31–40 of 122 posts
Oddly, 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Apologies, it was mostly from running across different Russian maps with Германия that I took it as such (in Serbian it is Немачка). I stand corrected! Nem/нем literally means "mute" in Serbian, perhaps it's a latter evolution per region either way.
Very far from Serbian only. Bulgarian, Russian, and even Balti-Slavic like Latvian is similar enough.
Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School. On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's i…
>> Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet The wording is entirely accurate, since even during the Roman Empire, the region where Sts. Cyril and Methodius were later born and worked was known as Macedonia. And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical…
You cannot expect eternal gratitude esp. when Russian Empire is constantly trying to influence its "vasals" using local puppets. Now is about time for you to fcuk off I would say -- we don't want to have anything in common with you people.
Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School. On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's i…
As someone who lived in Russia for 36 years (also studied linguistics there), it's my first time hearing this.
>Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.
To be honest, I only heard Bulgarians and North Macedonians pay attention to things like this ("actually, it was Macedonia, not Bulgaria" and vice versa). I googled a bit, and I guess you refer to a single case in 2017 when Putin said Cyrillic comes from Macedonia during a meeting with Macedonian president (usual boring diplomatic smalltalk) and Bulgaria got offended and there were multiple angry statements and posts from ordinary Bulgarians and their government :) And that makes you conclude Russians hate that Bulgaria invented Cyrillic? More like it's Bulgaria which has insecurity issues. A few years earlier during a state visit to Bulgaria Russia's patriarch said Cyrillic comes from Bulgaria. I'm sure that time Macedonia was the one offended. It has nothing to do with Russia, it's your usual purely regional Bulgaria vs. Macedonia thing.
Just what type of slop this one is? It was not "just after the invasion", it was ~7 months before the invasion. At least if I understand correctly that the start of Russo-Ukrainian war is called "invasion" here.
This 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…
That's not the reason. The real reason is how those regions were Christianised - Cyril and Methodius created the first version of what would later evolve into cyrilic script and they were sent by Constantinople, while missionaries sent by Rome would use latin script.
This 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 transla…
Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russi…
Russian Empire didn't give the conquered nations the alphabet, but USSR did, as part of supporting local nationalists (surprize!). And it first gave them the Latin script.
Secondly, using different scripts for the same language isn't hard. Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin interchangeably, and many people used Latin traslit in computers and phones when their codepages weren't available yet, and it wasn't a big problem. It takes you at most 2 weeks to learn Arabic script without knowing the language, and with own language of slightly older version, it's even easier.
You also suggest Arabic is their "proper" language, but abjad is not suitable for Turkic languages -- there vowels are significant, and many more than the 3 Arabic vowel diacritics. They had actually Turkic runes instead. Why don't you bash Arabic too?
What about Germanic peoples? Was switching to Latin from their runes an evil oppression?
It is military force and administration, that set school curriculum, use a certain script, and teach an edited history. Not the Cyrillic.
This 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 transla…
For example, in soviet Moldova it was mandatory to learn to read and write cyrillic at schools. They effectively wanted to eradicate the local language and culture in favor of russian.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russi…
Funnily, you don't know or omit the details yourself. Russian Empire didn't give the conquered nations the alphabet, but USSR did, as part of supporting local nationalists (surprize!). And it first gave them the Latin script. Secondly, using different scripts for the same language isn't hard. Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin interchangeably, and many people used Latin traslit in computers and phones when their codep…
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most of the former non-Slavic members have abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet previously forced upon them.