Unknown stories of famous letters: the letter A. History of the language: who invented the Russian alphabet
The concept of the alphabet, its main characteristics.
Writing styles. Typography.
Stages of formation of the Russian alphabet.
One of the main factors of phonemographic writing is alphabet– a set of letters arranged in the order accepted for a given writing system. The alphabet is characterized by the composition (number of letters) and the order of the letters in the list; it determines the style of the letters, their names and sound meanings.
The word "alphabet" is of Greek origin: it is composed of two Greek words - "alpha" and "vita (beta)" (α and β), in Latin "alphabetum". The Arabic word "alifba" is composed on the same principle. In the Russian language, the word “alphabet” is used, compiled from the name of the first letters of the Cyrillic alphabet: A - “az” and B - “buki”.
An ideal alphabet should consist of as many letters as there are phonemes in a given language. However, there are no ideal alphabets today, because writing has evolved over a long history, and much in writing reflects outdated traditions. There are alphabets that are more or less rational. Alphabetic characters (letters) can convey one sound (in Russian the letters I, O, T, R), but can convey two or more sounds (in Russian the letters E, Ts [ts]). On the other hand, one sound can be conveyed by two or more letters, for example, in English, the combinations of letters TH, SH, CH convey one sound each. Finally, there may be letters that do not convey sounds at all: in Russian these are the letters Ъ and ь.
Modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. There are 10 vowel letters: A, I, O, U, Y, E, E, Yo, Yu, Ya; consonants -21: B, V, G, D, ZH, Z, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, F, X, C, Ch, Sh, Sh. Letters b, b sounds are not indicated.
Lettering. There is no natural connection between the shape of a letter and its sound meaning; this connection is arbitrary, which turns the letter into a conventional sign of sound. The arbitrariness of the letter outline is confirmed by changes in the outline of the letters while the meaning is stable. For example, Ѩ eventually turned into I.
Meanwhile, the style of letters is an active characteristic of the alphabet, since it determines the appearance of the letter, its convenience and inconvenience, the speed of writing and reading, and the effectiveness of teaching both. The outline of a letter is a material carrier of its meaning, i.e. knowledge of the external appearance of a letter is a necessary condition for correct writing and reading. When drawing a letter, it is important to take into account both the interests of the writer and the interests of the reader. For the writer, simplicity of style is important, on which the speed of writing depends. For the reader, clarity and contrast in the appearance of the letter are important. The evolution of the external side of the alphabet - the shape of the letters - is connected precisely with these functions of the letter styles.
In addition, based on the handwriting and the general appearance of the letter, the time and place of creation of the written monument can be determined. The material side of writing is dealt with by the applied historical discipline - paleography(from Greek palaios "ancient").
The letters do not have a single descriptive pattern, but there are four varieties of each letter with two pairwise non-overlapping groupings: printed uppercase and lowercase; handwritten uppercase and lowercase. For example: A, a, A, a; T, t, T, t.;
Modern letters, based on the method of reproduction and design, are divided into written And printed. The designs of modern written letters were formed on the basis of the designs of the letters of the Slavic script. The foundations of the printed font were laid by the reform of Peter I.
Uppercase(large, capital) and lowercase(small) have their own history. Descriptive varieties of these letters began to appear in written monuments of the 16th century. The allocation of capital letters into a separate subalphabet was first noted in the primers of the 17th century. The use of capital letters was streamlined after the introduction of the Peter the Great civil alphabet.
The differences between uppercase and lowercase letters manifest themselves in three positions:
1) difference in size. This is reflected in the title (large and small), it is very important for reading, because large letters stand out against the background of small ones and serve as a support, a guide for the overall coverage of the text, highlighting its individual fragments;
2) difference in style. It does not apply to all letter characters, but to printed subalphabets of only four letters: A - a, B - b, E - e, E - e;
3) functional distinctions. They are the most significant components; spelling deals with this (see lecture 7). There are no functional differences in the letters ы, ь, Ъ.
Letter order in the alphabet is one of the characteristics of the alphabet, since the distinctive feature of any alphabet is its orderliness. The generally accepted arrangement of letters in the alphabet is arbitrary and has no connection with the letter itself and the phonetic side of the language. The place of a letter in the alphabet does not depend on its frequency. It was calculated that the most common letters are O, E (together with E), A, I, T, and the least used letters are Ш, Ц, ШЧ, Ф, Е.
On the one hand, the order of letters is the passive side of the modern alphabet, since it has no direct relation to the practice of writing. In order to write and read correctly, there is no need to know in what order the letters follow each other. This knowledge has general cultural significance. On the other hand, place in the alphabet is the most important characteristic of a letter, since it is determined by place, serial number (M is the fourteenth letter in the Russian alphabet). In speech practice, knowledge of the order of letters is necessary when using reference literature, since the headings in dictionaries are arranged in accordance with the so-called strict alphabet, i.e. the place in the alphabet is taken into account first by the first letters of the word, then by the second, etc. For example, in the dictionary the word will be listed first lamp, Then - doe.
