alain capel

Norm,


Russian and Bulgarian are languages which are close but not similar. They both belong to the familly of Slavic languages.

The change of alphabet that you refer to was indeed made in the soviet union after 1917 by the bolcheviks which believed in mediocratizing the language to educate illiterate workers and peasants destined to become the ruling class.

Even if Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Serb, etc.. use similar (not exactly same)alphabet the words are different and when they sound close they are often spelled differently.

In the IXth century two Greek monks (Cyril & Methodhius)created a "Russian" language by giving a Greek derived alphabet to people who did not have one.

They created new letters to match sounds that were not pronounced in the greek language.

Similarly knowing French I can easilly partly understand Spanish and Italian spoken or written.


http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/7635/alphabet.html


http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/6490/language/ezik.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/6490/language/alphabet.html


Kind regards,


Alain


P.S. : Sorry for John Walters but he is wrong. All the details are in the links above.