4 ms·

This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. T

This author is suggesting that Cyrillic is a sort of tool or weapon in the arms of the authority, and is imposed upon the people for purely political reasons. This is just false projection of modern politics onto old times. It's shameless propaganda. In reality, at the time, it was the Eastern Christian church that was more liberal than Rome. Rome insisted every local church make services in Latin, and didn't translate it in the local language. The Eastern church instead, had the bible in Greek, but allowed to translate it in local languages and make services in them. Initially, those translations were made with Greek letters, which weren't fully reflecting the phonology of Slavic and other languages, so they were extended, which produced Cyrillic. As I understand, the same way Coptic script in Egypt, and Ge'ez in Ethiopia were made, thanks to Eastern Christian church allowing this. p.s. Saint Cyril, in fact, invented the Glagolitic script. Cyrillic was named after him, and initially "Cyrillic" alphabet was mostly Greek, plus some characters from Glagolitic, like Ⱎ, ⱍ and ⱑ.

adrian_b 4mo ago
Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. This was very intentional, to make difficult for the younger people to read any books from before the Russian occupation, if they succeeded to find such books. This was coupled to a system of education were people were taught in schools a falsified history, were the Russian invaders were presented as liberators and where it was claimed that everything good in science and technology had been discovered or invented by some unknown Russians instead of those about whom the Western "imperialists" say that they were the discoverers/inventors.
- culebron21 4mo ago
  Funnily, you don't know or omit the details yourself. Russian Empire didn't give the conquered nations the alphabet, but USSR did, as part of supporting local nationalists (surprize!). And it first gave them the Latin script. Secondly, using different scripts for the same language isn't hard. Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin interchangeably, and many people used Latin traslit in computers and phones when their codepages weren't available yet, and it wasn't a big problem. It takes you at most 2 weeks to learn Arabic script without knowing the language, and with own language of slightly older version, it's even easier. You also suggest Arabic is their "proper" language, but abjad is not suitable for Turkic languages -- there vowels are significant, and many more than the 3 Arabic vowel diacritics. They had actually Turkic runes instead. Why don't you bash Arabic too? What about Germanic peoples? Was switching to Latin from their runes an evil oppression? It is military force and administration, that set school curriculum, use a certain script, and teach an edited history. Not the Cyrillic.
  - adrian_b 4mo ago
    The Latin alphabet and some local alphabets were allowed for some years after the formation of the Soviet Union, but eventually during the thirties Stalin has started the Cyrillisation by force of most of the Soviet republics. Any opponents were deported to forced labor in Siberia or killed. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most of the former non-Slavic members have abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet previously forced upon them.
    - culebron21 4mo ago
      They're just 3 states, and they have 0 texts from pre-Cyrillic period in the Latin alphabets they came up with. Azeri language is similar to Turkish, it's an easy job, and they can watch Turkish media with no issues, and there's an infinite corpus of Turkish texts for them. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the situation is that they used Arabic script before the Soviet times. There are no texts in the Latin they chose, and their scripts and languages are far from Turkish. If you walk down the street in Tashkent, there are signs and even announcements in Cyrillic, even in public schools. It takes long to take off, and it's probably 2nd if not 3rd version of Latin. And also, they teach Russian in Uzbekistan too, and watch Russian media, and share political views. You must have good imagination to suggest that the switch to Latin de-colonized them. In Kazakhstan, Latin was pet project of the former president, and is currently abandoned.
revengerwizard 4mo ago
Cyrillic has been used as a political weapon under the Soviet Union. For example, in soviet Moldova it was mandatory to learn to read and write cyrillic at schools. They effectively wanted to eradicate the local language and culture in favor of russian.
- culebron21 4mo ago
  No, you're wishfully thinking. What made people absorb the Soviet version of history and politics, was school curriculum, and central TV, and teaching Russian to keep them in orbit. Cyrillic alone won't allow this.
  - ak217 4mo ago
    It was one of multiple tools that were used to reinforce each other. The alphabet, of all things, obviously plays a huge role in cultural indoctrination and assimilation. You're being strangely defensive about this.
    - culebron21 4mo ago
      Oh, yes, the alphabet is used to write texts to convey evil empires' messages! Why am I so strangely defensive, really? Well, it's the most ridiculous argument people use here. Somebody is conquered, governed -- you may say colonized, -- there's army and police, but you all are pointing at the alphabet. Like, if you're on the USA/Israeli side in the current conflict, well, maybe quit using Arabic numerals, switch to Roman?
- nomorewords 4mo ago
  Didn't Romania use Cyrillic at a point in time?
- BAHKA 4mo ago
  Being a person grew up in Soviet Moldova I can't stop laughing at the nonsence you have just produced. In 1980s we had two types of schools - those with education in Russian and those with education in Moldavian language. "Russian" schools had obligatory 4 academic hours for Moldavian language classes, "Moldavian" schools had same amount of hours for Russian language classes. All banners, all documents, everything was written in two languages - it was OBLIGATORY. There was no single official document without two language versions of the same text. And btw, educate yourself - first alphabet of Medieval Moldova was... CYRILLIC! When Moldova Adopted CyrillicMedieval Era: The Cyrillic script arrived between the 9th and 10th centuries. It was introduced alongside Christianity, primarily through the influence of the First Bulgarian Empire. This script became the official writing system for the Principality of Moldavia when it was founded in the 14th century. Oldest Romanian document was written in Cyrillic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter

