Writing in a broad sense is a set of written communication means : graphic structure, alphabet, orthography.
Writing strictly speaking is a set of written and literary monuments of a nation.
About the history of writing
Pictography was the earliest for of writing or writing by pictures .The next stage of writing was an ideography or symbolic writing.
Ancient Egypt writing is an example. From the first view it`s very similar to pictography but from the very beginning the two writings differed from each other. And if pictography as a beginning was designed to depict the whole image every element of ideographic writing – hieroglyph – depicted separate image. Chinese hieroglyphs are the most famous ones of ideographic writings and almost the only one we have now. It`s still used in People`s Republic of Chine. Chinese hieroglyphs became a basis for the present system of japanese writing. Totally there is 60 thousand hieroglyphs in the chinese writing. As a rule a chinese knows several thousands of hieroglyphs. And with that he can afford newspaper reading or magazines or imaginative literature. Another ideographic writing is wedge writing spread among peoples of Mesopotamia –sumerians and assyrian - babylonians. There was a simplification of images unless they became symbols not an image - up to the simple scheme.Ancient phoenicians made another important step towards the present alphabet – they put into using egyptian hieroglyphs for writing – but used only those ones that detonated only separate syllables. But phoenician language had sounds egyptians didn’t have. For those sounds phoenicians made their own. The real alphabet is the one that consists of letters not of syllables – where there are signs for not only consonants bur also for vowels and it emerged in ancient Greece for the first time. Greeks borrowed writings from phoenicians but it appeared not be suitable for using in greek language where vowels play a major role and signs for their denotation were also necessary. In this way greeks invented signs for the vowel denotation.Greek alphabet appeared to be so easy and suitable other nations of ancient Mediterranean used it. – Etruscans – lycans - lydians –hracians – carians. Many writings including Latin alphabet emanated from the greek one. The major part of humanity uses latin alphabet that has different additional signs and dual letter symbols for sound denotation missed in Latin language. In the medieval times latin language became international and for mane centuries it played a role of scientific language. Theoretical dissertations were written in that language as well as results of experiments. Encyclopedists and enlighteners, naturalists, mathematics copied in latin language, letters were like scientific articles and its discussions as there were no periodically edited publications yet. Two scholar monks from greek town Solun` (city of Saloniki in Greece now) worked out slavic alphabet developed on the basis of greek writing. That were Kirill and Mefodiy. In 1963 year the date of 1100 that passed from the times of the first slavic alphabet creation was celebrated all around slavic countries. As for Bulgaria the day of slavic writing is the 21-st of May. Strictly speaking kirillic writing (kirillitsa) is not the only early slavic one. Simultaneously along with irt there were a so called glagolitsa – (from the term “verb” – glagol - in old slavic “word”). It’s more complicated than kirillitsa. Some scientists think that Kirill invented kirillitsa and glagolitsa as any letters of the two alphabets are similar. Others say that one of the alphabets existed before Kirill but witch exactly of the two - opinions are different .Kirillitsa has 43 letters.By the way the letters weere user for digital denotation – for that lines were put above them.And even now kirillitsa is being used in different its variants in Russia,Bulgaria,Yugoslavia.
Russian alphabet got modern pattern in the beginning of 18-th century when Peter the Great applied a new form of written symbols – civil type instead of the church one. Cultural development and demand growing on not only religious books but scientific and educational, imaginative literature heyday demanded more simple symbols.
Then some letters of Kirillitsa became needless as sounds they denoted missed from the language. Reforms of Peter didn’t take out all unnecessary letters in russian alphabet and only some of them were officially missed. Along with it two new letters appeared in russian in the 18-th centuary – й (yi) in 1735 y. and ё (yo) - 1797 y.The letter “ ё “ was used by N.M. Karamsin for the first time the author of “Bednaya Liza ” novel (“poor Liza”).
After 1917 unnecessary letters were taken out in russian alphabet . Letters Fita,Ijitsa,hard sign and finally yat`, cursed by all pupils missed.Modern writings of most russian peoples are base don slavic kirillian basis. Peoples speaking in 60 languages use writing formed on the basis of kirilllitsa.