Letter names are very essential in the writing system, because establishes their meaning. The names of Russian letters are built on the acrophonic principle: the meaning of a letter is the extreme sound of its name (from the Greek akros "extreme"). This may be the first sound of the name (initial type) - “de” - [d], “ka” - [k], “che” - [h]; the last sound (final type) – “er” - [r], “es” - [s], “ef” - [f]; the whole name (global type) is “a” - [a], “e” -, “yu” -. Thus, the name of a letter is directly related to its basic meaning, without which correct writing and reading are impossible.
The modern name of the letter is an indeclinable neuter noun, so it is correct to say “graceful” A", "big R".
Knowing the names is necessary to correctly read letter abbreviations: FSB[efsbe], ATS[atees], UMPO [uempeo]. They are taken into account in the formulation of spelling rules; it is impossible to do without letter names in textbooks and scientific works. Knowing the names of letters is also associated with speech culture. Errors in the names of letters (“re” instead of “er”, “cha” instead of “che”) are perceived as a gross violation of the norms of the literary language. The use of the correct letter names is an indicator of the level of a person’s general culture.
Alphabetical meaning of letters– this is the basic meaning of the letter, its original function. The alphabetic value is contrasted with the positional value of the letter. For example: letter ABOUT in a word Here means [o], in a word noses- [Λ], in nasal- [ъ], letter E in a word eating has meaning in the word we eat- , V weight- [`e], in scales- [`i e], in bike- [`ь], in karate- [uh]. However, it is clear to everyone who reads and writes in Russian that one of these meanings is basic (alphabetic) - the one that is acquired when learning the alphabet, the rest represent positional meanings. The alphabetic meaning is established regardless of the conditions of use; it is the basis for the formation of the meanings of letters, determined by graphics and spelling.
Writing style is a speech act considered from the point of view of its graphic execution in a written text. Being a significant characteristic of written speech and forming one whole with it, writing styles are divided into certain categories. The general requirements applicable to any manuscript include mastery of the skills of correct, aesthetically perfect writing, or the art calligraphy- mastery of writing characters. There are two main trends in the art of calligraphy: 1) perfect adherence to the standard rules of written characters; 2) the formation of an individual (personal) handwriting.
Handwriting refers not only to an individual style of writing, but also to a general style of writing that is characteristic of all writers of a certain historical period.
Personal, perfect handwriting that claims calligraphic significance is relatively poorly developed in the European tradition. The formation of calligraphically significant personal handwriting in Europe begins with the time of printing (XV century), when they began to be contrasted with standard printed letters as individual versus general. In the hieroglyphic cultures of the East, on the contrary, personal handwriting appears very early, and calligraphic art reaches high perfection. It should be borne in mind that personal handwriting always carries the spirit of its creator, expressing in a certain way some features of his personality, like individual features of pronunciation in oral speech.
The change in letter styles was associated with a change in supra-individual handwritings (charter, semi-charter, cursive), and then with the introduction of printing, the introduction of a civil font, followed by a change in cursive handwriting and printed fonts.
In the case of standard characters in Greek and Latin, as well as Slavic graphics, three standard styles of execution were gradually established:
1) charter - the complete style of marking;
2) cursive - shortened style of writing characters
3) semi-ustav - average (mixed) style of marking.
This division of styles is characteristic of all cultures. In Egyptian writing they correspond to hieroglyphic, democratic and hieratic writing, in Chinese hieroglyphs - zhenshu, caoshu and jianbizi.
The charter (from the beginning of writing to the middle of the 16th century) was characterized by a clear, calligraphic style. Words were not separated by spaces, and word abbreviations were rarely used. Each letter was written separately from the others, without connections or slanting, and had shapes close to geometric. The height and width of the letters were approximately the same. Therefore, the charter was easy to read, but difficult for the writer.
The semi-ustav (from the middle of the 14th century to the 17th century) differed from the charter in the less strictness of the lettering. Letters in their parts can form three rows of writing: the line itself, the superscript row and the subscript rows. The semi-character marks are placed in the middle line, and behind it the superscript and subscript elements of the letter styles are placed: loops, bows, etc. Sloping was allowed, letters became smaller and more elongated in height, titles (word abbreviations) and strengths (accent marks) were used. The semi-statut was written more fluently than the charter, but was more difficult to read. It moved from manuscripts to printed books from the time of Ivan Fedorov to Peter’s reforms; this was due to the desire of the first printers to give books a familiar appearance.
Cursive writing (from the end of the 14th century to the present day) is a coherent writing of letters, usually slanted to the right, with strokes extending beyond the top and bottom lines of the line. Initially it became widespread in diplomatic, clerical and trade correspondence.
Historically, charter is the earliest style of writing. The most solemn and official texts are executed in the statutory letter, and the least important ones are executed in cursive.
Typography is based on a new way of creating written characters. The essence of this method is to create a standard edition of handwritten text in terms of graphic design. The emergence and development of book printing is a complex and long historical process that had significant consequences for the spread and development of culture. The invention of printing cannot be attributed to any single person or nation. The basis for the creation of a printed book is the invention of paper by the Chinese in the 2nd century AD. e. Both a handwritten and a printed book can be equally embodied on paper. Following the invention of paper in the 7th-8th centuries. A printing press was created that was used to reproduce books. In the beginning, the printing matrix was copper or wooden boards, on which the text was either cut out or etched with acid over handwritten text. From such a matrix, using a printing press, it was possible to create a certain edition of text. Books created from matrices are called xylographs; they were the main type of publication until the 15th century.
