and under what conditions it arose. Nevertheless, the presence and emergence of writing is an important and fundamental milestone in the historical maturation of every people in the world, contributing to the development of its national culture and self-awareness. Sometimes, in the depths of centuries, the specific names of the creators of the writing of a particular people are lost. But this is not how it happened in the Slavic context. And those who invented the Russian alphabet are still known today. Let's find out more about these people.

The word “alphabet” itself originates from the first two letters: alpha and beta. It is known that the ancient Greeks put a lot of effort into the development and spread of writing in many European countries. Who was the first to invent an alphabet in world history? There is scientific debate about this. The main hypothesis is the Sumerian "alphabet", which appears about five thousand years ago. Egyptian is also considered one of the most ancient (of the known). Writing develops from drawings to signs, turning into graphic systems. And the signs began to display sounds.

The development of writing in human history is difficult to overestimate. The language of the people and their writing reflect life, everyday life and knowledge, historical and mythological characters. Thus, by reading ancient inscriptions, modern scientists can recreate what our ancestors lived.

History of the Russian alphabet

It has, one might say, a unique origin. Its history goes back about a thousand years and contains many secrets.

Cyril and Methodius

The creation of the alphabet is firmly connected with these names in the question of who invented the Russian alphabet. Let's go back to the 9th century. In those days (830-906) Great Moravia (a region of the Czech Republic) was one of the large European states. And Byzantium was the center of Christianity. Prince Rostislav of Moravia in 863 turned to Michael the Third, the Byzantine emperor at that time, with a request to hold services in the Slavic language to strengthen the influence of Byzantine Christianity in the region. In those days, it is worth noting that the cult was performed only in those languages that were displayed on the Jesus cross: Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

The Byzantine ruler, in response to Rostislav's proposal, sent him a Moravian mission consisting of two monk brothers, the sons of a noble Greek who lived in Saluny (Thessaloniki). Michael (Methodius) and Constantine (Cyril) and are considered the official creators of the Slavic alphabet for church service. It is named “Cyrillic” in honor of the church name of Cyril. Konstantin himself was younger than Mikhail, but even his brother recognized his intelligence and superiority in knowledge. Kirill knew many languages and mastered the art of oratory, participated in religious verbal debates, and was a wonderful organizer. This, as many scientists believe, allowed him (together with his brother and other assistants) to connect and summarize the data, creating the alphabet. But the history of the Russian alphabet began long before the Moravian mission. And that's why.

Who invented the Russian alphabet (alphabet)

The fact is that historians have unearthed an interesting fact: even before leaving, the brothers had already created the Slavic alphabet, well adapted to convey the speech of the Slavs. It was called Glagolitic (it was recreated on the basis of Greek writing with elements of Coptic and Hebrew characters).

Glagolitic or Cyrillic?

Today, scientists from different countries mostly recognize the fact that the first was the Glagolitic alphabet, created by Cyril back in 863 in Byzantium. He presented it in a fairly short time. And another, different from the previous one, Cyrillic alphabet was invented in Bulgaria, a little later. And there are still disputes over the authorship of this, undoubtedly, cornerstone invention for pan-Slavic history. Afterwards, a brief history of the Russian alphabet (Cyrillic alphabet) is as follows: in the tenth century it penetrated into Rus' from Bulgaria, and its written recording was fully formalized only in the XIV century. In a more modern form - from the end of the 16th century.

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Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Moscow State Engineering University (MAMI)"

Essay

by discipline" Russian language and culture of speech"

Subject:" OriginRussian alphabet"

Completed by: Beletsky I.M.

Checked by: Zmazneva O.A.

Moscow 2012

Introduction

When conveying speech in writing, letters are used, each of which has a specific meaning. A set of letters arranged in a prescribed order is called an alphabet or alphabet.

The word alphabet comes from the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: b-- alpha; c-- beta (in modern Greek - vita).

The word alphabet comes from the name of the first two letters of the ancient Slavic alphabet - Cyrillic: A - az; B - beeches.

Alphabet, a writing system based on more or less strict adherence to the so-called phonetic principle, according to which one symbol (one letter) corresponds to one sound of a language.

In the 1st century AD, our ancestors lived on the territory of Europe - tribes of Slavs who spoke an ancient language (scientists gave it the name Proto-Slavic language). Over time, these tribes settled in different territories, and their common language also began to disintegrate: the Proto-Slavic language formed various branches. One such branch was the Old Russian language - the predecessor of the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages.

The need for writing arose among the Slavs in the 9th century with the advent of states such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia, and the Czech Republic. And when Christianity replaced ancient paganism (Rus adopted Christianity in 988), the need for writing increased even more (there was a need for economic and cultural ties with other states).

Our distant ancestors, the Slavs, formed the Old Russian people, which included the East Slavic tribes of the Polyans, Drevlyans, Krivichi, Vyatichi. On the territory adjacent to the middle reaches of the Dnieper, populated by glades, a powerful state appeared - Kievan Rus. The first church books written in Old Church Slavonic began to arrive in Kievan Rus. This language was formed on the basis of translations of the first Christian books from Greek and had a great influence on the development of many Slavic languages. The continuation of the Old Church Slavonic language as a literary language was Church Slavonic.

People already used some letters of the Greek alphabet for counting and writing, but it had to be streamlined, systematized, and adapted for use in new conditions. The first Slavic alphabet - the Cyrillic alphabet - was created on the basis of the Greek alphabet in 863. We still use this alphabet (of course, in a modified version).

