The Russian alphabet (, or , more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, Old Slavonic. Initially an old variant of the Bulgarian alphabet, it became used in the Kievan Rusʹ since the 10th century to write what would become the Russian language. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ), a semivowel / consonant (), and two modifier letters or "signs" (, ) that alter pronunciation of a preceding consonant or a following vowel. Letters An alternative form of the letter El (Л л) closely resembles the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ). Historic letters Letters eliminated in 1917–18 — Identical in pronunciation to , was used exclusively immediately before other vowels and the ("Short I") (for example, , 'patriarch') and in the word ('world') and its derivatives, to distinguish it from the word ('peace') (the two words are actually etymologically cognate and not arbitrarily homonyms). ѣ — Originally had a distinct sound, but by the middle of the eighteenth century had become identical in pronunciation to in the standard language. Since its elimination in 1918, it has remained a political symbol of the old orthography. ѳ — From the Greek theta, was identical to in pronunciation, but was used etymologically (for example, "Theodore" became "Fyodor"). ѵ — From the Greek upsilon, usually identical to in pronunciation, as in Byzantine Greek, was used etymologically for Greek loanwords, like Latin Y (as in synod, myrrh); by 1918, it had become very rare. In spellings of the eighteenth century, it was also used after some vowels, where it has since been replaced with or (rarely) . For example, a Greek prefix originally spelled (equivalent to English ) is now spelled in most cases and as a component in some compound words. Letters eliminated before 1750 corresponded to a more archaic pronunciation, already absent in East Slavic at the start of the historical period, but kept by tradition in certain words until the eighteenth century in secular writing, and in Church Slavonic and Macedonian to the present day. and derived from Greek letters xi and psi, used