In the 15th century, Johann Guttenberg invented a type casting device and a typographic alloy - hart. This alloy was distinguished by its lightness and ductility - necessary qualities for creating a set. Europe thus became the birthplace of movable type printing. In the history of Russia, Ivan Fedorov became the first printer.
Printed speech develops directly from handwritten speech, changing the forms of existence of written speech, creating new qualities. It borrows linearity and the iconic principle of written language. However, writing signs change their shape in accordance with the conditions of machine production. In particular, the number and strict nomenclature of fonts are established. Modern typeface comes in a number of variations that are used to organize text in printed publications.
In the twentieth century, computers entered social and linguistic practice, due to which the scope of activity of technical devices for handwritten and printed speech significantly expanded. Computer graphics combines the properties of both. Computer graphics systems allow you to create not only text, but also drawings, geometric images, animation, etc.
In 988 the baptism of Rus' took place. The Christian religion (Orthodoxy) established itself as the state religion. This entailed the distribution of liturgical literature. Religious books were written in Old Church Slavonic using the Cyrillic alphabet. With the adoption of Orthodoxy, Slavic writing acquired the status of state writing.
In the history of Russian writing, several periods can be distinguished:
end of the 10th – mid-16th centuries. - from the beginning of writing to the beginning of printing;
second half of the 16th century - the beginning of Russian book printing;
Petrine reforms of Russian writing at the beginning of the 18th century;
Changes in the alphabet in the 18th-19th centuries;
Alphabet reform 1917-1918
In 1710, by decree of Peter, a new civil alphabet and printing books in a new font. Peter's next innovation was intended to strengthen the position of secular culture as opposed to church culture. Before this, Old Church Slavonic letter styles were used in official publications and in everyday life. After Peter's reform, the Old Church Slavonic font began to be called Church Slavonic. They are still used in church practice to this day.
The introduction of civil script at the beginning of the 18th century constituted an era in the development of Russian national culture. The alphabet has become much simpler and more accessible to a wide range of people. This also made it possible to create new techniques for book design. The need for the rapid development of printing in the Peter the Great era required a more advanced font than the Church Slavonic one.
The civil font was created on the basis of Western European fonts and new Russian handwriting, which were distinguished by greater symmetry in the construction of letters. About the change in the style of printed letters, M.V. Lomonosov wrote: “Under Peter, not only the boyars and boyars, but also the letters threw off their wide fur coats and dressed up in summer clothes.”
In addition to introducing a civil script, the Russian emperor tried to improve the alphabet. He personally crossed out the letters “yus big” - Ѭ, “yus small” -i, “xi” -Ѯ, “psi” -Ѱ, “izhitsa” - V, “uk” - Оу, “fert” - Ф, “omega” " - Ѡ, "earth" - Z, "like" - I.
However, this met with opposition from the church. The letters excluded by Peter continued to be used according to the established centuries-old tradition. As a result, civil books from 1711 to 1735 came out of print with a different set of letters.
Accent marks and titles (diacritical marks for abbreviating words) were abolished, since their use led to illegibility of texts and errors. At the same time, the use of letters in numerical values was abandoned.
The new civil alphabet finally came into use by the middle of the 18th century, when it became familiar to the generation that learned to read and write using it. It existed unchanged until the reform of Russian writing in 1918.
Transformations in Russian writing had a significant impact not only on writing, but also on the formation of the Russian literary language. Church Slavonic graphics lost their dominant position in Russian writing and ceased to be the bearer of a literary norm, which also meant that the Church Slavonic language lost its dominant role in the literary language. In this sense, the alphabet reform is a striking example of the modernization of Russian life. It could only take place in conditions when life was renewed. Newspapers began to be published, mail appeared, people began to conduct active business and private correspondence. Writing and reading have become not only a godly activity, but a necessity to correspond to the spirit of the times.
Introduction of new letters. Over the entire history of its existence, four new letters have been introduced into the Russian alphabet: Ya, Y, E, Yo.
I in the Church Slavonic alphabet it looked like two things - like “yus small” Ѧ or “A iotated” IA, which had the same sound meaning a long time ago. The shape of the modern letter I, similar to a mirror image of the Latin letter R, reproduces the italic style of the letter Ѧ, which became widespread in the middle of the 16th century (with a quick drawing of this letter, the left leg gradually disappeared, and the whole figure turned somewhat clockwise. In this form it was fixed with the introduction of the civil font in 1708 and has remained virtually unchanged since then.
E is considered to be a borrowed Glagolitic form of the letter “is” (E), which looks like E. In the Cyrillic alphabet, the sign E has been used at least since the mid-17th century. The letter E was officially included in the alphabet in 1708 when the civil font was created. A large number of borrowings in the Petrine era and later necessitated the need for the letter e, which denoted the sound [e] after hard consonants and at the beginning of a word. Thus, to denote one sound [e], two letters appeared in the language - E and E.
Y introduced in 1753. In the Church Slavonic language, a consistent and mandatory distinction between the use of styles I - J has been legalized since the middle of the 17th century. The translation of the Russian letter into a civil script abolished the superscripts and again combined them with the letter I. Y was restored in 1735, although it was not considered a separate letter of the alphabet until the 20th century.
Yo introduced in 1784. This letter has its own history. Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, held a meeting of the Russian Academy at her home on November 29, 1783. The conversation was about the future six-volume Dictionary of the Russian Academy. Then Ekaterina Romanovna, in the presence of Derzhavin, Fonvizin, Knyazhnin, Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg Gabriel, suggested writing not “yolk”, but “fir tree”. A year later, on November 18, “e” received official status. Derzhavin was the first to use the letter E, and the fabulist Ivan Dmitriev first printed it: he wrote the words “light” and “stump” into the fairy tale “The Freaky Girl”. The letter became famous thanks to Karamzin, and therefore until recently he was considered its creator.
Since then, the letter has experienced several stages of decline and rise in its popularity. Publishers of the tsarist period, the Soviet period, and perestroika had different attitudes towards it. In 2007, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation ordered that the letter “ё” be written in proper names. In 2009, the Supreme Court of Russia decided that in documents “ё” and “e” are equivalent. In 2009, the Bank of Russia allowed to write “ё” in payment documents.
The second reform of Russian writing was carried out in 1917-1918. This was a reform of both the alphabet and spelling. Preparations for this reform began at the end of the 19th century, when the need to simplify the alphabet and spelling became especially obvious. In 1904, the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences was created, which included such prominent linguists as A.A. Shakhmatov, F.F. Fortunatov, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, A.I. Sobolevsky and others. In the same year, a project was published that included proposals to eliminate unnecessary letters and new spelling rules. However, the project was met with hostility by the conservative part of society, government circles and even some scientists. At that time, the more widespread opinion was that the acquisition of spelling did not depend on the number of letters in the alphabet, but on incorrect teaching methods, and it was also believed that one should not attach much importance to the “cries of lazy students.” There were so many opponents of the reform that it was necessary to create a special preparatory commission with the participation of school teachers, which worked actively for more than ten years. Finally, in May 1917, the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education proposed introducing reformed spelling in schools starting with the new school year.
The reform was only implemented under Soviet power by decrees of the People's Commissariat of Education dated December 23, 1917 and the Council of People's Commissars dated October 10, 1918.
The reform finally abolished a number of unnecessary letters that made writing difficult: “fita” - Ѳ with replacement through Ф; “yat” - Ѣ with replacement through E; “and decimal - I with replacement through AND; “Izhitsa” – V. The letter “era” - Ъ was canceled at the end of words after a hard consonant (mir, bank).
The reform also made it possible to abandon the names of letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, which used significant words that began with the corresponding sounds (az - A, beeches - B). In the modern Russian alphabet, modeled on the Latin alphabet, the names of the letters are not significant: the name indicates the quality of the sound denoted by the letter (a - A; be - B). Brief letter names make learning the alphabet much easier.
As a result of the reform of 1917-1918. the current Russian alphabet appeared (see Appendix). This alphabet also became the basis of many newly written languages, for which writing was absent before the 20th century or was lost and introduced in the republics of the USSR after the October Socialist Revolution.
In 2010, Russia celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Russian alphabet.
This significant date was one of the reasons due to which the decision was made at the state level to create a domain zone on the Internet in Cyrillic. Cyrillic domains will allow the Russian language to exist in a much wider virtual space than before. This fact is significant not only for Russia, but also for those Slavic states whose writing is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.
List of used literature
Ivanova V.F. Modern Russian language. Graphics and spelling. M., 1976.
Istrin V.A.
The emergence and development of writing. M., 2010.
Istrin V.A. 1100 years of the Slavic alphabet. M., 2011.
Lowkotka Ch. Development of writing. (translated from Czech). – M., 1960.
Russian language. Encyclopedia/Ch. ed. Yu.N. Karaulov. – M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia;
Bustard, 1998.
Shchepkin V.N. Russian paleography. – M., 1967.
Linguistics. Large encyclopedic dictionary. – M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1998.
Questions for self-control
Give a definition of the concept alphabet.
When does the Russian alphabet appear? What are the prerequisites for its creation?
Tell us about the fate of the letters excluded from the Russian alphabet. State the reasons for their initial inclusion in the alphabet and subsequent exclusion.
Tell us about the process of introducing native Russian letters into the alphabet.
What is the composition of the modern Russian alphabet?
Assignment for independent work:
study the topic “The Baptism of Rus' and Slavic writing.”
Alphabet.
The Guinness Book of Records considers...
Ancient
The earliest example of alphabetic writing was found in Ugarit (now Ras Sharma, Syria). It dates from approximately 1450 BC. e. and is a clay tablet with 32 wedge-shaped letters printed on it.
The oldest letter
The oldest letter “o” remained unchanged in the same form in which it was adopted in the Phoenician alphabet (about 1300 BC). There are currently 65 alphabets in use.
