Developing of writing

Ulfilas and his alphabet: AD c.360

Ulfilas is the first man known to have undertaken an extraordinarily difficult intellectual task - writing down, from scratch, a language which is as yet purely oral. He even devises a new alphabet to capture accurately the sounds of spoken Gothic, using a total of twenty-seven letters adapted from examples in the Greek and Roman alphabets. 

God's work is Ulfilas' purpose. He needs the alphabet for his translation of the Bible from Greek into the language of the Goths. It is not known how much he completes, but large sections of the Gospels and the Epistles survive in his version - dating from several years beforeJerome begins work on his Latin text. 

The achievement of Ulfilas is repeated in the 9th century by two missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, who adapt their own Greek alphabet for the purposes of writing down a previously oral Slavonic language. 

An even more extraordinary feat of the same kind is achieved by Cherokee Indians in the 19th century. Their analysis of their own previously unwritten language leads them to the conclusion that it consists of eighty-six different syllables. They turn it into a written languge by adopting a symbol for each syllable. 

Cyril and Methodius: 9th century AD

Cyril and his elder brother Methodius already have a distinguished reputation as theologians and linguists when the Byzantine emperor sends them as missionaries, in 863, to the Slavs of Moravia. The brothers are Greek but they know the Slavonic language spoken in their native region of Salonika. In Moravia they conduct church services in Slavonic. Naturally they wish to write down this liturgy, together with their own Slavonic translation of parts of the Bible. But there is no Slavonic script. 

Like Ulfilasbefore them with Gothic, the brothers need to devise a new alphabet for their purpose. 
Cyril and Methodius base their new letters loosely on Greek examples. The Slavonic alphabet is known today as cyrillic after the more forceful of the brothers - though in its surviving form it is probably devised by Cyril's followers inBulgaria rather than the saint himself (whose original invention is more likely to be the now extinct glagolitic alphabet). 

Nevertheless the remarkable fact is that cyrillic remains the script of all the Slav regions which adopt the Greek Orthodox faith - including Serbia, Bulgaria and above allRussia.