Cyrillic alphabet, Part 1

We’re trying to learn at least a little Russian before we travel.  That’s not only because it should help, just a little, with reading street signs and menus, but also because it should help, just a little, in communicating with two-year-old Elena.

Russian, as you might know, is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.  The modern Russian Cyrillic alphabet looks like so:

А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

That’s just foreign enough to look difficult for those of us who use the Latin alphabet.  A few letters are familiar, some are backwards, some are odd.  However, it’s not so bad if you put it in a historical context.

Tradition has it that Sts. Cyril and Methodius developed Cyrillic (Cyril, Cyrillic: get it?) in about the ninth century AD.  That may or may not be true, but what’s certainly true is that Cyril and Methodius were born in Greece, and the Greek alphabet was the precursor to Cyrillic.  In fact, there’s still a lot of similarity between the modern Greek alphabet and Cyrillic.  Here’s the Greek alphabet:

Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω

For example, note the first four letters: alpha-beta-gamma-delta.  Very similar to the first five Cyrillic letters (beta split into two Cyrillic characters, Б and В).

The historical insight doesn’t make sounding out Russian words a snap, and it might not even help if you’re not a mathematician, Biblical scholar, sorority sister, or an Athenian.  But it does make a tenuous connection back to the Latin alphabet.  See that Д with the slanted sides?  It’s descended from the Greek Δ, just like our Latin D.