The longest and shortest alphabets
The largest number of letters - 72 - is contained in the Khmer language, the smallest - 11 (a, b, e, g, i, k, o, p, t, u) - in the Rotokas language from the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.
Origin of the Russian alphabet.
The alphabet in the 33-letter form we are familiar with did not always exist. Its prototype was the alphabet called Old Slavonic, or Church Slavonic.
The appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet, which dates back to the Greek language, is traditionally associated with the activities of the famous enlighteners Cyril and Methodius.
The Old Church Slavonic language, being the language of the church in Rus', was influenced by the Old Russian language. Thus, the Russian alphabet originated from the Old Russian Cyrillic alphabet, which was borrowed from the Greeks and became widespread in Kievan Rus after the adoption of Christianity (988).
At that time, it apparently had 43 letters. He looked like this:
It is easy to notice that some Cyrillic letters sound like our modern words: “good”, “earth”, “people”. Others - az, beeches, lead... What do they mean and what is their origin?
A3 is the personal pronoun of the first person singular.
BUKI - letter. There were quite a few words with the nominative singular form, which was unusual for us: “kry” - blood, “bry” - eyebrow, “lyuby” - love.
VEDI is a form of the verb “vedeti” - to know.
VERB - a form of the verb “verb” - to speak.
GOOD – the meaning is clear.
IS – third person singular present tense from the verb “to be”.
LIVE – second person plural of the present tense from the verb “to live”.
ZELO is an adverb meaning “very”, “strongly”, “very”.
IZHE (AND OCTAL) is a pronoun with the meaning “that”, “which”. In Church Slavonic the conjunction is “what”. This letter was called “octal” because it had the numerical value of the number 8.
AND (AND DECIMAL) - so called because of its numerical value - 10.
KAKO – interrogative adverb “how”.
PEOPLE – the meaning is self-explanatory.
MYSLETE is a form of the verb “to think.”
OUR is a possessive pronoun.
OH is a third person singular personal pronoun.
RTSY is a form of the verb “speech”, to speak.
THE WORD – the meaning is beyond doubt.
SOLID – also does not require comments.
UK – in Old Slavonic – teaching.
FERT - the etymology of this letter name has not been reliably clarified by scientists. From the outline of the sign came the expression “stand on the fence,” that is, “hands on hips.”
CHER – it is believed that this is an abbreviation of the word “cherub”, the name of one of the ranks of angels. Since the letter is “cruciform”, the meaning of the verb “to take away” has developed - to cross out, abolish, destroy.
HE THE GREAT is a Greek omega, which we got its name from the letter “he”.
TSY is an onomatopoeic name.
WORM - in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian the word “worm” meant “red paint”, and not just “worm”. The name of the letter was given an acrophonic name - the word “worm” began with “ch”.
SHA, SHA - both letters are named according to a principle already familiar to us: the sound itself signified by the letter plus any vowel sound before and after it.
ERY - the compound name of this letter - “er” plus “and” - was, as it were, a “description” of its shape. We renamed it “s” a long time ago.
ER, ER - conventional names of letters that have ceased to express the sounds of incomplete education and have become simply “signs”.
YAT – it is believed that the name of the letter “yat” may be associated with “yad” - food, food.
Yu, Ya - these letters were called according to their sound: “yu”, “ya”, as well as the letter “ye”, meaning “iotated e”.
YUS – the origin of the name is unclear. They tried to derive it from the word “us”, which in the Old Bulgarian language sounded with a nasal sound at the beginning, or from the word “yusenitsa” - caterpillar. The explanations do not seem uncontroversial.
FITA - in this form, the name of the Greek letter Θ came to Rus', which was called at different times either “theta” or “fita” and, accordingly, meant either a sound close to “f” or a sound that is now expressed in Western alphabets with the letters TH. We hear it close to our “g”. The Slavs adopted "fita" at a time when it was read as "f". That is why, for example, we wrote the word “library” as “vivliofika” until the 18th century.
IZHITSA is the Greek “upsilon”, which conveys a sound that seems to stand between our “i” and “yu” in the surname “Hugo”. The Slavs originally conveyed this sound differently, imitating the Greeks. Thus, the Greek name “Kirillos”, a diminutive of “Kyuros” - lord, was usually rendered as “Kirill”, but the pronunciation “Kurill” was also possible. In the epics “Kurill” was changed into “Chyurilo”. Until recently, in the west of Ukraine there was a place called “Kurilovtsi” - the descendants of “Kuril”.
Time rushes forward rapidly and makes its own adjustments. Some letters disappeared, and new ones appeared in their place.
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).
Subsequently, some abolished letters were restored and abolished again. By 1917, the alphabet came in a 35-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, Ѣ, E, Yu, I , Ѳ, Ѵ. (The last letter was formally listed in the Russian alphabet, but de facto its use came to an almost nonexistent level, and it was found in only a few words).
The last major reform of writing was carried out in 1917-1918 - as a result, the current Russian alphabet, consisting of 33 letters, appeared. This alphabet also became the written basis for most languages of the USSR, for which writing was absent before the 20th century or was replaced during the years of Soviet power.
Related information.
Hello, dear guys! Greetings, dear adults! You are reading these lines, which means that someone once made sure that you and I could exchange information using writing.
