E European History

» gspaulsson - Cyrillic Stumbling ...

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