Cyrillic writing, invented by the Greek enlighteners Cyril and Methodius in the Middle Ages, is still used by many Slavic peoples. During this time, languages and methods of writing have changed significantly. A modern person does not always manage to read an old text on the fly. To do this, you need to take into account some of the features of the old Cyrillic writing.
Necessary
- - text written in Cyrillic font;
- - a dictionary of the desired Slavic language of a certain period.
- - historical grammar and historical phonetics of the Russian or other Slavic language.
Instructions
Step 1
Determine roughly what time the text you want to read belongs to. This can be understood from the writing style. The earliest books were written by the charter, it was replaced by a semi-charter, and then cursive. Each era is characterized by its own writing materials, the presence or absence of watermarks, their character, the author's handwriting, etc. An auxiliary historical discipline called paleography deals with changes in the shape of letters.
Step 2
See how the letters were written using different styles of Cyrillic writing. Please note that after each regular reform, some letters disappeared from the alphabet. Most similar sounds in different Slavic languages are indicated by the same signs, but there are differences that can be found at the beginning of the foreign-Russian dictionary.
Step 3
Read the bylaws text. This style is characterized by straight, clear letters and a small number of superscripts. Remember that in the era when this style was adopted, writing materials were very expensive. Therefore, they were economized in every possible way. For example, in texts dating back to the 11th - 14th centuries, very often there are no spaces between words. A person who first undertook to read such a text needs to learn how to separate one word from another. Find the first word and look in the dictionary for its meaning and correct spelling. You need to know exactly how it ends in order to determine the beginning of the next one.
Step 4
Pay attention to the accents. There are still not very many of them in the charter, and they mainly denote abbreviations of well-known words. If you come across such a word, think about what it can mean and find it in the dictionary. Sometimes the most popular abbreviations of that era are given in dictionaries.
Step 5
Writing by the charter took time and patience. He was replaced by a semi-ustav. The text was written a little faster, but the letters became less clear. In addition, a lot of superscripts appeared, especially in the junior semi-ustav. That is why semi-ustav seems less clear to modern people than the earlier style of writing. The documents were written in rather small handwriting on paper.
Step 6
When reading semi-ustav, deal with accents. They can denote not only abbreviations, but also some missing vowels. In this case, superscripts can be written both in the same direction as the main text, and across. The half-unstav also has an advantage - the gaps between words are still small, but already distinguishable. The semiustav was also used at the initial stage of Russian book printing.
Step 7
Take a closer look at the cursive text. The letters are very similar to the modern ones, but they seem to be written at random. However, the eye gets used to it very quickly. Learn to distinguish related letters from separate ones. Understand what the superscript symbols mean. There are a lot of them in this style of writing, they mean both abbreviations and omissions of letters.
Step 8
To read the printed book of Peter the Great and subsequent eras, determine what letters there are that are absent in the modern alphabet. Find out what sounds they mean.. Peter the Great introduced civil script for secular literature. The outlines of the letters differ little from modern ones, the gaps between the words are expressed enough, so reading does not cause any particular difficulties. You just need to find out the meanings of unfamiliar words.
Step 9
In the computer era, the phrase “read in Cyrillic, the addressee receives a text entirely written with question marks or squares. This is especially often faced by people who find themselves in a country where everyone uses the Latin alphabet - and, accordingly, Cyrillic fonts are not installed on most machines.
Step 10
If you are using your computer, install Cyrillic fonts and an appropriate keyboard layout. For different versions of Windows, there is a standard or phonetic layout. In the first case, you will need to somehow mark the keys themselves with Cyrillic symbols, unless you remember the location by heart. In the second - each Russian letter will correspond to a Latin one, which gives a similar sound.
Step 11
Unable to set the Cyrillic layout (for example, you are working from an Internet cafe or just from someone else's computer), use the virtual keyboard. An online text transcoder can also come in handy.