The purpose of the work is to find out how and under what conditions the Russian alphabet originated, developed and changed. The abstract uses as sources of information: numerous Orthodox forums, encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Story

At the beginning of the second half of the 9th century, the Great Moravian state was one of the largest Slavic state entities. Since 846, Great Moravia was ruled by Prince Rostislav, who enjoyed special fame and courageously guarded the freedom of his people. Weighed down by his dependence on the Germans and realizing that the Slavs could not get rid of the influence of their dangerous neighbors on their own, he decided, together with his nephew Svyatopolk, to seek help from those who could help their needs, both spiritual and civil. at the same time would not be dangerous.

At that time, Christian preachers from Greece, Wallachia and Germany were already active in Moravia, and Prince Rostislav received holy baptism from some of them. Being enlightened by the light of Christ's faith, the noble prince cared about the spiritual awakening of his people.

At the same time, he perfectly understood that the preaching of Christianity could not be successful if missionaries replaced its lofty goals with political interests and, moreover, taught the people in a foreign, incomprehensible language.

At first, Prince Rostislav turned with his needs to Pope Nicholas I, who was then on the Roman throne, but he, being an ally of the German king Louis, did not respond to the prince’s request. Then Rostislav in 862 sent an embassy to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III. In his letter the prince wrote: " Our people rejected paganism and accepted the Christian law; but we do not have a teacher who would reveal to us the true Christian faith in our native language, so that other countries would follow our example. Therefore, we ask you, sovereign Sovereign, to send us such a bishop and teacher. From you always comes good law to all countries".

Emperor Michael did not hesitate to answer: the best of the best were sent to the Great Moravian mission - the Thessaloniki brothers Cyril and Methodius. These were unusually educated people for their time, ascetics, prayer books, men with rich experience in missionary work.

Cyril and Methodius came to the Great Moravian Empire through Bulgaria in 863 and handed over to Prince Rostislav a letter from St. Photius. In it, the patriarch wrote, addressing the prince: " God, who commands every nation to come to the knowledge of righteousness and to achieve the honor of the highest calling, has looked upon your faith and efforts. Having arranged this now in our years, He also revealed writings in your language, which previously did not exist, but now have recently existed, so that you too could be counted among the great nations who praise God forhisnative language. Therefore we have sent to you the one to whom they were revealed, a precious and illustrious man, veryscientist, philosopher. Behold, accept this gift, better and more worthy than all gold, silver and precious stones and all transitory wealth. Try together with him to boldly establish the matter and seek God with all your heart and not close off salvation for the whole people, but encourage in every possible way so that they do not be lazy, but take the path of righteousness, so that you too, ifbring youtheir efforts to know God, accepted the reward both in this and the future life for all souls who believe in Christ our God from now to eternity, and left a bright memory for future generations, just like the great Tsar Constantine".

Prince Rostislav provided the brothers with all possible assistance. First of all, he gathered many youths and ordered them to learn the Slavic alphabet from translated books, then, under the leadership of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius, he began to build churches. A year later, the first church in the city of Olomouc was completed, then several more churches were built.

The successful missionary activity of Saints Cyril and Methodius, supported by the holy prince Rostislav, laid the foundations for the independence of the Great Moravian state, and therefore aroused sharp opposition from the German princes and clergy who pursued their interests in the Slavic states.

Latin missionaries accused the brothers of using “unsanctified language” in worship and spreading false teaching about the Holy Spirit. Having consecrated the books of Holy Scripture translated by the holy brothers into the Slavic language, Orthodox Pope Adrian II composed a message to Holy Prince Rostislav: " If anyone dares to reproach these teachers and seduce you from the truth to fables, or, corrupting you, will blaspheme the books of your language, let him beexcommunicatedand is presented to the court of the church and will not receive forgiveness until he corrects himself. For these are wolves, not sheep, and we must recognize them by their fruits and beware of them...".

Formation

The mission of the brothers was to explain the Christian faith to people in their native language. And for this it was necessary to first translate liturgical books from Greek into Slavic. That is why Cyril and Methodius began developing a new alphabet. They even created 2 alphabets - Cyrillic and Glagolitic, but Glagolitic was forgotten over time (in Rus' it was used only in the very first years of the development and spread of writing). Our Russian alphabet comes from the Cyrillic alphabet. On its basis, the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian alphabets were also created - that’s why these languages are so similar.

Of course, the alphabet that we use now bears little resemblance to the ancient Old Church Slavonic alphabet. And the modern Russian language is also very different from the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages.

The Cyrillic alphabet is in many ways similar to our modern script. If you look at the letters of this alphabet, you will see that many letters have disappeared from our modern use:

· yus big and yus small (they denoted nasal vowels; these sounds remained in Polish and French);

· instead of fita and fert we use the letter f;

· instead of zelo and earth - the letter z;

· instead of yat and is - the letter e;

· xi and psi.

And of course, many Cyrillic letters have changed their style over time. The names of modern letters have also become shorter.

Cyrillic letters originally also had a numerical meaning, that is, they were used instead of numbers.

The Cyrillic alphabet had several types of styles. For a long time (especially among the Eastern Slavs) the charter letter, or charter, was preserved: Cyrillic letters were written directly, one separately from the other. The charter was used to write mainly liturgical books. Over time, the charter was replaced by a semi-statutory, which is found in books of the 15th-17th centuries. The font of the first Russian printed books was cast on the model of the semi-charter.

Poluustav was replaced by cursive writing, in which the original style of Cyrillic letters changed significantly. Starting from the time of Peter I, the Cyrillic alphabet, from which some letters were excluded, received the name of the Russian civil alphabet. Thus, a slightly modified Cyrillic alphabet formed the basis of our modern alphabet.

Literacy was highly valued in Rus'. From the depths of centuries, monuments of ancient Russian writing have reached us: church books, codes of laws, business documents, chronicles, literary works. The oldest surviving Russian handwritten books date back to the 11th century. Copying by hand in Ancient Rus' was the only way to “replicate” a book and distribute it among literate people.