adrian_b 4mo ago

Cyrillic has been indeed frequently used as a weapon, even if usually not by the Church, but by Tsars or by the Soviet state. Even the Eastern Christian Church, while it allowed various local alphabets, most of which were derived from the Greek alphabet, it was much less tolerant with the Latin alphabet or anything else that could be influenced by the Catholic Church, which was seen as a hostile competitor. The Russians have forced most of the people they have subjugated (except for the 3 Baltic countries) to switch their writing system to Cyrillic, regardless whether they had previously used Latin, Arabic or other alphabets. This happened both during the time of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. This was very intentional, to make difficult for the younger people to read any books from before the Russian occupation, if they succeeded to find such books. This was coupled to a system of education were people were taught in schools a falsified history, were the Russian invaders were presented as liberators and where it was claimed that everything good in science and technology had been discovered or invented by some unknown Russians instead of those about whom the Western "imperialists" say that they were the discoverers/inventors.

culebron21 4mo ago
Funnily, you don't know or omit the details yourself. Russian Empire didn't give the conquered nations the alphabet, but USSR did, as part of supporting local nationalists (surprize!). And it first gave them the Latin script. Secondly, using different scripts for the same language isn't hard. Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin interchangeably, and many people used Latin traslit in computers and phones when their codepages weren't available yet, and it wasn't a big problem. It takes you at most 2 weeks to learn Arabic script without knowing the language, and with own language of slightly older version, it's even easier. You also suggest Arabic is their "proper" language, but abjad is not suitable for Turkic languages -- there vowels are significant, and many more than the 3 Arabic vowel diacritics. They had actually Turkic runes instead. Why don't you bash Arabic too? What about Germanic peoples? Was switching to Latin from their runes an evil oppression? It is military force and administration, that set school curriculum, use a certain script, and teach an edited history. Not the Cyrillic.
- adrian_b 4mo ago
  The Latin alphabet and some local alphabets were allowed for some years after the formation of the Soviet Union, but eventually during the thirties Stalin has started the Cyrillisation by force of most of the Soviet republics. Any opponents were deported to forced labor in Siberia or killed. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most of the former non-Slavic members have abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet previously forced upon them.
  - culebron21 4mo ago
    They're just 3 states, and they have 0 texts from pre-Cyrillic period in the Latin alphabets they came up with. Azeri language is similar to Turkish, it's an easy job, and they can watch Turkish media with no issues, and there's an infinite corpus of Turkish texts for them. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the situation is that they used Arabic script before the Soviet times. There are no texts in the Latin they chose, and their scripts and languages are far from Turkish. If you walk down the street in Tashkent, there are signs and even announcements in Cyrillic, even in public schools. It takes long to take off, and it's probably 2nd if not 3rd version of Latin. And also, they teach Russian in Uzbekistan too, and watch Russian media, and share political views. You must have good imagination to suggest that the switch to Latin de-colonized them. In Kazakhstan, Latin was pet project of the former president, and is currently abandoned.

revengerwizard 4mo ago

Cyrillic has been used as a political weapon under the Soviet Union. For example, in soviet Moldova it was mandatory to learn to read and write cyrillic at schools. They effectively wanted to eradicate the local language and culture in favor of russian.

culebron21 4mo ago
No, you're wishfully thinking. What made people absorb the Soviet version of history and politics, was school curriculum, and central TV, and teaching Russian to keep them in orbit. Cyrillic alone won't allow this.
- ak217 4mo ago
  It was one of multiple tools that were used to reinforce each other. The alphabet, of all things, obviously plays a huge role in cultural indoctrination and assimilation. You're being strangely defensive about this.
  - culebron21 4mo ago
    Oh, yes, the alphabet is used to write texts to convey evil empires' messages! Why am I so strangely defensive, really? Well, it's the most ridiculous argument people use here. Somebody is conquered, governed -- you may say colonized, -- there's army and police, but you all are pointing at the alphabet. Like, if you're on the USA/Israeli side in the current conflict, well, maybe quit using Arabic numerals, switch to Roman?
nomorewords 4mo ago
Didn't Romania use Cyrillic at a point in time?
BAHKA 4mo ago
Being a person grew up in Soviet Moldova I can't stop laughing at the nonsence you have just produced. In 1980s we had two types of schools - those with education in Russian and those with education in Moldavian language. "Russian" schools had obligatory 4 academic hours for Moldavian language classes, "Moldavian" schools had same amount of hours for Russian language classes. All banners, all documents, everything was written in two languages - it was OBLIGATORY. There was no single official document without two language versions of the same text. And btw, educate yourself - first alphabet of Medieval Moldova was... CYRILLIC! When Moldova Adopted CyrillicMedieval Era: The Cyrillic script arrived between the 9th and 10th centuries. It was introduced alongside Christianity, primarily through the influence of the First Bulgarian Empire. This script became the official writing system for the Principality of Moldavia when it was founded in the 14th century. Oldest Romanian document was written in Cyrillic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter