Bulgarian alphabet

Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet
Българска кирилска азбука
Script type
Time period
9th century – present
LanguagesBulgarian
Related scripts
Parent systems
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Cyrl (220), ​Cyrillic
Unicode
Unicode alias
Cyrillic
subset of Cyrillic (U+0400...U+04FF)
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet (Bulgarian: Българска кирилска азбука) is used to write the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.[2][3]

It has been used in Bulgaria (with modifications and exclusion of certain archaic letters via spelling reforms) continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic script overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then much bigger territory of Bulgaria (including most of today's Serbia), North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece (Macedonia region), Romania and Moldova, officially from 893. It was also transferred from Bulgaria and adopted by the East Slavic languages in Kievan Rus' and evolved into the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian alphabets and the alphabets of many other Slavic (and later non-Slavic) languages. Later, some Slavs modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language varieties.

  1. ^ Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. "First Alphabet Found in Egypt", Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
  2. ^ Curta, Florin (2006-08-31). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250. Cambridge University Press. pp. 221–222. ISBN 978-0-521-81539-0.
  3. ^ Hussey, J. M. (2010-03-25). The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire. OUP Oxford. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-19-161488-0.

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