Early Cyrillic alphabet The
Cyrillic script was a writing system developed in the
First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century, to write the
Old Church Slavonic liturgical language. It was named after
Saint Cyril, who with his brother
Methodius had created the earlier
Glagolitic Slavonic script. Cyrillic was based on Greek
uncial script, and adopted Glagolitic letters for some sounds which were absent in Greek – it also had some letters which were only used almost exclusively for Greek words or for their
numeric value:
Ѳ,
Ѡ,
Ѱ,
Ѯ,
Ѵ. The
early Cyrillic alphabet was brought to
Kievan Rus' at the end of the first millennium, along with
Christianity and the
Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet was adapted to the local spoken
Old East Slavic language, leading to the development of indigenous East Slavic
literary language alongside the liturgical use of Church Slavonic. The alphabet changed to keep pace with changes in language, as regional dialects developed into the modern Ukrainian,
Belarusian and
Russian languages. Spoken Ukrainian has an unbroken history, but the literary language has suffered from two major historical fractures. Various reforms of the alphabet by scholars of Church Slavonic,
Ruthenian, and
Russian languages caused the written and spoken word to diverge by varying amounts. Etymological rules from Greek and
South Slavic languages made the orthography imprecise and difficult to master.
Meletii Smotrytskyi's Slavonic Grammar of 1619 was very influential on the use of Church Slavonic, and codified the use of the letters Я (
ya), Е (
e), and Ґ (
g). Various
Russian alphabet reforms were influential as well, especially
Peter the Great's Civil Script of 1708 (the
Grazhdanka). It created a new alphabet specifically for non-religious use, and adopted Latin-influenced letterforms for type. The Civil Script eliminated some archaic letters (
Ѯ,
Ѱ,
Ѡ,
Ѧ), but reinforced an etymological basis for the alphabet, influencing
Mykhailo Maksymovych's nineteenth-century
Galician
Maksymovychivka script for Ukrainian, and its descendant, the
Pankevychivka, which is still in use, in a slightly modified form, for the
Rusyn language in
Carpathian Ruthenia.
Nineteenth-century reforms , written in the
Yaryzhka orthography In reaction to the hard-to-learn etymological alphabets, several reforms attempted to introduce a
phonemic Ukrainian orthography during the nineteenth century, based on the example of
Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Cyrillic. These included
Panteleimon Kulish's
Kulishivka alphabet used in his 1857
Notes on Southern Rus' and
Hramatka, the
Drahomanivka alphabet promoted in the 1870s by
Mykhailo Drahomanov, and Yevhen Zhelekhivskyi's
Zhelekhivka alphabet from 1886, which standardized the letters ї (
yi) and ґ (
g). A Ukrainian cultural revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stimulated literary and academic activity in both
Dnieper Ukraine (formerly part of the
Russian Empire) and western Ukraine (Austrian-controlled
Galicia). In Galicia, the Polish-dominated local government tried to introduce a
Latin alphabet for Ukrainian, which backfired by prompting a heated "War of the Alphabets", bringing the issue of orthography into the public eye. The Cyrillic script was favoured, but conservative Ukrainian cultural factions (the Old Ruthenians and
Russophiles) opposed publications which promoted a pure Ukrainian orthography. In Dnieper Ukraine, proposed reforms suffered from periodic bans of publication and performance in the Ukrainian language. One such decree was the notorious 1876
Ems Ukaz, which banned the Kulishivka and imposed a Russian orthography until 1905 (called the
Yaryzhka, after the Russian letter
yery ы). The Kulishivka was adopted by Ukrainian publications, only to be banned again from 1914 until after the
February Revolution of 1917. The Zhelekhivka became official in Galicia in 1893, and was adopted by many eastern Ukrainian publications after the Revolution. The
People's Republic of Ukraine adopted official Ukrainian orthographies in 1918 and 1919, and Ukrainian publication increased, and then flourished under Skoropadsky's
Hetmanate. Under the
Bolshevik government of Ukraine, Ukrainian orthographies were confirmed in 1920 and 1921.
Unified orthography In 1925, the
Ukrainian SSR created a Commission for the Regulation of Orthography. During the period of
Ukrainization in
Soviet Ukraine, the 1927 International Orthographic Conference was convened in
Kharkiv, from May 26 to June 6. At the conference, a standardized Ukrainian orthography and method for transliterating foreign words were established, a compromise between Galician and Soviet proposals, called the
Ukrainian orthography of 1928, or
Skrypnykivka, after Ukrainian Commissar of Education
Mykola Skrypnyk. It was officially recognized by the Council of People's Commissars in 1928, and by the Lviv
Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1929, and adopted by the
Ukrainian diaspora. The Skrypnykivka was the first universally adopted native Ukrainian orthography. However, by 1930
Stalin's government started to reverse the Ukrainization policy, partly attributing the peasant resistance to
collectivization to Ukrainian nationalists. In 1933, the
orthographic reforms were abolished, decrees were passed to bring the orthography steadily closer to Russian. His reforms discredited and labelled "nationalist deviation", Skrypnyk committed suicide rather than face a show trial and execution or deportation. The Ukrainian letter
ge ґ, and the phonetic combinations ль, льо, ля were eliminated, and Russian etymological forms were reintroduced (for example, the use of -іа- in place of -я-). An official orthography was published in Kyiv in 1936, with revisions in 1945 and 1960. This orthography is sometimes called
Postyshivka, after
Pavel Postyshev, Stalin's official who oversaw the dismantling of Ukrainisation. In the meantime, the Skrypnykivka continued to be used by Ukrainians in Galicia and the worldwide diaspora. During the period of
Perestroika in the USSR, a new Ukrainian Orthographic Commission was created in 1986. A revised orthography was published in 1990, reintroducing the letter ge
ґ. It also revised the alphabetical order, moving the soft sign
ь from the end of the alphabet, to a position before the letter
ю, which helps sort Ukrainian text together with Belarusian (following a proposal by L. M. Ivanenko of the Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics). On 21 May 2019, the
Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a
new version of the orthography prepared by the Ukrainian National Commission on Spelling. The new edition brought to life some features of
orthography in 1928, which were part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition. At the same time, the commission was guided by the understanding that the language practice of Ukrainians in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century has already become part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition. == Letter names and pronunciation ==