Cyrillic alphabets


Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School by Saint Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, in parts of Southeastern Europe and Northern Eurasia, especially those of Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world.
Some of these are illustrated below; for others, and for more detail, see the links. Sounds are transcribed in the IPA. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian is pronounced in a number of words, an orthographic relic from when they were pronounced .
Spellings of names transliterated into the Roman alphabet may vary, especially й, but also г and ж.
Non-Slavic alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of these alphabets were developed by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural in the 1870s. Later, such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those languages were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in the late 1930s, all of the Latin alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched to Cyrillic as well. The Abkhazian and Ossetian languages were switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, both also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.
In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to write local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman‐based or returning to a former script.

Unlike the Latin script, which is usually adapted to different languages by adding diacritical marks/supplementary glyphs to standard Roman letters, by assigning new phonetic values to existing letters, or by the use of digraphs, the Cyrillic script is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. However, in some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.
Bulgarian and Bosnian Sephardim without Hebrew typefaces occasionally printed Judeo-Spanish in Cyrillic.

Common letters

The following table lists the Cyrillic letters which are used in the alphabets of most of the national languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.
UprightItalic/CursiveNameSound
А аА аA
Б бБ бBe
В вВ вVe
Г гГ гGe
Д дД дDe
Е еЕ еE
Ж жЖ жZhe
З зЗ зZe
И иИ иI
Й йЙ йShort I
К кК кKa
Л лЛ лEl
М мМ мEm
Н нН нEn/Ne
О оО оO
П пП пPe
Р рР рEr/Re
С сС сEs
Т тТ тTe
У уУ уU
Ф фФ фEf/Fe
Х хХ хKha
Ц цЦ цTse
Ч чЧ чChe
Ш шШ шSha
Щ щЩ щShcha, Shta,,
Ь ьЬ ьSoft sign or
Small yer
Ю юЮ юYu
Я яЯ яYa

Slavic languages

Cyrillic alphabets used by Slavic languages can be divided into two categories:

Russian

Notes:
  1. In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, which is still preserved as a distinct vowel in Bulgarian and Slovene, but only in some places in the word.
  2. When an iotated vowel follows a consonant, the consonant is palatalized. The Hard Sign indicates that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign indicates that the consonant should be palatalized in addition to a preceding the vowel. The Soft Sign also indicates that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatalized. Examples: та ; тя ; тья ; тъя ; т ; ть.
Before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: Іі, Ѳѳ, Ѣѣ, and Ѵѵ ; these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

Belarusian

The Belarusian alphabet
The Belarusian alphabet displays the following features:
The Ukrainian alphabet displays the following features:
The Rusyn language is spoken by the Lemko Rusyns in Carpathian Ruthenia, Slovakia, and Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Croatia and Serbia.
*Letters absent from Pannonian Rusyn alphabet.

South Slavic

Bulgarian

The Bulgarian alphabet features:
The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.
It has been used in Bulgaria continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic script overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then much bigger territory of Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece, Romania and Moldova, officially from 893. It was also transferred from Bulgaria and adopted by the East Slavic languages in Kievan Rus' and evolved into the Russian alphabet and the alphabets of many other Slavic languages. Later, some Slavs modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language varieties.

Serbian

Cyrillic alphabets are generally derived from Serbian Cyrillic. It, and by extension its descendants, differs from the East Slavic ones in that the alphabet has generally been simplified: Letters such as Я, Ю, and Ё, representing /ja/, /ju/, and /jo/ in Russian, respectively, have been removed. Instead, these are represented by the digraphs,, and, respectively. Additionally, the letter Е, representing in Russian, is instead pronounced or, with being represented by. Alphabets based on the Serbian that add new letters often do so by adding an acute accent over an existing letter.
The Serbian alphabet shows the following features:
The Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:
The Montenegrin alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:
The Bosnian language uses Latin and Cyrillic alphabets exactly the same as Serbian. Latin is slightly more common. A Bosnian Cyrillic script was used in the Middle Ages, along with other scripts, but has no connection to the modern Bosnian language.

Uralic languages

using the Cyrillic script include:
The Karelian language was written in the Cyrillic script in various forms until 1940 when publication in Karelian ceased in favor of Finnish, except for Tver Karelian, written in a Latin alphabet. In 1989 publication began again in the other Karelian dialects and Latin alphabets were used, in some cases with the addition of Cyrillic letters such as ь.

Kildin Sámi

Over the last century, the alphabet used to write Kildin Sami has changed three times: from Cyrillic to Latin and back again to Cyrillic. Work on the latest version of the official orthography commenced in 1979. It was officially approved in 1982 and started to be widely used by 1987.

Komi-Permyak

The Komi-Permyak alphabet:

Mari alphabets

Meadow Mari alphabet:
Hill Mari alphabet

Non-Slavic Indo-European languages

Iranian languages

Kurdish

s in the former Soviet Union use a Cyrillic alphabet:

Ossetian

The Ossetic language has officially used the Cyrillic script since 1937.

Tajik

The Tajik language is written using a Cyrillic-based alphabet.

Other

Romani

is written in Cyrillic in Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and the former USSR.

