Zhivete and Its Cyrillic Counterpart

Cyrillic zhivete is the same letter by name, sound and position, and in both alphabets it takes no numeral value from Greek because there is no Greek letter behind it. The two scripts then diverge over what to do about that. Glagolitic counts its own letters in order and gives it seven. Cyrillic, keeping the Greek values, gives it nothing at all, so this is one of the Cyrillic letters that simply does not appear in a number written out in letters.

That makes the pair a good illustration of what each system is for. The Glagolitic arithmetic is self-contained and can number any letter in the alphabet. The Cyrillic arithmetic is a Greek system with Slavic letters inserted into it, and the inserted letters are invisible to it. Neither is an accident: the first belongs to an alphabet designed as a whole, and the second to an alphabet assembled from an existing one.

The Cyrillic sign for this sound is one of the letters most often pointed to in the argument over the relationship between the two scripts, because Greek supplied nothing for it and it had to come from somewhere. Proposals include the Glagolitic letter, a Semitic model and a form composed for the purpose. The atlas records the pairing and does not choose among the explanations.