The emergence of printing in Rus' marked the beginning of a new era

Glagolitic

" The Life of Cyril" tells about the creation of the Slavic alphabet: " With the help of his brother, Saint Methodius (Michael) and the disciples Gorazd, Clement, Sava, Naum and Angelyar, he compiled the Slavic alphabet and translated books into Slavic, without which Divine services could not be performed".

A number of facts indicate that the Glagolitic alphabet was created before the Cyrillic alphabet, which in turn was created on the basis of the Glagolitic alphabet and the Greek alphabet. The oldest surviving Glagolitic inscription with precise dating dates back to 893, made in the church of the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon in Preslav. And the oldest handwritten monuments (including the “Kyiv Leaves”, dating back to the 10th century) are written in the Glagolitic alphabet, and they are written in a more archaic language, similar in phonetic composition to the language of the South Slavs.

Palimpsests (manuscripts on parchment in which the old text has been scraped off and a new one written on it) also indicate the great antiquity of the Glagolitic alphabet. On all surviving palimpsests, the Glagolitic alphabet has been scraped off, and the new text is written in Cyrillic. There is not a single palimpsest in which the Cyrillic alphabet has been scraped off and the Glagolitic alphabet written on it. In the treatise “On Writing,” Chernorizets Khrabr (beginning of the 10th century) emphasizes the difference in the writing of Greek letters and the Slavic alphabet of Cyril and Methodius, apparently Glagolitic:

“There is more holiness and honor in the Slavic writings that a holy man created them, and the Greek ones are filthy Hellenes. If anyone says that they did not make them good because they are still finishing them, in response we will say this: the Greeks also finished them many times.”

From the above quote we can conclude that there is a certain dissatisfaction with the alphabet of Cyril and Methodius, which may have led to the transition to the Cyrillic alphabet.

Late Glagolitic alphabet

Figure 1 - Late Glagolitic alphabet.

In popular literature, there is an opinion that the Glagolitic alphabet was founded by Constantine (Kirill) the Philosopher on some ancient Slavic, which was allegedly used for sacred pagan and secular purposes before the adoption of Christianity in the ancient Slavic states; there is no clear evidence of this (or the existence of “Slavic runes” in general). The Roman Catholic Church, in its fight against services in the Slavic language among the Croats, called the Glagolitic alphabet "Gothic scripts." At the Council of Bishops of Dalmatia and Croatia in 1059:

"They said that the Gothic letters were invented by a certain heretic Methodius, who in this very Slavic language wrote many false things against the teachings of the Catholic faith; because of this, they say, he was punished by God's court with a quick death" alphabet phonetic letter

The appearance of the letters of the early (round) Glagolitic alphabet somewhat coincides with the Khutsuri, the Georgian church alphabet created before the 9th century, possibly on the basis of the Armenian. In addition, the number of letters in the khutsuri, 38, coincides with the number of letters in the Slavic alphabet, counted by Chernorizets the Brave in his treatise. In some letters (and in general in the system of drawing small circles at the ends of lines) there is a striking resemblance to medieval Jewish Kabbalistic fonts and Icelandic “runic” cryptography. All this may not be accidental, since it is recognized that St. Constantine the Philosopher was familiar with Eastern alphabets (he read Hebrew texts in the original), which is also mentioned in the life of the saint. The style of most Glagolitic letters is usually derived from Greek cursive, and for non-Greek sounds the Hebrew alphabet is used, but there are no indisputable explanations for the shape of almost any letter.

The Glagolic and Cyrillic alphabets in their oldest versions are almost completely identical in composition, differing only in the shape of the letters. When reprinting Glagolitic texts in a typographical manner, Glagolitic letters are usually replaced with Cyrillic (since today few people can read Glagolitic). However, the numerical value of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic letters does not match, which sometimes leads to misunderstandings. In the Glagolitic alphabet, the numerical values of the letters are ordered according to the order of the letters, and in the Cyrillic alphabet they are tied to the numerical values of the corresponding letters of the Greek alphabet.

Usually there are two types of Glagolitic alphabet: the older “round” one, also known as Bulgarian, and the later “angular” one, Croatian (so called because until the middle of the 20th century it was used by Croatian Catholics when performing services according to the Glagolitic rite). The latter's alphabet was gradually reduced from 41 to 30 characters. Along with the statutory book, there was also Glagolitic cursive writing (cursive writing).

In Ancient Rus', the Glagolitic alphabet was practically not used; there are only isolated inclusions of Glagolitic letters in texts written in Cyrillic. The Glagolitic alphabet was the alphabet for transmitting primarily church texts; the surviving ancient Russian monuments of everyday writing before the baptism of Rus' (the earliest: an inscription on a pot from the Gnezdovo mound, dating back to the 1st half of the 10th century) use the Cyrillic alphabet. The Glagolitic alphabet is also used as a cryptographic script.

Cyrillic

The appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet, reproducing the Greek statutory (solemn) letter, is associated with the activities of the Bulgarian school of scribes (after Cyril and Methodius). In particular, in the life of St. Clement of Ohrid directly writes about his creation of Slavic writing after Cyril and Methodius. Thanks to the previous activities of the brothers, the alphabet became widespread in the South Slavic lands, which led in 885 to the prohibition of its use in church services by the Pope, who was struggling with the results of the mission of Constantine-Cyril and Methodius.

In Bulgaria, the holy king Boris converted to Christianity in 860. Bulgaria becomes the center of the spread of Slavic writing. Here the first Slavic book school was created - the Preslav Book School - the Cyril and Methodius originals of liturgical books (Gospel, Psalter, Apostle, church services) were copied, new Slavic translations from Greek were made, original works appeared in the Old Slavonic language ("On the writing of the Chrnoritsa Khrabra" ).

