Hello, Dear Guys! Greetings, dear adults! You are reading these lines, which means that someone once made sure that you and I could exchange information using writing.
Drawing rock carvings, trying to tell something, our ancestors many centuries ago could not even imagine that very soon the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet would form words, express our thoughts on paper, help us read books written in Russian and allow us to leave our mark on history of folk culture.
Where did they all come to us from A to Z, who invented the Russian alphabet, and how did the letter originate? The information in this article may be useful for research work in 2nd or 3rd grade, so welcome to study in detail!
Lesson plan:
What is the alphabet and where did it all begin?
The word familiar to us from childhood came from Greece, and it is composed of two Greek letters - alpha and beta.
In general, the ancient Greeks left a huge mark on history, and they could not do without them here. They made a lot of efforts to spread writing throughout Europe.
However, many scientists still argue who would have been the first, and in what year it was. It is believed that the Phoenicians were the first to use consonant letters back in the 2nd millennium BC, and only then did the Greeks borrow their alphabet and add vowels there. This was already in the 8th century BC.
This Greek writing became the basis of the alphabet for many peoples, including us, the Slavs. And among the most ancient are the Chinese and Egyptian alphabets, which appeared from the transformation of rock paintings into hieroglyphs and graphic symbols.
What about ours? Slavic alphabet? After all, we don’t write in Greek today! The whole point is that Ancient Rus' sought to strengthen economic and cultural connections with other countries, and for this you needed a letter. And even in Russian state The first church books began to be brought, since Christianity came from Europe.
It was necessary to find a way to convey to all Russian Slavs what Orthodoxy is, to create our own alphabet, to translate church works into readable language. The Cyrillic alphabet became such an alphabet, and it was created by the brothers, popularly called “Thessalonica”.
Who are the Thessaloniki brothers and why are they famous?
These people are called this way not because they have a surname or a given name.
Two brothers Cyril and Methodius lived in a military family in a large Byzantine province with the capital in the city of Thessaloniki, from which the name of their small homeland came the nickname.
The population in the city was mixed - half Greeks and half Slavs. And the brothers’ parents were of different nationalities: their mother was Greek, and their father was from Bulgaria. Therefore, both Cyril and Methodius knew two languages from childhood - Slavic and Greek.
This is interesting! In fact, the brothers had different names at birth - Constantine and Mikhail, and they were named church Cyril and Methodius later.
Both brothers excelled in their studies. Methodius mastered military techniques and loved to read. Well, Kirill knew as many as 22 languages, was educated at imperial court and for his wisdom he was nicknamed the philosopher.
Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the choice fell on these two brothers, when Byzantine ruler in 863 asked for help Moravian prince with a request to send wise men who could convey to Slavic people the truth of the Christian faith and teach writing.
And Cyril and Methodius set off on a long journey, moving for 40 months from one place to another, explaining in the Slavic language they knew well from childhood who Christ was and what his power was. And for this it was necessary to translate all church books from Greek into Slavic, which is why the brothers began to develop a new alphabet.
Of course, already in those days the Slavs used many greek letters in the invoice and letter. But the knowledge they had had to be streamlined, brought to one system, so that it would be simple and understandable for everyone. And already on May 24, 863, in the Bulgarian capital of Pliska, Cyril and Methodius announced the creation Slavic alphabet called the Cyrillic alphabet, which became the progenitor of our modern Russian alphabet.
This is interesting! Historians have discovered the fact that even before the Moravian commission, while in Byzantium, the brothers Cyril and Methodius invented an alphabet for the Slavs based on Greek writing, and it was called Glagolitic. Maybe that’s why the Cyrillic alphabet appeared so quickly and simply, since there were already working outlines?
Transformations of the Russian alphabet
The Slavic alphabet created by Cyril and Methodius consisted of 43 letters.
They appeared by adding newly invented 19 signs to the Greek alphabet (which had 24 letters). After the appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet in Bulgaria, the center of Slavic writing, the first book school appeared, and they began to actively translate liturgical books.
In any old book
“Once upon a time there lived Izhitsa,
And with it the letter Yat"
Gradually the Old Church Slavonic alphabet comes to Serbia, and in Ancient Rus' it appears at the end of the 10th century, when the Russian people adopted Christianity. It was then that the whole long process of creating and improving the Russian alphabet that we use today begins. That's what was interesting.
