Spread of the Latin script in the context of "Christianization of the Slavs"

⭐ In the context of the Christianization of the Slavs, the spread of the Latin script is considered…

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⭐ Core Definition: Spread of the Latin script

The spread of the Latin script has a long history, from its archaic beginnings in Latium to its rise as the dominant writing system in modernity. The ancestors of Latin letters are found in the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan alphabets. As the Roman Empire expanded in classical antiquity, the Latin script and language spread along with its conquests, and remained in use in Italy, Iberia, and Western Europe after the Western Roman Empire's disappearance. During the early and high Middle Ages, the script was spread by Christian missionaries and rulers, replacing the indigenous writing systems of Central Europe, Northern Europe, and the British Isles.

In the Age of Discovery, the first wave of European colonization saw the adoption of Latin alphabets primarily in the Americas and Australia, whereas sub-Saharan Africa, maritime Southeast Asia, and the Pacific were Latinised in the period of New Imperialism. Realizing that Latin was now the most widely used script on Earth, the Bolsheviks made efforts to develop and establish Latin alphabets for all languages in the lands they controlled in Eastern Europe, North and Central Asia. However, after the Soviet Union's first three decades, these were gradually abandoned in the 1930s in favour of Cyrillic. Some post-Soviet Turkic-majority states decided to reintroduce the Latin script in the 1990s, following the 1928 example of Turkey. In the early 21st century, non-Latin writing systems were only still prevalent in most parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the post-Soviet states, Asia, and some Balkan countries.

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👉 Spread of the Latin script in the context of Christianization of the Slavs

The Slavs were Christianized in waves from the 7th to 12th century, though the process of replacing old Slavic religious practices began as early as the 6th century. Generally speaking, the monarchs of the South Slavs adopted Christianity in the 9th century, the East Slavs in the 10th, and the West Slavs between the 9th and 12th century. Saints Cyril and Methodius (fl. 860–885) are attributed as "Apostles to the Slavs", having introduced the Byzantine-Slavic rite (Old Slavonic liturgy) and Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest known Slavic alphabet and basis for the Early Cyrillic alphabet.

The simultaneous missionary efforts to convert the Slavs by what would later become known as the Catholic Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church of Constantinople led to a 'second point of contention between Rome and Constantinople', especially in Bulgaria (9th–10th century). This was one of many events that preceded the East–West Schism of 1054 and led to the eventual split between the Greek East and Latin West. The Slavs thus became divided between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Closely connected to the competing missionary efforts of the Roman Church and the Byzantine Church was the spread of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts in Eastern Europe. The majority of Orthodox Slavs adopted Cyrillic, while most Catholic Slavs adopted the Latin, but there were many exceptions to this general rule. In areas where both Churches were proselytising to pagan Europeans, such as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Croatian Duchy and the Principality of Serbia, mixtures of languages, scripts and alphabets emerged, and the lines between Latin Catholic (Latinitas) and Cyrillic Orthodox literacy (Slavia Orthodoxa) were blurred.

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Spread of the Latin script in the context of Hawar alphabet

Kurdish is most commonly written using either of two alphabets: the Latin-based Bedirxan or Hawar alphabet, introduced by Celadet AlĂŽ Bedirxan in 1932 and popularized through the Hawar magazine, and the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet. The Kurdistan Region has agreed upon a standard for Central Kurdish, implemented in Unicode for computation purposes.The Hawar alphabet is primarily used in Syria and Turkey, while the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet is commonly used in Iraq and Iran. The Hawar alphabet is also used to some extent in Iraqi Kurdistan. Two additional alphabets, based on the Armenian and Cyrillic scripts, were once used by Kurds in the Soviet Union, most notably in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Kurdistansky Uyezd. Southern Kurdish lacks a standard orthography, as of 2024.

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Spread of the Latin script in the context of Latin alphabets

The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to represent a wide range of orthographic traditions, without regard to whether or how they are sequenced in their alphabet or the table.

Parentheses indicate characters not used in modern standard orthographies of the languages, but used in obsolete and/or dialectal forms.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Christianization of the Slavs ← Hawar alphabet ← Sorani alphabet ← Latin alphabets ← Christianisation of the Slavs ← Kurdo-Arabic alphabet
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Latium → Writing system → Modernity → Phoenician alphabet → Greek alphabet → Etruscan alphabet → Roman Empire → Classical antiquity → Latin → Italy → Iberian Peninsula → Western Roman Empire → Middle Ages → Christianisation → Indigenous language → Central Europe → Northern Europe → British Isles → Age of Discovery → First wave of European colonization → Americas → Australia → Sub-Saharan Africa → Maritime Southeast Asia → Pacific Islands → New Imperialism → Bolsheviks → Eastern Europe → North Asia → Central Asia → Soviet Union → Cyrillic script → Turkic languages → Turkey → MENA → Post-Soviet states → Asia → Balkan →