The Cyrillic alphabet ( ; slavic кириллица (kirillitsa); also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by six Slavic national languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian) as well as non-slavic (Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik of the former Soviet Union, and Mongolian). It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language that is written with it.
The alphabet has official status with many organisations. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1, 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the EU.