The widespread use of Slavic writing, its “golden age,” dates back to the reign of Tsar Simeon the Great (893-927), son of Tsar Boris, in Bulgaria. Later, the Old Church Slavonic language penetrates Serbia, and at the end of the 10th century it becomes the language of the church in Kievan Rus.

The Old Church Slavonic language, being the language of the church in Rus', was influenced by the Old Russian language. It was the Old Slavonic language of the Russian edition, as it included elements of living East Slavic speech.

Initially, the Cyrillic alphabet was used by some of the Southern Slavs, Eastern Slavs, as well as Romanians (see the article “Romanian Cyrillic”); Over time, their alphabets diverged somewhat from each other, although the style of letters and the principles of spelling remained (with the exception of the Western Serbian version, the so-called Bosančica) generally the same.

Cyrillic alphabet

Figure 2 - Cyrillic.

The composition of the original Cyrillic alphabet is unknown to us; The “classical” Old Church Slavonic Cyrillic alphabet of 43 letters probably partly contains later letters (ы, оу, iotized). The Cyrillic alphabet entirely includes the Greek alphabet, but some purely Greek letters (xi, psi, fita, izhitsa) are not in their original place, but are moved to the end. Some letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, absent in the Greek alphabet, are close in outline to Glagolitic ones. Ts and Sh are externally similar to some letters of a number of alphabets of that time (Aramaic letter, Ethiopic letter, Coptic letter, Hebrew letter, Brahmi) and it is not possible to unambiguously establish the source of the borrowing. B is similar in outline to V, Shch to Sh. The principles of creating digraphs in the Cyrillic alphabet (И from ЪІ, УУ, iotized letters) generally follow the Glagolitic ones.

Cyrillic letters are used to write numbers exactly according to the Greek system. Instead of a pair of completely archaic signs - sampi and stigma - which are not even included in the classical 24-letter Greek alphabet, other Slavic letters are adapted - Ts (900) and S (6); subsequently, the third such sign, koppa, originally used in the Cyrillic alphabet to denote 90, was replaced by the letter Ch. Some letters that are not in the Greek alphabet (for example, B, Zh) do not have a numerical value. This distinguishes the Cyrillic alphabet from the Glagolitic alphabet, where the numerical values did not correspond to the Greek ones and these letters were not skipped.

The letters of the Cyrillic alphabet have their own names, based on various common Slavic names that begin with them, or directly taken from Greek (xi, psi); The etymology of some names is controversial.

The emergence of the Russian alphabet

The Russian alphabet comes from the Old Russian Cyrillic, which, in turn, was borrowed from the Bulgarians and became widespread in Rus' after the adoption of Christianity (988).

At this point, it apparently had 43 letters. Later, 4 new letters were added, and 14 old ones were excluded at different times as unnecessary, since the corresponding sounds disappeared. The first to disappear was the iotized yus (?, ?), then the large yus (?), which returned in the 15th century, but disappeared again at the beginning of the 17th century, and the iotized E (?); the remaining letters, sometimes slightly changing their meaning and form, have been preserved to this day as part of the alphabet of the Church Slavonic language, which for a long time was considered identical with the Russian alphabet.

Spelling reforms of the second half of the 17th century (related to the “correction of books” under Patriarch Nikon) fixed the following set of letters: A, B, C, D, D, E (with a spelling different variant Є, which was sometimes considered a separate letter and placed in the alphabet on place of the current E, that is, after?), Zh, S, Z, I (with a spelling different variant Y for the sound [j], which was not considered a separate letter), I, K, L, M, N, O (in two orthographically different styles: “narrow” and “wide”), P, R, S, T, U (in two orthographically different styles:), F, X, ? (in two orthographically different styles: “narrow” and “wide”, as well as as part of the ligature “ot” (?), usually considered a separate letter), Ts, Ch, Sh, Shch, b, ы, b, ?, Yu , I (in two styles: IA and ?, which were sometimes considered different letters, sometimes not), ?, ?, ?, ?. Sometimes the big yus (?) and the so-called “ik” (in the form of the current letter “u”) were also included in the alphabet, although they had no sound meaning and were not used in any word.

The Russian alphabet remained in this form until the reforms of Peter I of 1708-1711. (and Church Slavonic is still the same today), when superscripts were eliminated (which incidentally “cancelled” the letter Y) and many doublet letters and letters used to write numbers were abolished (which became irrelevant after the transition to Arabic numerals). In the 19th century, separate alphabets began to be developed for the Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects, slightly different from the main one. Subsequently, some abolished letters were restored and abolished again. By 1917, the alphabet came in a 34-letter (officially; in fact there were 37 letters) composition: A, B, C, D, D, E, (E was not considered a separate letter), ZH, Z, I, (Y was not considered a separate letter considered), I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, F, X, C, Ch, Sh, Shch, b, S, b, ?, E, Yu, Z , ?, (? was considered no longer part of the Russian alphabet).

The last major reform of writing was carried out in 1917-1918 - as a result, the current Great Russian alphabet, consisting of 33 letters, appeared. This alphabet also became the basis of many newly written languages (writing for which was absent or lost before the 20th century and was introduced in the republics of the USSR after the Great October Socialist Revolution).

Letter reforms

§ Psi(?)- canceled by Peter I (replaced by the combination PS), was not restored (although the use of this letter was noted in the alphabet of 1717).

§ Xi (?) - abolished by Peter I (replaced by the combination KS), later restored, finally abolished in 1735. In the civilian font it looked like an Izhitsa with a tail.

§ Omega (?) and from(?) - canceled by Peter I (replaced by ABOUT and combination FROM accordingly), were not restored.

§ Fert (F) and fita (?) - Peter I in 1707--1708. canceled it was fert F(leaving fita ? ), but returned it in 1710, restoring the Church Slavonic rules for the use of these letters; fita was abolished by the reform of 1917-1918.

