In 1919 there was an idea to replace it with the Latin one and bring it into harmony with the alphabet used in Western countries. The very existence of the Cyrillic alphabet in Russia was once under threat. He introduced lower case characters (before all letters were written with capital letters) and mandated the use of westernized letter forms, making the modern Cyrillic similar to the modern Latin font. The Cyrillic alphabet achieved its current form in 1708 during the reign of Peter the Great. Letters Э and Й were officially added to the alphabet in 18th century. But the reverse has also happened: at the end of 18th century the Russian writer and historian Nikolay Karamzin suggested to introduce the letter Ё. Most reforms saw the number of letters decrease and the simplicity of their inscription increase.

He eliminated the letters Е and С and many forms of the letter О. In Russia, the first reformer of the Cyrillic was printer and publisher Ivan Fyodorov.

The Cyrillic alphabet has gone through many reforms in both Russia and other countries. It is on the basis of this alphabet that the Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD by the followers of the brothers, who were beatified as saints.īased on the Greek ceremonial script, the original Cyrillic alphabet included the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet and 19 letters for sounds specific to the Slavic language. Cyril, who, along with his brother, Methodius, created the first Slavic alphabet-the Glagolitic-in order to translate Greek religious text to Slavic. The Cyrillic alphabet owes its name to the 9th century Byzantine missionary St. The History of the Cyrillic Alphabet Practice The History of the Cyrillic Alphabet

Russian Alphabet Font