This is interesting! The godmother of the letter “Y” was Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, who proposed introducing it into the alphabet in 1783. The idea of the princess was supported by the writer Karmazin, and with them light hand the letter appeared in the alphabet, taking an honorable seventh place.
“Yo”’s fate is not easy:
- in 1904 its use was desirable, but not at all mandatory;
- in 1942, by order of the educational authority, it was recognized as compulsory for schools;
- in 1956, entire paragraphs of the rules of Russian spelling were devoted to it.
Today, the use of “Yo” is important when you can confuse the meaning of written words, for example here: perfect and perfect, tears and tears, palate and sky.
This is interesting! In 2001, in the Ulyanovsk Park named after Karamzin, the only monument to the letter “Y” in the form of a low stele in the whole world was unveiled.
As a result, today we have 33 beauties who teach us to read and write, open up to us new world, help to be educated to study native language and respect your history.
I am sure that you have known all these 33 letters for a long time and never confuse their places in the alphabet. Would you like to try to learn and Old Church Slavonic alphabet? Here it is, below in the video)
Well, in your piggy bank of projects for one interesting topic became more. Share the most interesting things with your classmates, let them also know where the Russian alphabet came to us from. And I say goodbye to you, see you again!
Good luck in your studies!
Evgenia Klimkovich.
Real Russian Alphabet.
Grigori Ovanesov.
Grigory Tevatrosovich Ovanesov.
ALPHABET OF A SINGLE LANGUAGE.
No.
1__1___a___10__10____w____19___100____w____28__1000____r
2__2___b___11__20____i_____20__200____m_____29__2000____s
3__3___g____12__30___l_____21__300____j____30___3000___v
4__4___d____13__40___x_____22__400____n____31__4000____t
5__5___e____14__50___s______23__500____w____32__5000____r
6__6___z____15__60___k______24__600____o____33__6000____c
7__7___e____16__70___h______25__700____h____34__7000___y
8__8___y____17__80___z______26__800____p___35___8000____f
9__9___t____18___90___g____27__900____j____36___9000___q
_____________________________________________________________________________
No. - Letter number. h.z. – the numeric value of the letter. R. - Russian alphabet.
To indicate the beginning of a sentence, you must use the same letters with an increased size. It also means that the letter h is a soft voicing of the letter G, which is used in the Russian language, but is not recorded and is used in dialects (adverbs), especially by shepherds when they drive cows, reproducing the sound he (ge). This pronunciation of the letter G as h is considered unliterary. In addition, the same letter G, as a thin throaty wheezing sound, is written in the form g. Moreover, the letters “e” are pronounced as “yyy”, “t” as “th”, “s” as “ts”, “z” as “dz”, “j” as “j”, r as hard (English) “ p” and “q” as “kh”. The alphabet does not contain the diphtones I (ya), Yu (yu), E (ye) and Yo (yo) since their voicing with separate mono sounds is already in the alphabet. Of course, b and b signs are not letters, since they are not voiced and cannot be used in the alphabet. In the process of voicing the letters of the alphabet, people actively used wide range sounds that animals and birds make, imitating them. Of course, the predecessors of the alphabet in graphic notation are two interconnected alphabets compiled millions of years ago. I restored them for the first time in the world, with the same number of letters, which ensured upright walking, practicing grasping movements and creating the semantic content of words with voicing of letters. Moreover, having restored two ancient alphabets, I turned out to be them modern creator. In addition, with the help of ABCs, the concepts of counting and numbers are introduced with letter-by-letter notation and designation with fingers, arranged decimal system units of counting, concepts of length and time. The actual number of fingers with spaces between them on the hands and feet are four nines, which together make up the number 36.
Thus, with the help of the Unified Alphabet, a letter-by-letter way of writing numbers was created. For example, the number 9999 was originally written letter by letter as q j g t or 3446 as vnkhz (see alphabet above). In fact, it was not easy for me to figure out on my own the mechanism for writing numbers and numbers letter by letter. For this I used only the alphabet with numeric letter values. In principle, this is a very serious topic, so I highlighted it separately.