Drawing rock carvings, trying to tell something, our ancestors many centuries ago could not even imagine that very soon the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet would form words, express our thoughts on paper, help us read books written in Russian and allow us to leave our mark on history of folk culture.
Where did they all come to us from A to Z, who invented the Russian alphabet, and how did the letter originate? The information in this article may be useful for a research paper in 2nd or 3rd grade, so welcome to study in detail!
Lesson plan:
What is the alphabet and where did it all begin?
The word familiar to us from childhood came from Greece, and it is composed of two Greek letters - alpha and beta.
In general, the ancient Greeks left a huge mark on history, and they could not do without them here. They made a lot of efforts to spread writing throughout Europe.
However, many scientists still argue who would have been the first, and in what year it was. It is believed that the Phoenicians were the first to use consonant letters back in the 2nd millennium BC, and only then did the Greeks borrow their alphabet and add vowels there. This was already in the 8th century BC.
This Greek writing became the basis of the alphabet for many peoples, including us, the Slavs. And among the most ancient are the Chinese and Egyptian alphabets, which appeared from the transformation of rock paintings into hieroglyphs and graphic symbols.
But what about our Slavic alphabet? After all, we don’t write in Greek today! The thing is that Ancient Rus' sought to strengthen economic and cultural ties with other countries, and for this a letter was needed. Moreover, the first church books began to be brought to the Russian state, since Christianity came from Europe.
It was necessary to find a way to convey to all Russian Slavs what Orthodoxy is, to create our own alphabet, to translate church works into a readable language. The Cyrillic alphabet became such an alphabet, and it was created by the brothers, popularly called “Thessalonica”.
Who are the Thessaloniki brothers and why are they famous?
These people are called this way not because they have a surname or a given name.
Two brothers Cyril and Methodius lived in a military family in a large Byzantine province with the capital in the city of Thessaloniki, from which the name of their small homeland came the nickname.
The population in the city was mixed - half Greeks and half Slavs. And the brothers’ parents were of different nationalities: their mother was Greek, and their father was from Bulgaria. Therefore, both Cyril and Methodius knew two languages from childhood - Slavic and Greek.
This is interesting! In fact, the brothers had different names at birth - Constantine and Mikhail, and they were named church Cyril and Methodius later.
Both brothers excelled in their studies. Methodius mastered military techniques and loved to read. Well, Kirill knew as many as 22 languages, was educated at the imperial court and was nicknamed a philosopher for his wisdom.
Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the choice fell on these two brothers when the Moravian prince turned to the Byzantine ruler for help in 863 with a request to send wise men who could convey to the Slavic people the truth of the Christian faith and teach them to write.
And Cyril and Methodius set off on a long journey, moving for 40 months from one place to another, explaining in the Slavic language they knew well from childhood who Christ was and what his power was. And for this it was necessary to translate all church books from Greek into Slavic, which is why the brothers began to develop a new alphabet.
Of course, already in those days the Slavs used many Greek letters in their lives in counting and writing. But the knowledge they had had to be streamlined, brought to one system, so that it would be simple and understandable for everyone. And already on May 24, 863, in the Bulgarian capital of Pliska, Cyril and Methodius announced the creation of a Slavic alphabet called the Cyrillic alphabet, which became the progenitor of our modern Russian alphabet.
This is interesting! Historians have discovered the fact that even before the Moravian commission, while in Byzantium, the brothers Cyril and Methodius invented an alphabet for the Slavs based on Greek writing, and it was called Glagolitic. Maybe that’s why the Cyrillic alphabet appeared so quickly and simply, since there were already working outlines?
Transformations of the Russian alphabet
The Slavic alphabet created by Cyril and Methodius consisted of 43 letters.
They appeared by adding newly invented 19 signs to the Greek alphabet (which had 24 letters). After the appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet in Bulgaria, the center of Slavic writing, the first book school appeared, and they began to actively translate liturgical books.
In any old book
“Once upon a time there lived Izhitsa,
And with it the letter Yat"
Gradually, the Old Church Slavonic alphabet came to Serbia, and in Ancient Rus' it appeared at the end of the 10th century, when the Russian people adopted Christianity. It was then that the whole long process of creating and improving the Russian alphabet that we use today begins. That's what was interesting.
This is interesting! The godmother of the letter “Y” was Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, who proposed introducing it into the alphabet in 1783. The idea of the princess was supported by the writer Karmazin, and with their light hand the letter appeared in the alphabet, taking an honorable seventh place.
“Yo”’s fate is not easy:
- in 1904 its use was desirable, but not at all mandatory;
- in 1942, by order of the educational authority, it was recognized as compulsory for schools;
- in 1956, entire paragraphs of the rules of Russian spelling were devoted to it.
Today, the use of “Yo” is important when you can confuse the meaning of written words, for example here: perfect and perfect, tears and tears, palate and sky.
This is interesting! In 2001, in the Ulyanovsk Park named after Karamzin, the only monument to the letter “Y” in the form of a low stele in the whole world was unveiled.
As a result, today we have 33 beauties who teach us to read and write, open up a new world for us, help us be educated to learn our native language and respect our history.
