The alphabet is the key to knowledge. Studying the alphabet, we make the first and very step towards a systematic acquaintance with science and culture, we get an irreplaceable tool for gaining new knowledge.
It is believed that the first alphabetic alphabet appeared in the 13th century BC. e., when the Phoenicians made a decisive transition from signs denoting words to signs denoting sounds. Almost all existing alphabets are descendants of the Phoenician or Canaanite script. In the Phoenician alphabet, letters designated only consonants and there were enough of them. However, even in modern Russian, the overwhelming majority of texts will remain understandable if they are written only in consonant letters.
The history of the Russian alphabet can be traced quite clearly. It comes from the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, which Cyril and Methodius gradually adapted, first to the Old Slavonic language, and then to the Old Russian. The Russian alphabet developed as a living organism - new letters appeared, some rarely used or completely unnecessary ones disappeared. The current version of the Russian alphabet can be dated back to 1942. Then the use of the letter "ё" became mandatory, respectively, in the alphabet there were 33 letters.
Here are some fun facts about the Russian alphabet:
1. The Cyrillic alphabet had 49 letters. Gradually, their number decreased to 32, and then again grew slightly due to “e”.
2. Most often the letter “o” is used in Russian. The rarest letter in Russian writing is a hard sign.
3. The letter "o" is 2,000 years older than the entire alphabet. It is used 8 times in the word “defense capability”.
4. The letter "y" takes a rather high 23rd place out of 33 in frequency of use, but only 74 words start with it.
5. There are no words in Russian beginning with soft and hard signs and "s".
6. The letter "f" occurs exclusively in words of foreign origin.
7. Peter I, reforming the spelling, removed the letters "xi", "omega" and "psi" from the alphabet. The emperor wanted to remove four more letters and all superscripts, but the opposition of the priests was so strong that even the frantic Peter was forced to retreat. Lomonosov later called the reform of Peter I the dressing up of letters from winter fur coats into summer clothes.
8. The letter "ё" was invented back in 1783, but was finally included in the alphabet only after a century and a half. The surname of the hero "Anna Karenina" was "Levin". In Levin it was renamed by the printing workers. However, later Andrei Bely and Maria Tsvetaeva did not use this letter in principle. In 1956 it was made optional again. On the Russian Internet, heated debates about "yo" did not subside until 2010.
9. A solid sign and now is not the easiest letter to use, and before the reform of 1918, its predecessor, called "er", was the cornerstone of literacy. It had to be placed according to special rules at the end of words (but not all) ending in a consonant. There were more than 50 "ers" on almost any book page. All the "eras" copied from "War and Peace" would take 70 pages.
10. During the reform of 1918, the last two letters were removed from the alphabet, and the last was "I". In certain circles, the reform was interpreted as follows: "The Bolsheviks put human individuality in last place."
11. The deletion of the letter “myrrh” from the alphabet was also interpreted in a corresponding way - the new government refuses to anoint the Orthodox.
12. The Cyrillic alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet, so the order of the letters is very similar in the Russian and Greek alphabets. With the letters denoting sounds that are not in Greek, Cyril and Methodius acted simply and logically - they placed them in front of the most similar Greek ("b" before "c", "g" before "z"), or put them at the end of the list ...
13. With the exception of the counted units, all words starting with “a” are borrowed. For example, "alphabet". But the word "alphabet" is native Russian.
14. The well-known writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn already in the 1970s proposed to return “yat” and “er” to the Russian alphabet.
15. The letter "e" appeared in the alphabet after borrowing foreign words with a corresponding sound. Before that, there was no need for it. Even now, in many words, especially at the end, it is replaced by "e", for example, "pince-nez".