Moreover, for the first time in the world, I gave a definition to DIGIT and NUMBER.
In this case, the Number is the quantity voiced by a letter or word in a record.
So a Number is a quantity written in letters or numbers.
Of course, quantity is HOW MUCH.
It should be borne in mind that the number 0 is voiced by the word “zero, zero”, the number 1 is voiced by the word “one, one”, the number 2 is voiced by the word “two, two”, etc., and on different languages x in your own words.
Moreover, the reflection of the Unified Alphabet in the form of the positions of the fingers and their grasping movements made it possible to substantiate how all numbers were created up to the largest from 10,000 onwards, which are now used for counting.
In the alphabet numeric values letters determine the order of distribution into columns (groups). In the first nine (first column), the digital recording of letter numbers and their numerical values are written in the same way. In this case, the numbers of the other three columns of letters are written in two-digit numbers. Moreover, the numerical values in each column include significant figures from 1 to 9. Moreover, in the second column one zero is added to each of these numbers, in the third column two zeros and in the fourth column three zeros. There is also a complete correspondence between each digital entry of a two-digit letter number and its numerical value.
It should be borne in mind that Russian-speaking people, due to the absence of a significant number of letters (mono-sounds) of the world's first alphabet with the help of which the semantic content of words and their pronunciation were created, arise serious problems with the study of other adverbs single language peoples of the world.
We are so accustomed to using the alphabet that we don’t even think about how convenient the order of letters is. Many ancient peoples knew what the alphabet was; modifications of the alphabet were carried out as they improved writing, and their final form alphabets various countries We already purchased ours on time.
Definition of alphabet
What is the alphabet? Modern linguists identify three features that distinguish each ordered letter system. This:
A certain order of constructing letters denoting sounds;
A system of diacritics and superscripts that change the reading of the same letter or modify the characteristics of sound;
Names of letters and signs. For example, the letter "A" in Old Church Slavonic alphabet read as “az”, in modern English language- like “hey.”
Previously, another feature of the alphabet was the use of letters as numbers when counting. Sometimes we even now use letters instead serial number. But in the vast majority of cases, using numbers is much more convenient.
The number of letters is approximately equal to the number of the most commonly used phonemes in the language. However, language changes and lives its own life, introducing new or foreign words and putting obsolete idioms and expressions out of use. The totality and order of the letters of the alphabet changes extremely rarely.
Religion and the alphabet
According to many religions of the world, writing is a gift from the Gods. For example, the legends of the Phoenicians say that writing was given to them by the god of wisdom Tautu, and the great Anubis taught the ancient Egyptians how to write letters. But even ancient legends cannot answer what the alphabet is and why it arose. To solve the riddle of the alphabet, you need to look for answers from historians and linguists.
The most ancient alphabets
According to scientific data, the first alphabetic letter dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. It arose at the intersection of ancient written cultures- Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. This was an era of great migrations and resettlement - the exodus of the ancient Israeli people from Egypt, the destruction of Troy and the decline of the Hittite kingdom.
The first alphabets used various sound components, which denoted both sound and concept at the same time. The main written signs of the ancient peoples were closely related to their religious and ideological ideas about the world around them. Later, this connection was lost, and the primary letters of the alphabet became the basis for a universal tool for fixing any dialect and language. Thus began the victorious march of the alphabet around the world. The oldest alphabet found belongs to the Phoenicians. It had 22 letters. The language of this forgotten people became the founder of Aramaic and Greek writing.
What are the alphabets?
Linguists divide alphabets based on the naming of sounds in a particular language. Thus, there are vocalic, consonantal and neosyllabic alphabets.
Letters of the Russian alphabet, like most letters European languages, belong to the vocal group. Here, each sound is represented by one or two letters. For example, the letters “e”, “yu”, “ya” can actually mean individual syllables. But in general, the vocal alphabet clearly reflects the spoken sounds in writing.
The letters of the alphabet of the consonantal group in writing represent only syllables or consonant sounds. Vowel sounds are indicated by various diacritics or so-called matres lectionis - these are letters that indicate semivowels or aspirated sounds. These languages include Arabic, Phoenician and Hebrew.