§ Izhitsa (?) - abolished by Peter I (replaced by I or IN, depending on pronunciation), later restored, again abolished in 1735, again restored in 1758... It was used less and less and from the 1870s was usually considered abolished and no longer part of the Russian alphabet, although until 1917-1918 gg. sometimes used in individual words (usually in m?ro with derivatives, less often - in s?nod with derivatives, even less often - in ?fast and so on.). In the documents of the spelling reform of 1917-1918. not mentioned.

§ І And AND AND, but then returned it, changing the rules for the use of these letters in comparison with Church Slavonic ones (later the Church Slavonic rules were restored). The rules regarding the number of points over І : Peter canceled them; then it was prescribed to put two dots over І before vowels, and one before consonants; finally, since 1738 the dot has become the same everywhere. Letter І abolished by reforms of 1917-1918.

§ Y- this sign, abolished by Peter I, was returned to the civil press in 1735 (they usually say that it was then that it was introduced); was not considered a separate letter until the 20th century.

§ Z And Ѕ - Peter I initially abolished the letter Z, but then returned it, canceling Ѕ .

§ I.A. and small yus (?) - replaced by Peter I with the mark I(used earlier and originating from the cursive form of the small yusa).

§ - replaced by Peter I with an outline in the form of the current letter U.

§ Yat (?) - abolished by the reform of 1917-1918.

§ E- used since the middle of the 17th century (considered borrowed from the Glagolitic alphabet), officially introduced into the alphabet in 1708.

§ Yo- proposed in 1783 by Princess E.R. Dashkova, used since 1795, popular since 1797 at the suggestion of N.M. Karamzin (it should be noted that he used the letter Yo only in works of art, but in the famous “History of the Russian State” he made do with traditional spellings through E). Previously (since 1758) instead of the letter Yo lettering was used IO under a common cover. Separate alphabet letter sign Yo officially became in the middle of the 20th century. Mandatory for use in print from 1942 until the death of I.V. Stalin.

Composition of the Russian alphabet

There are 33 letters in the Russian alphabet, of which 10 represent vowels, 21- consonants and 2 letters do not indicate special sounds, but serve to convey certain sound features. The Russian alphabet, shown in Table 1, has uppercase (capital) and lowercase (small) letters, printed and handwritten letters.

Table 1

Conclusion

So, we saw that the appearance of the Russian alphabet was marked by a very significant step for the Slavic group of peoples. It is difficult to imagine what language we would now communicate in, and what alphabet we would use.

After researching this topic, you can see that the formation of the Russian alphabet was not only difficult and long, but also required many human sacrifices. Due to its “youth”, the alphabet still has to undergo modifications, and I hope that all these changes will help raise the level of the Russian language as a whole.

Literature

1. Grinevich G.E. Proto-Slavic writing. M., 1993.

2. Zinoviev A.V. Cyrillic cryptography. The solution to the logical-mathematical system of the Slavic alphabet. Vladimir, 1991.

3. Minin Yu.P. "The solution to the Russian alphabet." / Ed. Kitaygorodsky M.V., Shiryaeva E.N. - M.: Science, 1981

4. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%F3%F1%F1%EA%E8%E9_%E0%EB%F4%E0%E2%E8%F2

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Cyril and Methodius - creators of the Russian alphabet

Once upon a time there lived two Byzantine brothers - Cyril and Methodius. It was thanks to them that the Russian alphabet was created, they became the first creators.

Methodius, the eldest son, who chose the military path, went to serve in one of the Slavic regions. His younger brother Kirill was partial to science even as a child; teachers were amazed by his knowledge. At the age of 14, his parents sent him to Constantinople, where he managed to master many knowledge in a short period of time: grammar, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Slavic.

In 863, ambassadors from Moravia visited Constantinople. They arrived with a request to provide a preacher to their country to study the Christian population. The emperor decided that the brothers, Cyril and Methodius, should go to Moravia. Before setting off, Cyril asked the Moravians if they had an alphabet. The answer was negative. The Moravians did not have an alphabet. The brothers didn't have much time. Cyril and Methodius worked hard from early morning until late evening. And so they managed to quickly create an alphabet for the Moravians, named after their younger brother - the Cyrillic alphabet.

Thanks to the created Slavic alphabet, it was not difficult for the brothers to translate the main liturgical books from Greek into Slavic. Now we know who first created the alphabet.

What happened next?

After Methodius died in 885, the disciples and followers of the brothers began to continue the work. They defended services in the Slavic language. Somewhere around this time, the students created another Slavic alphabet. Today there is no certainty about which alphabet was developed by Kirill and which by his students and successors. There is an assumption that Kirill composed the Glagolitic alphabet, after which, on its basis, he developed the Cyrillic alphabet, which was named after the first creator of the Russian alphabet. Perhaps Kirill himself was involved in improving the primary alphabet, but all his students completed it.

Peculiarities

The Russian alphabet was created on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is a reworking of the Greek alphabet. The creators of the Russian alphabet took into account the phonetic features of the Old Church Slavonic language and 19 letters were introduced into it that were absent in the Greek letter.

The originality of the alphabet created by Cyril and Methodius was manifested in the fact that in order to indicate one sound, one letter had to be used.

As for writing in Cyrillic letters, they were used only at the beginning of a paragraph. The large capital letter was beautifully painted, so the first line was called “red,” that is, a beautiful line.

Thanks to the first creator of the alphabet of the Russian language, today people can write. And if it weren’t for the brothers Cyril and Methodius, we wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Alphabet, or ABC, is a set of signs adopted to designate speech sounds in the written system of a language and arranged in a certain order. The word "alphabet" comes from the first two Greek letters: "alpha" and "beta". In the past, in Russia, instead of the name “alphabet,” they used the word “alphabet,” which came from the first two letters of the Russian alphabet: “az” and “buki.” The characters of the alphabet are called letters. An alphabet whose letters have a common pattern in their shapes is called font.

