Russian alphabet

The Russian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Russian language.

The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (⟨б⟩, ⟨в⟩, ⟨г⟩, ⟨д⟩, ⟨ж⟩, ⟨з⟩, ⟨к⟩, ⟨л⟩, ⟨м⟩, ⟨н⟩, ⟨п⟩, ⟨р⟩, ⟨с⟩, ⟨т⟩, ⟨ф⟩, ⟨х⟩, ⟨ц⟩, ⟨ч⟩, ⟨ш⟩, ⟨щ⟩), ten vowels (⟨а⟩, ⟨е⟩, ⟨ё⟩, ⟨и⟩, ⟨о⟩, ⟨у⟩, ⟨ы⟩, ⟨э⟩, ⟨ю⟩, ⟨я⟩), a semivowel / consonant (⟨й⟩), and two modifier letters or "signs" (⟨ъ⟩, ⟨ь⟩) that alter pronunciation of a preceding consonant or a following vowel.

History

Old Church Slavonic emerged as a standard language in the 9th century as a result of the efforts of Cyril and Methodius; it was the first Slavic literary language. A new script, later known as Glagolitic, was based on Greek cursive but included new letters for vowels that did not exist in Greek. This script was soon replaced by Cyrillic in the 10th century, likely developed by the disciples of Cyril and Methodius and likewise based on the Greek alphabet. The earliest evidence of Russian writing culture comes from birch-bark manuscripts dating to the 11th–15th centuries and written by laypeople.

The early Cyrillic alphabet had 44 letters, many of which were used for numerals. The alphabet was adapted to Russian from Old Church Slavonic, but over time it came to contain several redundant and superfluous letters as a result of phonological changes in Russian, including the loss of yers. Peter the Great made the first attempt to reform Russian orthography in 1708–1710. The last major reform took place in 1917–1918.