Distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet worldwide. The dark green shows the countries that use Cyrillic as the one main script; the lighter green those that use Cyrillic alongside another official script.

This is a list of national variants of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Sounds are indicated using IPA. These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions?for example, Russian ??? (yego, ?him/his?), which is pronounced instead of .

Note that transliterated spellings of names may vary, especially y/j/i, but also gh/g/h and zh/j.

See also a more complete list of languages using Cyrillic.

Common letters

The following table lists Cyrillic letters which are used in most national versions of the Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.

The soft sign ? is not a letter representing a sound, but modifies the sound of the preceding letter, indicating palatalisation (?softening?), also separates the consonant and the following vowel. Sometimes does not have phonetical meaning, just orthographical (Russian ???, tush /tu?/ = ?flourish after a toast?, ????, tush? /tu?/ = ?india ink?). In some languages, a hard sign ? or apostrophe ? just separates consonant and the following vowel (?? /b?a/, ??? /b?ja/, ??? = ??? /bja/).

Slavic languages

Belarusian

The Belarusian alphabet displays the following features:

• ? represents a voiced glottal fricative .
• Yo (? ?)
• I resembles the Latin letter I (?, ?).
• U short (?, ?) falls between U and Ef. It looks like U (?) with a breve and represents , or like the u part of the diphthong in loud.
• A combination of sh and ch (??, ??) is used where those familiar only with Russian and or Ukrainian would expect Shcha (?, ?).
• Yery (? ?)
• E (? ?)
• An apostrophe is used to indicate de-palatalization of the preceding consonant.
• The letter combinations ?? ?? and ?? ?? appear after ? ? in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. These digraphs each represent a single sound: ?? , ?? .

Bosnian

The Bosnian language uses both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets^[1] but Cyrillic is seldom if ever used in today's practice. There was also a Bosnian Cyrillic script (Bosan?ica) used in the Middle Ages, along with other scripts, although its connection with the Bosnian language, which was only standardised in the 1990s and whose status as a language is still debated, is tenuous at best. The modern Cyrillic used to write the language is the Serbian variant.

Bulgarian

The Bulgarian alphabet features:

• (?) represents and is called "?" .
• (?) represents and is called "??" .
• (?) represents the vowel , and is called "?? ?????" ('big er').

?he Bulgarian names for the consonants are , , etc. instead of , , etc.

Macedonian

Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:

• Between Ze and I is the letter Dze (?, ?), which looks like the Latin letter S and represents .
• Djerv is replaced by Gje (?, ?), which looks like Ghe with an acute accent (´) and represents ,
• Tjerv is replaced by Kja (?, ?), which looks like Ka with an acute accent (´), represents ,

Russian

• Yo (? ?)
• The Hard Sign¹ (? ?) indicates no palatalisation²
• Yery (? ?) indicates (an allophone of )
• E (? ?)
• ? and ? indicate sounds that are retroflex

Notes:

1. In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, still preserved in Bulgarian. See the notes for Bulgarian.
2. When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with ) follows a consonant, the consonant will become palatalised (the sound will mix with the consonant), and the vowel?s initial sound will not be heard independently. The Hard Sign will indicate that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign will indicate that the consonant should be palatised, but the vowel?s sound will not mix with the palatalization of the consonant. The Soft Sign will also indicate that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatised. Examples: ?? (); ?? (); ??? (); ??? (); ? (); ?? ().

Historical letters: before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: (replaced by ??), (???? "Fita", replaced by ??), (??? "Yat", replaced by ??), and (????? "Izhitsa", replaced by ??); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

Rusyn

The Rusyn language is spoken by the Lemko Rusyns in Carpathian Ruthenia, Slovakia, and Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Serbia.

*Letters absent from Pannonian Rusyn alphabet.

Serbian

The Serbian alphabet shows the following features:

• E represents .
• Between ? and E is the letter Dje (?, ?), which represents , and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards.
• Between ? and ? is the letter Je (?, ?), represents , which looks like the Latin letter J.
• Between ? and ? is the letter Lje (?, ?), representing , which looks like a ligature of ? and the Soft Sign .
• Between ? and ? is the letter Nje (?, ?), representing , which looks like a ligature of ? and the Soft Sign.
• Between ? and ? is the letter Tshe (?, ?), representing and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top at half of the vertical line.
• Between ? and ? is the letter Dzhe (?, ?), representing , which looks like Ts but with the downturn moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.
• ? is the last letter.

