May 24 is celebrated as the Cyrillic Alphabet Day in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus and Russia – and possibly even more countries, as there are over 50 languages that use it. Our Bulgarian-born project manager Svetlana shares some insight.
The Cyrillic alphabet is named after Saint Cyril who, together with his brother St Methodius, is credited with developing the script in the ninth century for the Slavic people. Cyril and Methodius were Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries who helped to promote Christianity amongst the Slavic nations. In the course of their work, they recognised that in order for the Slavs to engage with the new religion, it had to be presented to them in a language they could comprehend.
Back at that time, there was a popular idea that Biblical Hebrew, Greek and Latin were the only valid languages for liturgy – or languages in which to praise God. This ‘trilingualism’ was challenged by Cyril and Methodius, who introduced liturgy in Old Church Slavonic. They developed a script – the Glagolitic script, which is very different from modern Cyrillic – to give Slavic languages their own writing system and to enable them to translate the gospels and essential liturgical books into Old Church Slavonic. Their followers continued their work but abandoned the Glagolitic script in favour of an adaptation of the Greek alphabet and further developed it into what we now know as Cyrillic.
Cyril and Methodius were canonised as saints and widely celebrated for their work. It is their feast day that we celebrate as Cyrillic Alphabet Day and also as the day of Slavonic enlightenment, language, culture and literature. The Cyrillic script is used by around 250 million people in Eurasia as the official script for their national language. Since 2007, Cyrillic is also the third official script of the European Union, together with the Latin and Greek alphabets.
From ABC to АБВ
If you need translation, typesetting or advice for Russian, Bulgarian, Tajik or any other Cyrillic language, First Edition Translations has the expertise to help. We have been in the localisation industry since 1981 and handle everything from cookbooks to clinical trial documentation. Our multilingual project management team are always happy to hear from you under enquiries@firstedit.co.uk