I am sure that you have known all these 33 letters for a long time and never confuse their places in the alphabet. Would you like to try to learn the Old Church Slavonic alphabet? Here it is, below in the video)
Well, you have more projects on one interesting topic in your collection. Share the most interesting things with your classmates, let them also know where the Russian alphabet came to us from. And I say goodbye to you, see you again!
Good luck in your studies!
Evgenia Klimkovich.
Imagine that you are a primitive man who has come up with an effective way to hunt a mammoth or make fire. You want to tell your fellow tribesmen, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren about this, but there is one problem - you don’t know how to write.
You can take a coal from an extinguished fire or scratch a line on the cave wall with a sharp stone, or convey a message using knots, shells, or special tablets. In other words, you need to invent a system of signs that other people can repeat in order to share information, that is, come up with writing.
The most visual way to do this is to draw figures on a cave wall or a sheet of paper.
A child draws a sun, a house, a tree, a father and a mother - and here we see a modern example of pictorial writing, which was used by primitive people, Scythians or American Indians of the 19th century. Picture writing is very convenient - you don’t need to know foreign languages to understand the picture. If you depict three people with spears and a mammoth on the wall of a cave, then we can easily guess that these people are hunting.
We still use pictograms today. These are, for example, road signs - a fork and spoon means that there is a canteen nearby, a bed with a cross means that there is a hospital nearby. Pictograms are used to design cafe and store signs, as well as computer programs. A person in an unfamiliar city or in a foreign country can easily find a restaurant or other desired place.
At first glance, writing with pictures is the best, but it is not so.
To begin with, let’s imagine a person who needs to quickly convey the order to start a war. He can draw little men with sticks, but then he will have to show the direction of movement, the goal of the hike. It’s good if there is only one hostile tribe or city in the area, but what if there are several of them? In battle, everything is decided by seconds, and it takes longer to paint a picture than to give the order: “Attack.” In addition, a subordinate may misinterpret the drawn order, and then disaster will occur.
There have been many cases in history when the incorrect interpretation of symbols and signs led to tragedy. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus talks about an unusual gift that the Scythians gave to the Persian king Darius - a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. At first, Darius decided that the Scythians would surrender and give the Persians possession of the sky (bird), earth (mouse), frog (water) and their army (arrows). But one of the king’s subordinates interpreted this letter completely differently: “If you, Persians, do not fly away into the sky like birds, or hide in the ground like mice, or, like frogs, do not gallop into the lake, then you will not come back and that’s all.” You will die from our arrows." After this, Darius was forced to leave the territory of the Scythians.
Another problem with picture writing will be the abundance of icons and the inability to draw many abstract concepts. For example, what does a picture of a human eye mean? The concept of “attention” or the verb “to see”? And if a tear flows from the eye, is it sadness, grief, separation or illness? If a closed eye is drawn - is it blindness, death, divorce, quarrel (“I don’t want to see you”)? How can you use a drawing to depict emptiness, darkness or happiness? In addition, people draw in different ways, sometimes it is impossible to understand what is depicted, which means that such a letter needs an interpreter.
The ancient Egyptians tried to solve this problem. Their hieroglyphs (sacred signs) are a combination of pictograms that could represent a concept, a sound, or simply serve as a qualifier to help the reader understand what these icons mean in a given case. All this was more reminiscent of the well-known game of charades, when one word is explained using similar ones. (For example, the word whirlpool can be made using the image of a glass of water and a collar). This is not very convenient, and some peoples tried to tie writing not to images of objects, but to parts of a word - syllables or letters.
If a language has a small number of syllables built in a certain order (for example, each syllable consists of two sounds, where a consonant precedes a vowel), then the signs can indicate syllables. The Japanese followed this path, but for us this path is impossible. In Russian, there are long monosyllabic words with a large combination of consonants (“splash”). To come up with a separate sign for this word means to increase their number to infinity. Scientists, by the way, count more than 400 thousand words in the modern Russian language.
A solution was found several thousand years ago by the Phoenicians, who created the first alphabet, that is, a system of signs in which a letter is associated with a separate sound. In some languages, only consonants are written, in others (for example, in Greek, Latin or Russian), both vowels and consonants can be expressed using signs.
This was a revolutionary discovery. Now a person did not need to learn thousands of pictograms or hundreds of symbols to indicate syllables to express thoughts. It is enough to learn to use several dozen symbols. It seemed that an ideal way of transmitting information had been found; letters could be written quickly and on any surface - from Novgorod birch bark letters and Greek papyri and parchments to computer screens.
But everything turned out to be not so simple.
If we look at ancient Russian texts, we will find that each manuscript is written in its own way. In the life of Theodosius of Pechersk, its author Nestor calls the saint either “Theodosius” or “Fedos”. Such discrepancies are not evidence of the illiteracy of the ancient Russian hagiographer, but evidence of the formation of a tradition. Sometimes the peculiarities of the spelling of a particular word can tell a historian or philologist the place where the manuscript was compiled. If words like “cave”, “milk”, “Vladimir”, “ezero”, “sveta” are often found in the manuscript, then it most likely came to life among the southern Slavs. Old Russian versions of these words are: milk, Volodymyr, lake and candle. And traces of the East Slavic name of the caves can now be found in the names of the patericon: Kiev-Pechersk or Pskov-Pechersk. If we look at the texts of Archpriest Avvakum, they will remind us of children’s notes. When a child learns to write, he often writes words according to the phonetic principle: “as they hear, so they write.” And even in Ancient Rus', words were written without spaces or punctuation marks.
