Shame to Cyril & Methodius

[vitus_wagner]

Today Russian orthodoxs celebrate memory of the saints Cyril and Methodius, who create shameful cyrillic alphabet which separated Russian culture from the rest of Europe for nearly thousand of years.

Only after Peter The Great reign, when it became a custom for educated classes to learn at least one of European languages, Russia became major player in the European politics again.

Comments

[vitus_wagner]

Note that it was before Great Schism of 1054. There was no Orthodox World, no Catholic World, there was single Christian World with single Catholic (world-wide) Orthodox Church.

[alamar.livejournal.com]

Которая равноправно использовала несколько алфавитов.

[nickgrigoriev.livejournal.com]

OK, "Orthodox" may be a wrong word to refer to the part of the world that gravitated around Byzantium. Anyway, my point was about the usefulness and prestige of Greek at the time. Greek was the original language of the New Testament, and Greek koiné acted as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean; whereas Latin was the language of the fallen Western Empire. An alphabet made of Greek characters (plus "shin" and "tzadik" from Hebrew) was clearly meant to foster integration, not to separate.

[leonid-.livejournal.com]

There wasn't such thing as "western empire" for 9'th century greeks as they considered themselves the Roman Empire itself. The word "rum" (meaning "romans") is still used in Turkish for Greeks living in Turkey (and Cyprus). The inhabitants of modern Greece are called Yunan (derived from arabic al-yunan).

[leonid-.livejournal.com]

before the Great Schism.

And Greeks were among the most advanced nations during that time. Way more advanced than the rest of Europe.