What is Cyrillic?

In the 9th century AD, two Greek missionaries, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, were sent to the 1st Bulgarian Empire and there developed the Cyrillic script, which was used in church books and liturgies created for use by the local inhabitants. Cyrillic was originally a hybrid of the Greek alphabet and the Glagolitic script already in use. Cyrillic eventually displaced Glagolitic and is currently used by 225 million people who are native speakers of Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Macedonian, Tatar, Ukrainian and many other languages.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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Sergey Boev

Kurt VanderSluis - your explanations about Cyrillic are not very accurate. I am a Bulgarian, and I know well this alphabet, which is used in my country since IX century AD. St. Cyril and St. Methodius were not Greeks but Byzantine theologians. In that time there was not Greek state, but Eastern Roman Empire, later named as Byzantine Empire. They were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia (today a part of the Czech Republic) to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. They created the Glagolitic script to translate liturgical books for the use of Slavic people. Their mission failed and their disciples returned to Bulgaria, where under the patronage of Tsar Boris created the Cyrillic alphabet and translated the liturgical books from Greek. First Cyrillic alphabet was created by St. Clement and St. Naum, two of St. Cyril and St. Methodius disciples. About 100 years later, this alphabet was introduced in Kievan Rus at the time of Christianization in 988.