# Cyrillic: why didn't Cyril and Methodius just use Greek? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 27, 2008, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067 "2008-04-27T09:52:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/1 "2008-04-27T09:52:38Z")
Saints Cyril and Methodius devised the Cyrillic alphabet. But why couldn’t they just use the extant Greek alphabet? Or the Roman one, for that matter? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/2 "2008-04-27T11:00:48Z")
[Ain’t Wiki grand?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet#History) They borrowed letters from the existing Glagolitic alphabet as well as Greek. They may have taken that approach because they may have wanted a one-to-one match between phonemes and letters for simplicity, and came pretty close to achieving that. There are a number of sounds in Russian that do not exist in Greek (or old Glagolitic for that matter), and perhaps required their own letters under that system. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/3 "2008-04-27T11:13:08Z")
Because the Greek alphabet was ill-equipped to deal with some of the phonetic aspects of the Slavic language that was being spoken at the time (basically Old Bulgarian, known also as Old Church Slavonic, and not Russian, as **ElvisL1ves** seems to suggest, which did not exist yet at the time), which contained palatalized and nasal sounds absent in Greek. Cyrill and Methodius therefore devised new letters such as Ѫ - ę (nasal e) ш - š (palatalized s) ж - ž (palatalized z) So basically what they did was to amend the Greek alphabet as it was used at the time by incorporating a bunch of new signs to deal with sounds that weren’t there in Greek. ETA: **ElvisL1ves** , Glagolitic is not a language, it is an alternative alphabet that was also developed to be suitable for use in Slavic Languages. ---
**Author:** ![Antonius\_Block](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Antonius\_Block](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antonius_Block)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/4 "2008-04-27T12:06:24Z")
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves] They borrowed letters from the existing Glagolitic alphabet… [/QUOTE] Saints [Cyril and Methodius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius) are usually credited with [creating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet) the Glagolitic alphabet, not borrowing from it. Although the [Cyrillic alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet) is **based** on the Glagolitic, it really only got going several decades after C & M had died. ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/5 "2008-04-27T14:48:36Z")
Because EVERY nerdy teenager thinks its cool to make their own alphabet, even though the one they currently use is perfectly suitable. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/6 "2008-04-27T15:26:49Z")
Why doesn’t English, French, Spanish or German simply use the Roman alphabet without modification? Everyone wants to tinker to get the alphabet closer to the natural sounds of the language it is supposed to represent. Nothing unique about Cyrillic here. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/7 "2008-04-27T15:42:52Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Why doesn’t English, French, Spanish or German simply use the Roman alphabet without modification? Everyone wants to tinker to get the alphabet closer to the natural sounds of the language it is supposed to represent. Nothing unique about Cyrillic here. [/QUOTE] Cyrrilic is certainly not unique in this respect, but it is definitely different from the languages/alphabets that you name. English, French, Spanish and German _are_ using the Roman alphabet with barely any modification, safe the occasional diacritical marks and ligatures. They modified the sounds the letters are supposed to represent, not the letters themselves. This is why any English speaker can read Latin (not knowing what is being said, maybe, but still) without any alphabet training but not Russian. You can’t say that Cyrillic is a modification of Greek the way our (English, French, Spanish, etc.) alphabets are modifications of the Roman one. Greeks cannot read Russian out loud without being trained to do so. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/8 "2008-04-27T16:46:44Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] Cyrrilic is certainly not unique in this respect, but it is definitely different from the languages/alphabets that you name. English, French, Spanish and German _are_ using the Roman alphabet with barely any modification, safe the occasional diacritical marks and ligatures. > [@](#): > > Not true. See below. > > They modified the sounds the letters are supposed to represent, not the letters themselves. This is why any English speaker can read Latin (not knowing what is being said, maybe, but still) without any alphabet training but not Russian. You can’t say that Cyrillic is a modification of Greek the way our (English, French, Spanish, etc.) alphabets are modifications of the Roman one. Greeks cannot read Russian out loud without being trained to do so. English speakers can read Latin because we’ve added letters (w and j), but we didn’t subtract any. The changes to Cyrillic (from Greek) are quantitatively different, but not qualitatively different. I believe the OP was asking about the former. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/9 "2008-04-27T19:04:32Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] The changes to Cyrillic (from Greek) are quantitatively different, but not qualitatively different. I believe the OP was asking about the former. [/QUOTE] Oops. I believe the question was about the latter, not the former. Why were changes made, not how many. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2008, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cyrillic-why-didnt-cyril-and-methodius-just-use-greek/447067/10 "2008-04-27T21:00:32Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Oops. I believe the question was about the latter, not the former. Why were changes made, not how many. [/QUOTE] You are correct. Just look at English to see the manglings with which we cope.