Facts about the Cyrillic Alphabet

1. 07

   Peter the Great's 1708 orthographic reform removed four letters from the Cyrillic Alphabet and simplified letter shapes to create a more European appearance for Russian civil documents.

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2. 06

   Glagolitic script, the predecessor to Cyrillic, contained 40-41 letters and was gradually replaced by the simpler Cyrillic system throughout the 10th and 11th centuries.

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3. 05

   Macedonian Cyrillic includes two additional letters, Ѐ and Ѐ, that do not exist in Russian or Bulgarian versions of the alphabet.

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4. 04

   Bulgaria adopted the Cyrillic Alphabet officially in 893 CE under Tsar Simeon I, making it the first nation to establish this script as its state writing system.

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5. 03

   The Cyrillic Alphabet contains 33 letters in its modern Russian form, compared to 26 letters in the Latin alphabet used by English.

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6. 02

   Over 250 million people across Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan use the Cyrillic Alphabet as their primary writing system today.

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7. 01

   Saint Cyril and Methodius developed the Cyrillic Alphabet during the 9th century to transcribe Old Church Slavonic for missionary work in Bulgaria and Moravia.

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