Balgarianovinite.com On May 24, Bulgaria celebrates the Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, of the Bulgarian Alphabet, Education and Culture, and of Slavic Literature. The day is traditionally marked by paying floral tributes to monuments of St Cyril and St Methodius and festivities at schools, community centres and libraries across the country.
May 24 commemorates the work of the brothers Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher (827-869) and Methodius (815-885), Byzantine missionaries born in Salonica, who devised the Glagolitic in 855 AD or 862-863 AD. The Cyrillic, from which the modern Slav nations’ alphabets are derived, came 40-50 years later, c. 902-912 AD. Like the Roman script, it was adapted by scholars of the Preslav Literary School from the Greek alphabet, borrowing the latter’s all 24 characters and adding 24 new ones for specific Slav sounds.
The Slav alphabet was adopted in Bulgaria in 886 AD as a vehicle of enforcing Old Bulgarian as the single national and liturgical language. From Bulgaria, the script spread to other Slav countries and is now used by some 250 million people worldwide in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Croatia. Romania also used the Cyrillic until the late 1870s. The alphabets of some non-Slav languages, like Kazakh, Mongolian, Ossetian, Tatar and Tajik, are also based on the Cyrillic script.
More than a third of the original 48 Cyrillic letters have been dropped in modern Bulgarian, which makes do with a 30-character alphabet (spelling was last reformed in 1945).
As Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, the Cyrillic became the third official EU alphabet after the Latin and the Greek ones. On May 2, 2013, the European Central Bank put into circulation a new EUR 5 banknote on which, for the first time, the name of the single currency and the abbreviation ‘ECB’ (European Central Bank) are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Bulgaria Celebrates Day of Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, of Bulgarian Alphabet 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-05-24 06:17:21 Latest news World news Country news Most important news latest news most important latest of the day Justice Petar Nizamov Feathers Petar Nizamov- Feathers Justice bg iustitia.bg iustitia iusticia usticia investigation Burgas Bulgaria news news of the last hour news of the day news of today Bulgaria news The news from Bulgaria blitz news top news most important most commented latest news Boyko Borisov news weather coronavirus news news weather facebook youtube facebook instagram news today news of the last minutes news today today news news bg news leading news hot news bg news site for news all news news bg news of the last hour latest latest news bg news of today news today news today news of the last hour latest news today news bg news news 24 hours news vesti bg novini news world bird bg bivol bg bivol trud bg novini latest news today novinite bg news hello bulgaria political party coat of arms delyan peevski scandalous Bulgarian National Television Free Europe Television scandal exclusive live tv live right now tv tv online tv program bg live now tv news online tv online live court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas district court Burgas appellate court Burgas prosecutor Burgas prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev Prosecutor Geshev Tsatsarov Ministry of Internal Affairs Burgas ODMR Burgas ODPR Burgas police Burgas district police Burgas prosecutor Tsatsarov SGS cases Varna court chairman of the SGS court decisions on civil cases decisions on cases Plovdiv court decision of the court decisions cases Varna court criminal cases district district court decisions work in the court SGS chairman of the SGS judges Sofia court post judges Plovdiv court Plovdiv judges Plovdiv Supreme Court Inspectorate Supreme Court Supreme Judicial Council lawyer lawyer criminal cases lawyer civil cases lawyer marriage cases lawyer administrative criminal law criminal process civil law civil process administrative law constitutional law