The alphabet of the language of the Ethiopians or the Indian Devanagari people belongs to the third, neo-syllabic group. The writings of these languages use syllables with the same composition, but with different pronunciation vowels. The length of the vowel sound and its vowel sound become significant. Neosyllabic writing has a special structure, in which each sound is not only read in in a certain order, but also pronounced differently.
Signs of written structure
Any writing system In addition to the alphabet, he actively uses the following techniques:
Graphic arts. This is the name for the methods of depicting letters and signs when writing;
Punctuation. This is the customary name for systems of signs that separate words from each other and give the written form a finished look and a more complete meaning;
Spelling. This is a collective designation of the correct spelling of certain words, as well as rules and techniques for checking such spelling.
Alphabets based on Greek
Not everyone knows what an alphabet based on the Greek language is. It’s worth saying a few words about this separately. The Greek alphabet was the first to introduce vowel patterns into writing. In the Greek language, a letter order was first proposed, part of which is found in all modern alphabets. Greek writing developed in two directions - eastern, which was used by the inhabitants of Hellas and the city-polices of Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, and western, which was widespread in Italy, Sardinia, on the southern coasts of Spain and France. From Western Greek writing it was first formed Etruscan writing, and then Latin, which laid the foundation for all written structures Western Europe. East End The Greek alphabet was transformed into Coptic, and then into Byzantine writing, on the basis of which the letters of the Russian alphabet were developed. These are the ways of developing written language.
So the question of what is an alphabet involves many most interesting moments, some of which have been outlined in this article. For more serious and scientifically based answers, one should turn to the works of historians ancient world and linguists from various countries.
The importance of writing in the development of mankind is difficult to overestimate. Even in that era, when there was no trace of the alphabet, ancient people tried to express their thoughts in the form of rock inscriptions.
ABC of Elisabeth Boehm
First they drew figures of animals and humans, then - various signs and hieroglyphs. Over time, people managed to create easy-to-understand letters and put them into an alphabet. Who was the creator of the Russian alphabet? To whom do we owe the opportunity to express ourselves freely through writing?
Who laid the foundation of the Russian alphabet?
The history of the appearance of the Russian alphabet dates back to the 2nd millennium BC. Then the ancient Phoenicians came up with consonant letters and used them for quite a long time to compose documents.
In the 8th century BC, their discovery was borrowed by the ancient Greeks, who significantly improved the letter by adding vowels to it. Subsequently, it was the Greek alphabet, with the help of which statutory (solemn) letters were compiled, that formed the basis of the Russian alphabet.
Who created the Russian alphabet?
IN Bronze Age V Eastern Europe Proto-Slavic peoples lived who spoke the same language. 
Primer Slavic pismeny Greatest Teacher B. Hieronymus of Stridon
Around the 1st century AD, they began to break up into separate tribes, as a result of which several states were created in these territories, inhabited Eastern Slavs. Among them was Great Moravia, which occupied the lands of modern Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, partly Ukraine and Poland.
With the advent of Christianity and the construction of temples, people had a need to create a writing system that would allow them to record church texts. To learn to write, the Moravian prince Rostislav turned to the Byzantine emperor Michael III for help, and he sent Christian preachers Cyril and Methodius to Moravia. In 863, they came up with the first Russian alphabet, which was named after one of the preachers - the Cyrillic alphabet.
Who are Cyril and Methodius?
Cyril and Methodius were brothers originally from Thessaloniki (now Greek Thessaloniki). In those days in their hometown, in addition to Greek, they spoke the Slavic-Thessalonica dialect, which formed the basis Church Slavonic language.
Initially, Cyril’s name was Konstantin, and he received his middle name just before his death, having taken a monastic vow. In his youth, Constantine studied with the best Byzantine teachers of philosophy, rhetoric, and dialectics, and later taught at Magnavra University in Constantinople. 
Monument to Saints Cyril and Methodius in Saratov. Photo by Vasily Zimin.
In 863, going to Moravia, with the help of his brother Methodius, he created. Bulgaria became the center of the spread of Slavic writing. In 886, the Preslav Book School was opened on its territory, where translations from Greek language and rewrote the originals of Cyril and Methodius. Around the same time, the Cyrillic alphabet came to Serbia, and at the end of the 10th century it reached Kievan Rus.
