Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
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Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
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Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#2Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0]
Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages.
The reason for that is pretty obvious if you look at the Glagolitic letters themselves: they are horrible UX. You need a lot more strokes than for something like Greek or Latin to record the same information. Because Glagolitic was contrived and not polished with use over the centuries, there was very little reason to use it over Greek.
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Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#3This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. This is just false projection of modern politics onto old times. It's shameless propaganda.
In reality, at the time, it was the Eastern Christian church that was more liberal than Rome. Rome insisted every local church make services in Latin, and didn't translate it in the local language.
The Eastern church instead, had the bible in Greek, but allowed to translate it in local languages and make services in them. Initially, those translations were made with Greek letters, which weren't fully reflecting the phonology of Slavic and other languages, so they were extended, which produced Cyrillic.
As I understand, the same way Coptic script in Egypt, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia were made, thanks to Eastern Christian church allowing this.
p.s. Saint Cyril, in fact, invented the Glagolitic script. Cyrillic was named after him, and initially "Cyrillic" alphabet was mostly Greek, plus some characters from Glagolitic, like Ⱎ, ⱍ and ⱑ.
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#4Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0] Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages. The reason for that is p…
Interestingly, it was also a derivative of Greek, but the cursive version. It's harder to write, but apart from that, I like it. Ⱂⱃⰺⰲⰵⱅ, ⱂⰺⱎⰺⱅⰵ Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰺⱌⰵⰻ!
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#5This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to digraphs or glyphs with diacritics — some are thus not using it to distance from a particular influence instead).
None of the interesting bits of Cyrillic invention are covered, like how the original Slavic script was Glagolitic as the sibling mentioned, and only evolved into modern Cyrillic much later. Or how there was no lowercase until a few centuries ago, especially with the reform of Peter the Great.
With Slavic people, it's also worth noting that "Slav" actually means "word" or "letter" (of an alphabet), so legibility was part of the identity. In contrast, most Slavic people call Germans a variation of "Nemci", or mutes (those who cannot speak) — notably, most except Russians who call them Germans. Again, likely to distance themselves from the negative connotation with their aspiring historical partners.
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#6This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to dig…
No idea where you're getting it from, Germans are Nemci in Russian as well. It's rather "unable to speak the language", meant for all foreigners but later stuck to Germans, presumably because German traders were the most common foreigners.
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#7Oddly, the article doesn't mention the most interesting part. Most scholars believe that Cyril and Methodius did not design Cyrillic, but instead something called Glagolitic.[0] Glagolitic very quickly got pushed out by what were essentially Greek letters. If you look at Bulgarian and Byzantine manuscripts from the time, they are almost impossible to tell apart, unless you know the languages. The reason for that is p…
Interestingly, it was also a derivative of Greek, but the cursive version. It's harder to write, but apart from that, I like it. Ⱂⱃⰺⰲⰵⱅ, ⱂⰺⱎⰺⱅⰵ Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰺⱌⰵⰻ!
This is a novel claim to me. I don't think Glagolitic looks particularly like cursive Greek, and I haven't seen this idea in scholarship. What is your source for it?
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#8This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to dig…
No idea where you're getting it from, Germans are Nemci in Russian as well. It's rather "unable to speak the language ", meant for all foreigners but later stuck to Germans, presumably because German traders were the most common foreigners.
> Germans are Nemci in Russian as well
I wanted to check; are you implying that Russian is not a Slavic language?
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#9This is an article with a long introduction and then jumps straight to the point in one, final paragraph: Russia is abusing it for political messaging again. While yes, any tool will be abused like this, it really is also a tool to best codify spoken language of the Slavs (in a sense, it is trivially provable that Cyrillic script is better adapted even to languages which do not use it today, but have to resort to dig…
"Slav" deriving from the Slavic term for "word" is something of a false etymology that was invented in the 19th century. It is implausible on philological grounds: you'd expect a different vowel in this word if this were the case, and the suffix *-ninъ is only otherwise used in terms derived from place names.
It is more likely[0] that the term derives from some toponym. This is in line with how tribal names tend to work in Europe and is not problematic in terms of historical linguistics, however it gives less fuel to romantic nationalism and armchair speculations about national "identities" or "mindsets".
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[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...
Re: Inventing Cyrillic (2024)
#10The article feels like AI hallucinated slop. Just a quick scroll through the page:
* Sviatoslav was not a local ruler - he ruled Kievan Rus' 1500km north-east and he remained a pagan until his death, even if his mother had converted to Christianity.
* Sviatoslav was born nearly 60 years after both Cyril and Methodius had died.
* In 890 Boris was no longer in power but his firs son, who coincidentally tried to reverse the Christianity conversion and was kicked off the throne a few years later.
* " Just after the invasion of Ukraine in July 2021" check the date.