Reforms of Russian Orthography

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, approximately during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. An earlier rune-like and possibly syllabic script was simultaneously discarded, and so thoroughly discouraged that today there are no uncontested specimens of it in existence. In this way, no sharp distinction was drawn between the vernacular language and the liturgical, though the latter was based on South Slavic rather than Eastern Slavic norms. As the language evolved, several letters, notably the yuses were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries, and not one of several attempts at linguistic standardisation properly succeeded.