Cyrillic

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Wikipedia
The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced /sɪˈrɪlɪk/, also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languagesBelarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. It has also been used for other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language with which it is written. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1, 2007, Cyrillic also became the third official alphabet of the EU.


More than 200 languages have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The main ones are Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian. Each has its own peculiarities, including letters specific to one but not another.

Languages

  • Slavic languages
    • Belarusian
    • Bosnian
    • Bulgarian
    • Macedonian
    • Russian
    • Rusyn
    • Serbian
    • Ukrainian
  • Non-Slavic languages
    • Iranian languages
      • Ossetian
      • Tajik
    • Moldovan
    • Mongolian languages
      • Khalkha
      • Buryat
      • Kalmyk
    • Northwest Caucasian languages
      • Abkhaz
    • Turkic languages
      • Azerbaijani
      • Bashkir
      • Chuvash
      • Kazakh
      • Kyrgyz
      • Uzbek

Fonts

Keyboards

Here is the most common Russian keyboard layout

 ё 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
    й ц у к е н г ш щ з х ъ \
     ф ы в а п р о л д ж э
      я ч с м и т ь б ю /
 Ё ! " # * : , . ; ( ) _ +
    Й Ц У К Е Н Г Ш Щ З Х Ъ |
     Ф Ы В А П Р О Л Д Ж Э
      Я Ч С М И Т Ь Б Ю ?

Turkic and other native languages

In the Russia and central Asian countries there are many Turkic languages that are also written with Cyrillic. In most cases these languages have added 4 to 6 additional letters that are not used in Slavic languages. The same situation applies to native languages throughout Russia.

Unicode has codepoints for all these characters however it is not clear how many fonts have implemented these extra characters. In the case of Turkic languages, some of them are also written with a Latin-based alphabet but it may also have additional letters and it may not be possible for unambiguous machine transliteration between alphabets. In the countries in which both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are used, people are used to seeing some content in one alphabet and some in another.

The following image shows the extra letters used in Kyrgyz.
Bas kg.gif