Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitic alphabet ( in Slavic spelling also Glagolitic; bulgar / mazedon / Slovenian / russ glagolica, Kroat glagoljica, tschech. hlaholice, Slovak: hlaholika. .. .. . ) Is the oldest Slavic script.

History

It was (most likely, however, only 863) of the posted to 860 from Byzantium, originating from Thessaloniki scholar Constantine, a monk took the name Cyril later developed for the purposes of the Moravian Mission and Pannonian first Slavic church planting. Since the Greek alphabet was of limited use for the Slavic languages ​​and Konstantin wanted to emphasize the cultural autonomy of the Slavs, he conceived the Glagolitic alphabet as " distance publication"; that is, he put her though the Greek system ( "Font thinking": letters with sounds and a numeric function) based, however, created a formally independent of other writings, new alphabet. To be sure, Cyril could not escape entirely the influence of other writings. His sources also Caucasian (especially the Georgian ) and Semitic writing systems were used in addition to the Greek minuscule. It is certain also that Christian symbols (in particular cross, circle, triangle) played an important role in shaping.

From the structural archetype of the Glagolitic initially developed a round, then also a square version. The round Glagolitic dominated the Bulgarian- Macedonian- Serbian room, the younger square, especially in Croatia and has been used since the 16th century also for letterpress printing.

As in the last decades of the 9th century on the territory of the Bulgarian Empire, the Cyrillic alphabet was developed largely from the Greek script, some signs of the Glagolitic script were retained (without number), specifically for sounds that were present in Slavonic, in Greek, however, were missing. From the 10-11. Century Glagolitic Script of the Cyrillic alphabet by reforms became more and more displaced. While they were still played on other territories already in the late 12th century at best as secret writing a certain role, she was able to keep in Croatia for a long time, on the island of Krk and in the northwestern Croatian region of Istria even until the early 19th century.

The written around 1100 Baska tablet, one of the oldest and most famous cultural monuments of the Croatian language and history, is written in the Glagolitic script. The first printed Glagolitic Letter Book, a Missal, published in 1483 in Venice.

Even at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century appeared a Catholic church slavonic missal written in Glagolitic script.

Alphabet

The letter of the Glagolitic alphabet:

Glagolitic Alley

The Glagolitic Alley is a monument to the Glagolitic alphabet, which was built in 1976. The avenue leads over 6 km from Roč to Hum in northern Istria (Croatia).

Encoding

The Glagolitic alphabet is allocated in Unicode in Unicode block Glagolitic ( 2C00 - 2C5E ).