Once upon a time, the Latin spoken by the Romans left an indestructible mark. We are talking about all European languages, which are divided into Romance and Germanic. As for the Slavic peoples, a fundamentally new script was developed specifically for them, in which echoes of Europe and the Balkans were traced. So, the main alphabets among the Slavic-European peoples were Cyrillic and Latin, which we still use.
Origin of languages
The origins by which one can calculate the birth of a particular language are very vague. Until now, ancient linguistics and etymology constitute one of the greatest difficulties for researchers. However, Cyrillic and Latin are some exceptions, since the origin of these alphabets is more or less clear.
Latin
We'll start with a language spoken in ancient Rome, which today, although dead, is widely used in medicine, history and philology. The prototype of Latin was the Etruscan unwritten language, which existed mainly in oral form and was used among the tribes of the same name inhabiting the center of modern Italy.
The new Roman civilization systematized all the dialects and developments of their ancestors, forming a full-fledged Latin alphabet. It consisted of 21 letters: A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Z. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin spread widely throughout Europe and assimilated into various tribal languages (Celtic, Welsh, Gothic, etc.).
This is how the languages of the Romance-Germanic group appeared - French, Italian, German, English and many others. Today, a single alphabet is used to write them, consisting of 26 letters.
Old Church Slavonic
For the Slavic peoples, Latin was alien and unacceptable. But given the fact that some lands were subject to papal authority, while others adopted Orthodox Christianity, it was necessary to teach people the Holy Word. The Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius created an alphabet of 43 letters, which became understandable to the Slavic people.
They named him after his elder brother Cyril, and he became the basis for the new Old Church Slavonic language. Later, the number of letters decreased, and the language itself spread over very large areas. Of course, it has undergone changes due to various dialects, and as a result, it has broken up into many independent languages. This alphabet became the basis for Eastern European writings, South European and Russian.
Modern international writing systems
Today, for the exchange of information at the international level, even in Eastern countries, Cyrillic and Latin are used. These are two universal alphabets that have a similar structure and symbols, and they are also able to replace each other. But at the same time, it is worth noting that each of them has its own merits.
Undoubtedly, the Latin alphabet is more common on the globe. With its help, many Chinese and Japanese words are recorded, it is widely used in bank documents (even in Russia) to record personal data. But any linguist will tell you for sure that the Cyrillic alphabet is a much richer and more convenient alphabet due to the fact that its characters convey a wider range of sounds.
"Alphabet" reforms
Replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet is a very important issue that has repeatedly arisen in many Slavic states. For the first time, the Latin letter replaced the Slavic in the Commonwe alth and the Principality of Lithuania. Until now, Lithuania and Poland, despite the Slavic roots of their languages, use the Latin alphabet.
Translation from Cyrillic to Latin also affected the South European countries. For example, Romania, which used the Cyrillic script, adopted the Latin alphabet in the 19th century. Montenegro, Serbia and the Czech Republic did the same.
What Russia went through
On the territory of our state, the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets fought for a place under the sun more than once. UndoubtedlyCyrillic writing was native to a Russian person, but repeated attempts to catholize the country meant abandoning it and introducing the Latin alphabet as the basis of written speech.
Peter the First wanted to abandon the Slavic alphabet. He even carried out a language reform, throwing out many letters from the alphabet and replacing some of them with European ones. But later he abandoned this idea, returning everything to its place.
The second attempt to Latinize Russian society took place after the revolution. At that time, Lenin carried out a unification reform. European units of measurement were adopted, there was a transition to the European calendar, and it was assumed that the language would be translated.
Linguists did a tremendous job of changing all Russian sources that were written in Cyrillic. But Stalin, who soon came to power, realized that the idea was devoid of common sense, and returned everything to normal.
Latin and Cyrillic: difference
It is impossible not to notice that these two alphabets are incredibly similar to each other. They even contain exactly the same letters: A, B, E, K, M, H, O, R, C, T, U, X. But as it was rightly noted above, the functionality of the Cyrillic alphabet is much wider. Due to such letters as “Sh” or “Sh”, for example, a sound is transmitted, which is written in Latin using two-three-four characters.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the letters "C" and "K", which in our letter are strictly distinguished by sound. And in the languages of the Latin group, their transcription depends onin front of the leading vowel. Well, and most importantly, how the Latin alphabet differs from the Cyrillic alphabet is that each sound corresponds to its letter.
The combination of letters in a word does not affect their sound, double consonants are pronounced clearly, there are no mute vowels and mute syllables.
