There are, as we have mentioned above, many circumstances, which seem to justify the opinion, that the Slavi were very early in possession of a degree of cultivation, which would make it indeed difficult to believe, that they should not have known how to read and write before the ninth century. Ditmar of Merseburg, the German, speaks of the inscriptions with which the pagan Obotrites, the Slavic inhabitants of Mecklenburg, used to cover their idols. The southern Slavi had much greater advantages. Neighbours of the Greeks, and in constant intercourse with them; both as a nation, by war and traffic, and through individuals who lived at the court of Constantinople; it can hardly be supposed, that no earlier attempt should have been made to adapt the Greek alphabet to the Slavic language, or to invent a new one founded on that basis. There was however not a single _satisfactory_ proof, that this was ever done with any degree of success before that time; notwithstanding all the grounds by which some modern writers, zealous and eloquent advocates of this opinion, endeavoured to support it.[10] It is only since Kopitar's discovery of some Glagolitic manuscripts _at least_ cotemporary with the most ancient Cyrillic documents known, that this question has taken another aspect. But whether there existed already a Slavic alphabet or not, it is very doubtful whether Cyril knew it; since the Slavic tribes among whom he and Methodius lived, were not acquainted with it; for all the legends and early historical annals agree in calling Cyril the inventor of the Slavic alphabet.
This alphabet, as arranged by Cyril, is founded on the Greek. In adjusting it, Cyril employed all the Greek characters; although a few of them have so much altered their shape in the course of time, as hardly to be recognized in their present form, e.g. the _Z_ and the _H_ of the Greeks. The first has the English, not the Greek pronunciation of that letter; the latter in its altered shape is the common _I_ of the Slavic language, and thus corresponds with the pronunciation of the modern Greeks. The _H_ or _Eta_ in an unaltered form, on the other hand, is the _N_ of the Slavic alphabet. The Greek _B_, ß, went over into the still softer sound of _V_, _v_;[11] and another sign was selected for Buki or _B_. This and all the characters to denote Slavic sounds, which he did not find in the Greek alphabet, Cyril took from other oriental languages, wherever he could find similar sounds; and thus very judiciously avoided that accumulation of letters to mark a single sound, which occur so often in all the systems of writing derived from the Latin. In this manner he extended his alphabet to forty-six characters or signs; some of them indeed merely signs for expressing shades of pronunciation, which in other languages are denoted by marks and points. Some others are not pronounced at all, and seem, at least according to the present state of the Slavic languages, utterly superfluous. Hence the Russians and Servians have diminished the number of their letters considerably; although the Russian has still some which could be amalgamated with others, or entirely omitted. Whether the Old Slavic actually had, at the time of Cyril's invention, so many different shades of sound, it would be difficult to decide at present, after that language has existed for so many centuries as a mere language of books.