Every so often a reader of this blog will be frustrated about not being able to read Russian characters. While we will occasionally include transliteration and audio, learning to read Cyrillic is much easier that you think! There are several reasons why reading Russian is beneficial, and we will look at some relatively painless ways of learning the alphabet.

Transliteration is Limited

There are several ways of writing Russian text in Latin characters. These systems differ in the ways they render Russian characters in Latin script, and that inconsistency can be confusing. For example, the letter х (ha) may be transliterated as “kh,” “x,” or “h.”

Moreover, the reader of transliterated Russian may be tempted to fall back on the phonetic rules of their first language when sounding them out. For instance, an English speaker reading the word zhizn’ (жизнь, “life”) may not realize, from the looks of the word, that “zh” is really the sound of “s” in “pleasure” and not the sound of “z” in “lizard,” and the apostrophe after the “n” makes that sound palatalized (“soft“).

Recognizing Loanwords

Learning to read Cyrillic allows you to understand international loanwords — in Russian and in other languages that use a similar alphabet. Imagine you are in a Russian city feeling illiterate because you cannot read words you would otherwise have surely recognized — ресторан, банк, кафе, библиотека, аэропорт, магазин (restaurant, bank, café, library, airport, shop/store), and so on. Transparent Language offers alphabet courses within its products, but here is a quick overview of the Russian alphabet to help you start reading.

Letters That Look And Sound (Generally) Like in Latin Alphabets

Both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Greek alphabet, so a few letters are generally the same. Let us look at some of these letters (capital and lowercase), their approximate pronunciation, and some examples containing the letter.

• Аа — “ah,” audio here; ма́ма (mom/mum), мак (poppy), мат (mat)
• Ее — “yeh” at the beginning of words, after vowels or the hard sign (ъ); “eh” after consonants, with the preceding consonant palatalized/”softened”; те́ма (theme, topic), маке́т (mock-up)
• Оо — “aw” (not “oh”!); кот (male cat), кто (who), том (/book/ volume); the sound will be closer to the letter “а” for unstressed syllables
• Кк — non-aspirated “k”; кака́о (cocoa), ком (lump), так (so)
• Мм — “m”; ме́тка (mark); коме́та (comet)
• Тт — unaspirated “t”; тот (that); като́к (ice rink)

Letters That Look But Do Not Sound Like in Latin Alphabets

These are the guys that tend to throw learners off because they look like a different letter in the Latin alphabet!

• Рр — trilled “r”; сестра́(sister), рок (rock music; also “fate”)
• Сс — “s”; текст (text), систе́ма (system)
• Вв — “v”; вариа́нт (variant); университе́т (university)
• [technically, this is not exactly like a Latin letter but is reminiscent of one] Ии — “ee”; интерне́т (Internet); кино́ (cinema)
• Нн — “n”; ›но́та (musical note), ›сена́тор (senator)
• Уу — deep “ooh” (not the American expression of surprise “ooh!”); тури́ст (tourist), мину́та (minute)
• Хх — like “ch” in “loch”; мона́рх (monarch), хара́ктер (personality, character)

We will continue learning the alphabet in our next post. For those just learning to read — how did you feel trying to put Russian letters together? Was the connection to Latin letters helpful or confusing?