The letters of the alphabet are not random figures arbitrarily designated by the inventor. Each letter of our modern alphabets is the result of a long, sometimes very complex development, and its form has deep historical roots. In most cases, the prototype of the modern letter style is the image of a specific material, animate or inanimate object. Changes in the development of the alphabet occurred relatively slowly, as new requirements emerged from the developing language. The font, as a specific embodiment of the alphabet, is directly related to the tools and materials with which writing is carried out. To a greater extent than the alphabet, it is determined by the material culture of society and its aesthetic norms, as a result of which, along with them, the font constantly undergoes noticeable changes.

Even at the dawn of his development, man sought to record the manifestations of the reality around him and his attitude towards it. At first, various objects associated with a particular event and reminiscent of it served for this purpose.

Later they began to use various conventional signs in the form of shells, pebbles, knots, notches, sticks, etc. Over time, the system of combinations of these signs became more precise and complicated, becoming the so-called subject letter(nodular, from shells, etc.).

Among a number of peoples, at an early stage of their development, figurative-pictorial, or pictographic letter. In this writing system, certain events were depicted in the form of a drawing, primitive and very conventional. In particular, until very recently, picture writing was used among North American Indians.

Gradually, to speed up the writing process, simplified images of a particular object were developed. Such signs-symbols in their form often had nothing in common with the type of objects that they designated. Signs corresponding to abstract concepts appeared. This type of writing is called figurative-symbolic or ideographic.

The earliest ideographic writing is cuneiform, created in the fourth millennium BC Sumerians. Later, cuneiform began to be used in Assyro-Babylonia, Armenia and other peoples. In the 6th century BC, cuneiform was adopted by the Persians. Along with the designation of whole words, they began to designate individual speech sounds with certain figures, but did not move on to the alphabet.

Chinese figurative writing also includes hieroglyphs(from the Greek word hieroglyphoi- sacred carving), the appearance of which is noted in the third millennium BC. The basis of Chinese characters were simplified images of various objects. This is especially clear in ancient Chinese writing. To denote abstract concepts and verbs in ancient Chinese writing, combinations of hieroglyphs depicting material objects were widely used. So, for example, the verb “tear” was indicated by the sign “tree” and the sign “hand” located above it (19, 21), the word “bright” was depicted by a combination of the signs “sun” and “month” (22.25), the verb “sing” " - with the signs "mouth" and "bird" (26--29), "listen" - with the signs "door" and "ear" (30, 31).

Hieroglyphic writing has survived to the present day and exists in three countries of the world - China, Japan and Korea.

Ancient Egypt also created hieroglyphic writing. Hieroglyphic inscriptions are already found on monuments and pyramids built by the Egyptians around three thousand years BC. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, as a rule, represent signs whose outline accurately reproduces the shape of the designated object.

Gradually, the form of hieroglyphs was simplified, and images of objects became increasingly conventional. Thus, created by the priests, the so-called hieratic letter. Finally, the most simplified form of Egyptian hieroglyphs was demotic letter- civil cursive writing, the signs of which only vaguely resembled the objects they denoted.

The features of each of the three types of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing are clearly visible when comparing the “owl” signs. The left sign, which reproduces the shape of the object in most detail, belongs to hieroglyphic writing, the middle, simplified one, to hieratic writing, and the right one, which has almost lost connection with the original form, to demotic writing.

Ancient Egyptians almost solved the problem of the transition from figurative-symbolic writing to sound - phonetic. Over time, hieroglyphs began to be used to designate syllables, and then sounds. For this purpose, hieroglyphs were used, the initial sounds of which coincided with the required sound. In total, the Egyptians had up to twenty-five such letters, but they did not make a complete transition to phonetic writing.

IN 1904 -1906 gg. The so-called Sinai inscriptions dating back to the 13th-14th centuries BC were discovered. The signs of these inscriptions were in many ways reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but their system represented a complete alphabet. The creators of this most ancient alphabet were Hyksos- semi-nomadic proto-Semitic people. They conquered Egypt and dominated there for several centuries until they were expelled by the strengthened Egyptians. The Hyksos adopted the high Egyptian culture and, on the basis of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were already sufficiently prepared for this, created their own writing, the basis of which was the alphabet.

Ancient Semites, who adopted the Hyksos writing and improved it, were for a long time considered the first creators of the alphabet. The basis for this was a stone found in 1869 with an inscription of the Moabite king Mesha dating back to 896 BC ( Moabites- one of the branches of the ancient Hebrew people who lived east of the Dead Sea). Phoenicians, who traded with many countries, significantly improved the ancient Semitic writing, making it exclusively phonetic.

Greeks became acquainted with Semitic writing back in the second millennium BC and around the 10th century BC they created their own alphabet based on the Phoenician. They introduced designations for vowel sounds that were absent in the Phoenician alphabet. The origin of the Greek alphabet from the ancient Semitic is confirmed by the surviving names of many letters. For example, the Greek letter “alpha” in the Semitic alphabet corresponds to the letter “alef”, the letter “beta” - “bet”, “delta” - “dalet”, etc. Greek writing was at first left-handed, as is the case in Semitic writing.

The Greek colonies in Italy transferred their writing there, on the basis of which various versions of the Latin alphabet were created. The oldest monument of Latin writing is the so-called Douin's vessel, dating back to the 5th century BC. The inscription on the vessel is also made in the left direction.

After the unification of Italy by Rome first century BC A unified Latin alphabet was introduced, which has remained virtually unchanged to this day. The new alphabet eliminated the additional symbols found in early Latin alphabets, which complicated writing and made reading difficult. The Latin alphabet began to spread in Western Europe and soon became the main alphabet there.