Initially, the first Russian alphabet had 43 letters. Later, 4 more were added to it, and the previous 14 were removed as unnecessary. At first, some of the letters appearance resembled Greek ones, but as a result of spelling reform in the 17th century, they were replaced with those that we know today.
By 1917, there were 35 letters in the Russian alphabet, although in fact there were 37 of them, since E and J were not considered separate. Additionally, the alphabet contained the letters I, Ѣ (yat), Ѳ (fita) and V (Izhitsa), which later disappeared from use.
When did the modern Russian alphabet appear?
In 1917–1918, a major spelling reform was carried out in Russia, thanks to which the modern alphabet. It was initiated by the Ministry public education under the Provisional Government. The reform began before the revolution, but was continued after the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks. 
Wikimedia Commons/Jimmy Thomas ()
In December 1917, the Russian statesman Anatoly Lunacharsky issued a decree according to which all organizations were ordered to use new alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.
Although the spelling reform was prepared before the revolution and did not have any political background, at first it was criticized by opponents of Bolshevism. However, over time, the modern alphabet took root and is used to this day.
An alphabet is a collection of letters or other signs used to write in a particular language. There are many different alphabets, each with its own characteristics and history.
IN in this case we'll talk about the Russian alphabet. Over the course of several centuries of existence, it developed and underwent changes.
History of the Russian alphabet
In the 9th century, thanks to the monks Cyril and Methodius, the Cyrillic alphabet appeared. From that moment on it began to develop rapidly Slavic writing. This happened in Bulgaria. It was there that there were workshops where liturgical books were copied and also translated from Greek.
A century later Old Slavonic language comes to Rus', church services are conducted there. Gradually, under the influence of the Old Russian language, Old Church Slavonic undergoes some changes.
Sometimes between Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages they put an equal sign, which is completely wrong. These are two different languages. However, the alphabet, of course, originated from Old Church Slavonic.
At first Old Russian alphabet had 43 letters. But the signs of one language cannot be accepted by another language without amendments, because the letters must somehow correspond to the pronunciation. How many Old Slavonic letters was removed from, how many and which letters were destined to appear is the subject of a separate article. We can only say that the changes were significant.
Over the next centuries, the alphabet continued to adapt to the requirements of the Russian language. Letters that were not in use were abolished. A significant reform of the language took place under Peter I.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian alphabet had 35 letters. At the same time, “E” and “Yo” were considered one letter, just like “I” and “Y”. But the alphabet contained letters that disappeared after 1918.
Most of the letters of the alphabet, until the beginning of the 20th century, had names different from modern ones. If the beginning of the alphabet is familiar (“az, beeches, lead”), then the continuation may seem unusual: “verb, good, is, live...”
Today the alphabet consists of 33 letters, of which 10 are vowels, 21 and two letters that do not indicate sounds (“b” and “b”).
The fate of some letters of the Russian alphabet
For a long time, “I” and “Y” were considered variants of the same letter. Peter I, while reforming, abolished the letter “Y”. But after some time, she again took her place in writing, since many words are unthinkable without her. However, the letter “Y” (and short) became an independent letter only in 1918. Moreover, “Y” is a consonant letter, while “I” is a vowel.
The fate of the letter “Y” is also interesting. In 1783, the director of the Academy of Sciences, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, proposed introducing this letter into the alphabet. This initiative was supported by the Russian writer and historian N.M. Karamzin. However widespread I didn't get the letter. “Yo” settled in the Russian alphabet by the middle of the 20th century, but its use in printed publications continues to remain unsteady: sometimes “Yo” is required to be used, sometimes it is categorically not accepted.
The use of the letter “Ё” vaguely resembles the fate of the Izhitsa “V”, the letter that once completed the alphabet. It was practically not used, because was replaced by other letters, but continued to proudly exist in some words.
The next letter worthy of special mention is “Ъ” - solid sign. Before the reform of 1918, this letter was called “er” and was used in writing much more often than now. Namely, it was necessarily written at the end of words ending with a consonant. The abolition of the rule to end words with “erom” led to large savings in publishing, since the amount of paper for books was immediately reduced. But the solid sign in the alphabet remains, it performs very the desired function, when placed inside a word.