Ukrainian

The Ukrainian alphabet displays the following features:

• Ve represents (which may be pronounced in a word final position and before consonants).
• He (?, ?) represents a voiced glottal fricative, ().
• Ge (?, ?) appears after He, represents . It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in the Soviet Union after 1933, so it is missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)
• E (?, ?) represents .
• Ye (?, ?) appears after E, represents .
• Y (?, ?) represents .
• I (?, ?) appears after Y, represents .
• Yi (?, ?) appears after I, represents .
• Yot (?, ?) represents .
• Shcha (?, ?) represents .
• An apostrophe (?) is used to mark de-palatalization of the preceding consonant.
• Like in Belarusian Cyrillic, the sounds , are represented by digraphs ?? and ?? respectively.
• Until reforms in 1990, Soft sign (?, ?) appeared at the end of the alphabet, after Ju (?, ?) and Ja (?, ?), rather than before them, as in Russian. Many native speakers continue to ignore this reform.

Non-Slavic languages

These alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of them were generated by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, Kerashen Tatars) in 1870s. Later such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those alphabets were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script, etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in the late 1930s, all of the Latin?based alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched over to Cyrillic as well (the Baltic Republics were annexed later, and weren't affected by this change). The Abkhazian alphabet was switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Stalin, Abkhaz also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.

In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to represent local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies?either Roman?based or returning to a former script.

Unlike the Latin alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages by using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets invented in the nineteenth century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Bulgarian and Bosnian Sephardim lacking Hebrew typefaces occasionally printed Judeo-Spanish in Cyrillic.^[2]

Iranian languages

Ossetian

The Ossetic language has officially used the Cyrillic alphabet since 1937.

Tajik

The Tajik language is written using a Cyrillic-based alphabet.

Moldovan

The Moldovan language used the Cyrillic alphabet between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.

Mongolian

The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia), Buryat (around Lake Baikal) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet.

Overview

This table contains all the characters used.

?? is shown twice as it appears at two different location in Buryat and Kalmyk

Khalkha

• ? ? =
• ? ? = ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = (after a hard consonant)
• ? ? = (extra short)
• ? ? = ,

The Cyrillic letters ??, ?? and ?? are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat

The Buryat (??????) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha above, but ?? indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ?? or ?? in its native words.

• ? ? = ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = ,
• ? ? = ,

Kalmyk

The Kalmyk (??????) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters ??, ?? and ?? appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (??????), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (?????? = ).

• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =

Northwest Caucasian languages

Living Northwest Caucasian languages are generally written using adaptations of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Abkhaz

Abkhaz is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia.

Turkic languages

Azerbaijani

The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Azerbaijani language from 1939 to 1991.

Bashkir

The Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Bashkir language after the winter of 1938.

Chuvash

The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.

Kazakh

Kazakh is also written with the Latin alphabet (in Turkey, but not in Kazakhstan), and modified Arabic alphabet (in the People's Republic of China, Iran and Afghanistan).

• ? ? =
• ? ? = (voiced uvular fricative)
• ? ? = (voiceless uvular plosive)
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? = , ,
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =

The Cyrillic letters ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ?? and ?? are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.

Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.

• ? ? = (velar nasal)
• ? ? = (close front rounded vowel)
• ? ? = (open-mid front rounded vowel)

Tatar

Tatar has used Cyrillic since 1939, but the Russian Orthodox Tatar community has used Cyrillic since the 19th century. In 2000 a new Latin alphabet was adopted for Tatar, but it is used generally in the Internet.

Uzbek

The Cyrillic alphabet is still used most often for the Uzbek language, although the government has adopted a version of the Latin alphabet to replace it. The deadline for making this transition has however been repeatedly changed. The latest deadline was supposed to be 2005, but was shifted once again a few more years. Some scholars are not convinced that the transition will be made at all.

• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =
• ? ? =

Sino-Tibetan

Dungan language

Paleosiberian languages

Cyrillic-based orthographies are in use for several of the Paleosiberian languages in Russia, including Itelmen, Koryak, Nivkh and Yukaghir.^[3]

References

See also

• List of Cyrillic letters

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