Huge importance for the development of fonts in the first half of the 15th century There was the advent of printing using movable type. Typography existed before, but printing was done from boards on which texts were cut out. This method was first used in VI in China. In China in the 9th century there was printing using movable type made of baked clay. The inventor of this method is considered to be a blacksmith Pi-shen.

The widespread use of movable type for book printing began only after the development of this method Johann Guttenberg. For mass production of letters, he used carved punches and dies extruded into soft metal using punches. Types were cast in dies made of low-melting alloys.

In a world that is constantly changing, in a world open to all peoples and languages, there is something constant, something that connects us with our ancestors - this is our alphabet. We use it when we think, when we speak or write, but the alphabet is interesting not only as a building material for sentences. The uniqueness of our alphabet is in the history of its creation, because it is completely unique!

Sooner or later, every person begins to be tormented by the question: Who came up with letters, words and names of objects? It is impossible to say anything definite about the origin of some writings: who invented them and when they were invented. Take, for example, Chinese or Greek writing? These writings were not invented by individuals, but developed over many centuries and were the result of the accumulation of knowledge of several generations. They do not and cannot have a personal author, just as there is no creator of a wheel, hammer, knife, etc. Other writings are lucky: they emerged from a specific creative process that took place at a specific time in a specific place. For example, the Georgian letter was founded by King Farnavaz, and the Armenian letter by Mesrop Mashtots. If you are asked a question about who created the Slavic writing, you will answer without hesitation that the creators of the Slavic writing are Cyril and Methodius. However, their contribution is much greater than many ordinary people think. After all, Cyril and Methodius not only invented an alphabet for writing the Slavic language and became the founders of writing itself, but also translated many church books into the Slavic language. Where did it all start?

An attempt to look into the past

The history of Slavic writing is a vivid example of how powerless science is in the face of time and history, but the power of our scientists lies in the fact that despite any prohibitions or changes in power, they still try to find a life-giving source of truth. Today, the famous Solun brothers - Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius - are the brightest historical figures, about whom more than five thousand scientific works have been written, where many hypotheses have been put forward, and even more research has been conducted on who actually is the author of the first Old Slavonic ABCs. At the same time, research scientists have found a huge amount of materials that both confirm and fundamentally refute each other. That is why exact answers have not been found to important questions about the history of the emergence of Slavic writing.

“What is the reason?” - you ask. First of all, this is due to the nature of ancient texts, which are the main sources on the basis of which scientists build their hypotheses. These texts are sometimes inaccurate and sometimes deliberately distorted. In some texts you can find descriptions of events for which exact confirmation has not been found. At the same time, ancient sources have reached us in their original form. However, with repeated rewriting, different chroniclers distorted the original texts, adding their own vision or thoughts to them, and the result was a kind of “damaged telephone” that prevents modern scientists from coming to a unanimous opinion. Thus, it is often possible to encounter a situation where different copies of the same ancient document describe information differently. On the other hand, modern scientists themselves are to blame, because they often like to interpret historical events in a way that suits them. The reasons for such liberties lie either in ordinary unprofessionalism or dishonesty, or in false patriotism. Regardless of the reasons driving our scientists, we have to admit that we still do not know in what year Methodius was born and what his real name was. After all, Methodius is the monastic name of the discoverer of the Slavic alphabet. Due to the elementary human ignorance of scientists, the Solunsky brothers were credited with the creation of letters, to which they had nothing to do. Let's throw away these scientists' "probably" and "possibly" and try to figure out where the first alphabet came from, what it looked like, and what meaning our ancestors put into each letter.

The most interesting guide to the origin of Slavic writing is the primary source, which is the legend of the monk Brave, which includes excerpts from the lives of Methodius and Cyril (Constantine). This legend was republished in 1981 and is called “The Legend of the Beginning of Slavic Writing.” If desired, this book can be found on bookstore shelves or purchased through an online store.

Who invented the alphabet

In the 9th - early 10th centuries, one of the largest states in Europe was Great Moravia, which included not only modern Moravia (the historical region of the Czech Republic), but also Slovakia, and part of Poland, the Czech Republic, and other states located nearby. Great Moravia played a major political role from 830 to 906.

In 863, the Moravian prince Rostislav turned to the Byzantine emperor Michael III with a rather daring request - to hold a service in the Slavic language. This audacity lay in the fact that before this, services were held in the three languages in which the inscription on the cross of Jesus was made: Latin, Hebrew and Greek.

The decision to hold services in the Slavic language, according to Rostislav, was purely political in nature and would allow Rostislav to weaken the dependence of his policies on the Bavarian clergy. Why Slavic language? Everything is very simple - at that time the Slavs had a common language, the only difference was in different dialects. However, the Slavs did not yet have writing at that time, and they used Latin or Greek writing for writing. The transition to worship in the Slavic language presupposed the presence of Slavic writing, since it was necessary to translate the main service books into the Slavic language and train priests. Moreover, such a translation implied the creation of not only a special Slavic writing system, but also a written literary Slavic language. It was difficult to translate Greek religious texts into the everyday Slavic language, since they were not adapted to convey their content. The Greek texts simply lacked the necessary words and syntactic structures.

