Explores the origins and deliberate creation of the Cyrillic script, tracing who invented it and why.
Key Takeaways
Cyrillic is not an organic evolution but a designed writing system, attributed to medieval scholars in the First Bulgarian Empire.
The script was engineered to fit Slavic phonology, adapting Greek uncial letters and adding new characters for sounds Greek lacked.
The historical record around Cyrillic’s exact inventors remains contested, with Saints Cyril and Methodius more directly linked to the predecessor Glagolitic script.
Understanding script invention has direct relevance to anyone designing encoding systems, fonts, or language tooling for Slavic languages.