So alphabet-based writing is not only convenient, but also quite difficult to learn, like any other.
But letters have another undoubted advantage, which can only be fully appreciated now. We pick up a cell phone and with the help of eight buttons we can type any word. We understand each other, even if we don't know how to draw. We write SMS with words of love, and a person in another city or country receives them, smiles, and our life becomes more beautiful. All this became possible thanks to the fact that many thousands of years ago a person wanted to tell his descendants about how to hunt a mammoth, and a little more than a thousand years ago Saints Cyril and Methodius came up with the Slavic alphabet, which we still use with minor changes.
In this article we will tell you about the origin of the Russian alphabet. You will find out what reforms the Russian alphabet has undergone, whether it has always consisted of 33 letters.
Around 863, two brothers Methodius and Cyril the Philosopher (Constantine) from Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki), by order of Michael III, the Byzantine emperor, streamlined writing for the Slavic language. The emergence of the Cyrillic alphabet, derived from the Greek statutory (solemn) letter, is linked to the activities carried out by the Bulgarian school of scribes (after Methodius and Cyril).
After 860, when Christianity was adopted in Bulgaria by the holy Tsar Boris, Bulgaria turned into a center from where Slavic writing began to spread. Here the Preslav Book School was created - the first book school of the Slavs, where the originals of Cyril and Methodius' liturgical books (church services, Psalms, Gospels, Apostles) were copied, new translations into the Slavic language from Greek were made, original works written in Old Slavonic appeared (for example, “About the writings of the Chronor of Brave”).
Later, the Old Church Slavonic language penetrated into Serbia, and by the end of the 10th century. in Kievan Rus it became a church language. Being the language of the church in Rus', the Old Church Slavonic language was influenced by the Old Russian language. This, in fact, was the Old Church Slavonic language, but only in the Russian edition, since it contained living elements of the speech of the Eastern Slavs.
Thus, the ancestor of the Russian alphabet is the Old Russian Cyrillic alphabet, borrowed from the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet and spread after the baptism of Kievan Rus (988). Then, most likely, there were 43 letters in the alphabet.
Later, 4 new letters were added, and at different times, 14 old ones were excluded as unnecessary, since the corresponding sounds were missing. The first to disappear is the iotized yus (Ѭ, Ѩ), then the big yus (Ѫ) (which returned in the 15th century, but disappeared again at the beginning of the 17th century), and E iotized (Ѥ); other letters, sometimes slightly changing their shape and meaning, have remained to this day in the alphabet of the Church Slavonic language, which for a long time and mistakenly was identified with the Russian alphabet.
Spelling reforms of the 2nd half of the 17th century. (associated with the “correction of books” during the time of Patriarch Nikon), the following letter set was recorded: A, B, C, D, D, E (with a different spelling variant Є, which was sometimes considered a separate letter and placed in the alphabet after Ѣ, i.e. . to the position of today's E), Zh, S, Z, I (for the sound [j] there was a variant Y that differed in spelling, which was not considered a separate letter), I, K, L, M, N, O (in 2 forms that differed spelling: “wide” and “narrow”), P, R, S, T, U (in 2 forms that differed spelling: Ѹ и), Ф, Х, Ѡ (in 2 forms that differed orthographically: “wide” and “narrow”, and also as part of a ligature, which was usually considered a separate letter - “ot” (Ѿ)), Ts, Ch, Sh, Shch, b, ы, b, Ѣ, Yu, Ya ( in 2 forms: Ѧ and IA, which were sometimes considered different letters, and sometimes not), Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѳ, ѳ. The capital yus (Ѫ) and a letter called “ik” (similar in shape to the current letter “u”) were sometimes also introduced into the alphabet, although they did not have any sound meaning and were not used in any words.
In this form, the Russian alphabet existed until 1708-1711, i.e., before the reforms of Tsar Peter I (the Church Slavonic alphabet remains so today). Then the superscripts were abolished (this “abolished” the letter Y) and many doublet letters used to write different numbers were removed (with the introduction of Arabic numerals this became irrelevant). Then a number of abolished letters were returned and canceled again.
By 1917, the alphabet officially had 35 letters (actually 37): A, B, C, D, D, E, (E was not considered a separate letter), ZH, Z, I, (Y was not considered a separate letter), I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, F, X, C, Ch, Sh, Shch, Kommersant, S, b, Ѣ, E, Yu, I, Ѳ, ѳ. (Formally, the last letter was included in the Russian alphabet, but in fact it was almost never used, appearing only in a few words).
The result of the last major reform of writing in 1917-1918 was the emergence of the current Russian alphabet of 33 letters. It also became the written basis for most of the languages of the peoples of the USSR, which until the twentieth century. There was no written language or it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet during the years of Soviet power.
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