Mongolian

The Mongolic languages include Khalkha, Buryat and Kalmyk. Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet.

Overview

This table contains all the characters used.
Һһ is shown twice as it appears at two different locations in Buryat and Kalmyk

Khalkha

The Cyrillic letters Кк, Пп, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat

The Buryat Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.
The Kalmyk Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable, but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable.
Living Northwest Caucasian languages are generally written using Cyrillic alphabets.

Abkhaz

is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia.
А аБ бВ вГ гГь гьӶ ӷӶь ӶьД дДә дәЕ е
Ж жЖь жьЖә жәЗ зӠ ӡӠә ӡәИ иЙ йК кКь кь
Қ қҚь қьҞ ҟҞь ҟьЛ лМ мН нО оП пҦ ҧ
Р рС сТ тТә тәҬ ҭҬә ҭәУ уФ фХ хХь хь
Ҳ ҳҲә ҳәЦ цЦә цәҴ ҵҴә ҵәЧ чҶ ҷҼ ҽҾ ҿ
Ш шШь шьШә шәЩ щЫ ыҨ ҩЏ џЏь џьЬ ьӘ ә

Other

are generally written using Cyrillic alphabets.

Avar

is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Republic of Dagestan, of the Russian Federation, where it is co-official together with other Caucasian languages like Dargwa, Lak, Lezgian and Tabassaran. All these alphabets, and other ones have an extra sign: palochka, which gives voiceless occlusive consonants its particular ejective sound.
А аБ бВ вГ гГъ гъГь гьГӀ гӀД д
Е еЁ ёЖ жЗ зИ иЙ йК кКъ къ
Кь кьКӀ кӀКӀкӀ кӀкӀКк ккЛ лМ мН нО о
П пР рС сТ тТӀ тӀУ уФ фХ х
Хх ххХъ хъХь хьХӀ хӀЦ цЦц ццЦӀ цӀЦӀцӀ цӀцӀ
Ч чЧӀ чӀЧӀчӀ чӀчӀШ шЩ щЪ ъЫ ыЬ ь
Э эЮ юЯ я-----

is spoken by the Lezgins, who live in southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan. Lezgian is a literary language and an official language of Dagestan.

Other

Azerbaijani

;Cyrillic alphabet : Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Ғғ, Дд, Ее, Әә, Жж, Зз, Ии, Йй, Кк, Ҝҝ, Лл, Мм, Нн, Оо, Өө, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Үү, Фф, Хх, Һһ, Цц, Чч, Ҹҹ, Шш, Ыы, Ээ, Юю, Яя, ʼ
;Cyrillic alphabet : Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Ғғ, Дд, Ее, Әә, Жж, Зз, Ии, Ыы, Јј, Кк, Ҝҝ, Лл, Мм, Нн, Оо, Өө, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Үү, Фф, Хх, Һһ, Чч, Ҹҹ, Шш, ʼ
;Latin Alphabet: Aa, Bb, Cc, Çç, Dd, Ee, Əə, Ff, Gg, Ğğ, Hh, Xx, Iı, İi, Jj, Kk, Qq, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Öö, Pp, Rr, Ss, Şş, Tt, Uu, Üü, Vv, Yy, Zz

Bashkir

The Cyrillic script was used for the Bashkir language after the winter of 1938.

Chuvash

The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.

Kazakh

can be alternatively written in the Latin alphabet. Latin is going to be the only used alphabet in 2022, alongside the modified Arabic alphabet.
The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.

Kyrgyz

has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.
Tatar has used Cyrillic since 1939, but the Russian Orthodox Tatar community has used Cyrillic since the 19th century. In 2000 a new Latin alphabet was adopted for Tatar, but it is used generally on the Internet.
The Cyrillic letters Ёё, Цц, Щщ are not used in native Tatar words, but only for Russian loans.

Turkmen

, written 1940–1994 exclusively in Cyrillic, since 1994 officially in Roman, but in everyday communication Cyrillic is still used along with Roman script.
;Cyrillic alphabet: Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Дд, Ее, Ёё, Жж, Җҗ, Зз, Ии, Йй, Кк, Лл, Мм, Нн, Ңң, Оо, Өө, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Үү, Фф, Хх, ‚ Чч, Шш,,, Ыы,, Ээ, Әә, Юю, Яя
;Latin alphabet version 2: Aa, Bb,, Çç, Dd, Ee, Ää, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Žž, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ňň, Oo, Öö, Pp, Rr, Ss, Şş, Tt, Uu, Üü, Ww, Yy, Ýý, Zz
;Latin alphabet version 1: Aa, Bb,, Çç, Dd, Ee, Êê Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Žž, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ññ, Oo, Ôô, Pp, Rr, Ss, Şş, Tt, Uu, Ûû, Ww, Yy, Ýý, Zz

Uzbek

From 1941 the Cyrillic script was used exclusively. In 1998 the government has adopted a Latin alphabet to replace it. The deadline for making this transition has however been repeatedly changed, and Cyrillic is still more common. It is not clear that the transition will be made at all.

[Dungan language]

Since 1953.
;International auxiliary languages
;Fictional languages