Die kyrillische Schrift als Symbol kultureller Zugehörigkeit und Orientierung

In the history of mankind there have been several attempts to create new alphabets. More often, however, people adapt already existing writing systems to a given language. In both cases, the introduction of literacy depends on external factors, usually related with cultural, political and economic factors, with the linguistic features of the systems involved playing a secondary role. The article focuses on the use of the Cyrillic alphabet for non-Slavic languages of the North Caucasus and its role as marker of cultural and ethnic identity. Its adoption was not based on purely linguistic arguments, but reflected rather a cultural program as well as political-military strategies. The starting point of the discussion shall be the case of Ossetic, an Iranic language now spoken in the Central Caucasus, whose writing history, notwithstanding the relatively short period of time involved (just over two centuries), offers a considerable number of noteworthy moments