Why did Cyrillic H take the sound of English N and in Latin H took the sound of English H?

Question

Similar to P in Cyrillic which is English R. Except H and N seem to have no connection. Why did it form this way?

While I'm at it, why did Cyrillic begin using an backwards English R or Я?

****and in Latin, H

**** a backwards

Answer 1

OK, Cyrillic and English languages are from different language families.

In simple words, English derives 60% of its words from Latin, largely by way of French, but partly through direct borrowings made especially during the 1600s in England.
English language was also based on West Germanic, wich was partially established by Latin. It explains why Latin H (and many other letters in Latin) is just like our H.

Cyrillic on the other hand arrived from Slavic language family. Slavic havely borrowed from Latin (Roman) and Germanic during early ages. Also, Latin was a large contributer to East Germanic, which is very close to northeastern Bulgaria, where Cyrillic was established (in theory). There is so much simularity - letters K, M, T, C ( looks like our C but sounds like S) , B (looks like english B but sounds V), D, A, X ( this is Russian closest to english H), H (yes, h looks like ours but sound n), P (looks like our capital P but actualy sounds R).

It is complicated with R, Our capital R looks like russian Я (pronounced "ya") - I have no idea why but will look into it...

I hope it helps :)

Answer 2

Cyrillic and its predecessors were invented alphabets used to write Slavic languages starting about 1100 years ago.

If you look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet

you will see that many of the letters that you ask about were derived from Greek letters.

Answer 3

If I could answer these questions, I would surely win the Nobel Prize. There seems to be no logical reason, but the observation is very interesting nonetheless.