What do you think, answered Michael III? But he did not answer, he sent the so-called Moravian mission to Rostislav in the person of two brothers. These two brothers were the sons of a noble Greek who lived in the city of Thessaloniki (the Slavic name for the city of Thessaloniki, which is located on the territory of modern Greece), and their names were Methodius (presumably born in 815) and Constantine (his date of birth was in 827). oh year). Methodius (real name - Michael) was a monk. Constantine, only before his death, accepted monasticism, along with which he took the new name Cyril. It is his monastic name that will be immortalized in the name of the Slavic alphabet - Cyrillic. Although Constantine was younger than Methodius, his authority was recognized even by his elder brother. Today it is known for certain that Constantine was a very educated person, and among his many professions and callings one can single out: philosopher, theologian, poet and linguist. He knew many languages and was fluent in the art of oratory, which allowed him to participate in religious debates more than once. The brightest advantages of the elder brother were considered to be his innate organizational abilities, which allowed him to be a governor in the Slavic regions, as well as the abbot of a monastery. But the most important thing is that both brothers were fluent in the Slavic language.

Scientists believe that an interesting fact is that Constantine and Methodius, even before leaving for Moravia, created the Slavic alphabet, which was perfectly adapted for transmitting the sounds of Slavic speech. This first alphabet was called the Glagolitic alphabet and was based on the letters of minuscule Greek writing. In addition to Greek characters, some Hebrew and Coptic characters joined the Glagolitic alphabet. Naturally, having created the first Slavic alphabet, Constantine and Methodius were impatient to get to work on translations.

The first translations of church books appeared in Byzantium, and upon arrival in Moravia the brothers began their main work at a very high pace. Thus, a new written language appeared, which in academic circles is called Old Church Slavonic.

In parallel with the translations, Cyril and Methodius prepared priests who could conduct services in the Slavic language. After such painstaking work, the Solun brothers return home, distributing new writings along the way. As you understand, the emergence of new traditions did not like the “old” clergy, who recognized trilingualism, so the brothers went to Rome, where Constantine held successful debates with the trilinguals. In Rome, the mission of the Thessalonica brothers was delayed, and Constantine accepted monastic rank and the new name Cyril. This happened just 50 days before his death.

After the death of Cyril, Methodius becomes the main advocate of worship in the Slavic language, who is invited to Pannonia (modern Hungary) by the local prince Kotsela, who supports the initiatives of Cyril and Methodius. At this time, an intense struggle was being waged between the supporters of Methodius and the German trilinguals. Nevertheless, Pope Adrian, admiring the merits of Methodius, elevates him to the rank of bishop. However, this did not prevent the Bavarian clergy, the just cause of trilingualism, from putting Methodius in prison in 870, where he spent two and a half years. Only in 873 did Methodius emerge from captivity and restore his rank, after which he returned to Moravia.

Methodius spends the rest of his life in Moravia in the rank of archbishop and dies in 885. And this is where the real war between the trilinguals and the disciples of Cyril and Methodius began. In 886, the Slavic liturgy was completely destroyed, and priests who conducted services in the Slavic language were beaten, stoned, chained, expelled from the country, sold into slavery and even killed. But this does not mean that the fight against the “Slavs” ended with the victory of the trilinguals. On the contrary, many of Methodius’ disciples find refuge in the Bulgarian state, where Prince Boris kindly receives them. It was he who organized a new school of Slavic writing, and Bulgaria became the new center of Slavic book culture. The head of the new Slavic school is a student of the Thessalonica brothers, Clement, who will later be nicknamed Clement of Ohrid. Why was he given such a nickname? Everything is very simple: the school was located near Lake Ohrid, which today is located on the territory of modern Macedonia.

According to the majority of modern scientists, the creator of the new Slavic alphabet - the Cyrillic alphabet - is Kliment of Ohrid. Clement named it Cyrillic in honor of his teacher Kirill. However, the name of this alphabet for a long time confused scientists who believed that the Cyrillic alphabet was older than the Glagolitic alphabet. However, today many agree that Kirill created not the Cyrillic alphabet, but the Glagolitic alphabet. The most interesting thing is that these are just guesses, not supported by any Old Slavonic writings. But the most interesting fact remains that in ancient manuscripts there is not a single mention of the existence of two Slavic alphabets!

Glagolitic and Cyrillic

Today, most scientists agree that after all Glagolitic is the real first Old Slavonic alphabet, and it was invented by Cyril back in 863, when he was in Byzantium. Kirill - Constantine the Philosopher created it in a fairly short time and included many Greek symbols. Cyrillic was invented in Bulgaria around the 9th century. However, the controversial question still remains who is the author of this invention. Many scientists are still debating this issue. Thus, adherents of the classical theory argue that it was undoubtedly Clement of Ohrid, while others suggest that the signs displayed in the Cyrillic alphabet are more reminiscent of those used by Old Slavonic scribes led by the enlightener Konstantin of Pereslavl.

Any alphabet is notable for the fact that each letter has a formal and meaningful meaning. Formal studies of each letter involve the history of the design of the sign that is displayed in a particular letter, and a meaningful approach to the study of letters involves searching for a correspondence between the letter itself and its sound. If you pay attention to the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabet, you will see that the Glagolitic alphabet is a more striking invention than the Cyrillic alphabet. Moreover, the number of letters in the Glagolitic alphabet corresponds to the number of sounds that existed in the Old Church Slavonic language. In other words, the creator or creators of the Glagolitic alphabet knew very well the phonetics of the Old Church Slavonic language and were guided by this when creating Old Church Slavonic writing.

It is also interesting to compare the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabet by letter style. In both the first and second cases, the symbolism is very reminiscent of Greek, but the Glagolitic alphabet still has features characteristic only of the Slavic alphabet. Take, for example, the letter “az”. In the Glagolitic alphabet it resembles a cross, and in the Cyrillic alphabet it completely borrows the Greek letter. But this is not the most interesting thing in the Old Slavonic alphabet. After all, it is in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabet that each letter represents a separate word, filled with the deep philosophical meaning that our ancestors put into it.

Although today letter-words have disappeared from our everyday life, they still continue to live in Russian proverbs and sayings. For example, the expression “start from the beginning” means nothing more than “start from the very beginning.” Although in fact the letter “az” means “I”.