E European History

» Amanda Kendle - Cyrillic Stumbling ...

Hi Kerry,
Thanks, now I know who to thank for the confusing Cyrillic alphabet! I've traveled a lot throughout eastern Europe and before my first trip to Russia I sat down studiously to learn the alphabet - it helped a lot to recognise street names etc, but the similarities to our alphabet made it almost more confusing to learn ... Is it adapting to be more like our alphabet or changing in other ways??
cheers
Amanda

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» Kerry Kubilius - Cyrillic Stumbling ...

In response to Cyrillic Stumbling ... posted by akendle:

Well, I hope that Cyrillic doesn't change too much! While it can be confusing to English speakers, it's fairly straightforward in terms of pronunciation (unlike English). One of the most frustrating aspects to learning Russian (or any other language with a Cyrillic alphabet)is the "similar" letters that are actually quite different (Cyrillic P is the Russian equivalent of the "r" sound, etc.), and inversion between the two alphabets is almost inevitable. I think it's the languages that are changing rather than the alphabet - with the constant influx of foreign and technological terms, languages using the Cyrillic alphabet are having to adopt or adapt words to suit all the time.

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» gspaulsson - Cyrillic Stumbling ...

In response to Cyrillic Stumbling ... posted by Slavophile:

What is not so widely appreciated is that Cyril and Methodius also adopted two Hebrew letters - sh and ch, from the Hebrew shin and tsadi. The Great Moravian Empire, which included parts of the modern Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, did not retain its connection with Constantinople, but through Czech-German and Polish-German connections became part of Western Christianity and adopted the Latin alphabet. The divide between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets is essentially the divide between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity (which had not yet split apart in the days of Cyril and Methodius) - the clearest example is Serbocroatian - one language, but written by the Catholic Croats using the Latin alphaber and by the Orthodox Serbs using Cyrillics. And boy do they hate each other.

-- posted by gspaulsson

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