by xdennis 5 hours ago

Curiously enough, Romanian, though a Romance language, was also spelt with the Cyrillic alphabet. Probably because we were under the Bulgarian empire (the ones who invented Cyrillic).

In the 1800s when we switched to Latin, it didn't happen abruptly, there were several intermediary alphabets which mixed Latin an Cyrillic[1].

Example:

    ши се варсъ (Cyrillic) 
    шi se вapsъ (transition alphabet)
    și se varsă (Latin)
    ʃi se varsə (IPA for reference)
When Russia annexed eastern Moldova, it forced them to switch back to Cyrillic, but with a monstrous alphabet derived from Russian instead of the old Romanian alphabet. The Russians forced Romanians to use this:

    ши се варсэ
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_transitional_alphabet