The Russian Alphabet

Guide to the Russian Alphabet ©

Newcomers often think the Russian alphabet is a major obstacle to learning the language, but it is the least of your worries! In fact, you can learn the alphabet—meaning you can recognize the English equivalents of all the Russian letters—inside one hour. It takes much longer, of course, to learn how to pronounce Russian letters correctly, whether in isolation or grouped together in words and phrases.

The surest way to learn how to pronounce Russian letters and words correctly, and indeed to acquire all the basic language skills in Russian, is to take the excellent language courses offered by the UofA Russian Department.

You can also buy commercial language learning books and/or tapes. It takes a lot of discipline to work by yourself and of course using this method you do not as a rule receive any immediate feedback. There are now some "self-taught" computer programs that come with sound so you can check yourself.

A much more expensive way of improving your pronunciation is to visit Russia. If you take that step, get all the essential shots (Russia and Eastern Europe are medical danger zones at the moment) and be very careful while walking around because, sadly, Moscow and other major Russian cities now resemble most American cities as centers of violence and (organized) crime.

If you are not ready to invest a great deal of time and money, the easiest way to refine your pronunciation is to find someone with a native command of Russian, most likely one of the many recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and ask him/her politely to help you. There are quite a few bilingual students at the UofA. As a rule Russians are extremely patient and will help you all they can.

But to return to our project, which is merely to learn how to recognize the letters of the Russian alphabet within one hour. Being able to read words would be a great help if you were visiting Russia as a tourist, not as a student.

Members of fraternities and sororities have an advantage learning the Russian alphabet because many letters are Greek, although there are some trick letters you must watch out for (see below).

Here is the Russian alphabet, which consists of 32 letters instead of our 26, so we have to do some maneuvering in order to provide English equivalents to all the Russian letters (and of course the sounds). Rough pronunciation equivalents are given only as a guide. One advantage you will notice at once: the Russian alphabet is a much more reliable guide to pronunciation than our English alphabet (as you can tell from some multiple English equivalent sounds to one Russian consonant).

At this point we are focusing only on printed letters. Reading Russian handwriting—as in any language—is a different matter entirely. It is a skill that comes with practice. We may add Russian handwriting to this Guide later.

Please note: If you have problems loading the Russian letters used in this Guide, try the following (this refers to Netscape with a PC): click on View, then Encoding… Check Russian CP1251 in the list of languages. For general help about 'russifying' your computer go to http://www.siber.org. It has excellent advice for both PCs and Macs, and various software packages. There are East and West coast sites.

Russian Letters	English Equivalents
А, а	A [as first 'a' in 'marmelade' never as 'a' in 'mat']
Б, б	B
В, в	V [this is one of the trick letters!]
Г, г	G [as in 'good' never 'ginger']
Д, д	D
Е, е	YEH [no 'h' sound; the 'y' sound is more noticeable after a vowel or when it is the first letter in a word]*
Ж, ж	ZH [harsher than 'j' in 'jejune'
З, з	Z
И, и	I [closer to the vowel sound in 'feet' than in 'fit']
Й, й	Y [as in 'boy' or 'bay']
К, к	K
Л, л	L
М, м	M
Н, н	N
О, о	O [as in 'tot' never as in 'tote']**
П, п	P
Р, р	R [must be trilled; get a Russian to show you]
С, с	S
Т, т	T
У, у	U [like 'oo' in 'book' never like 'u' in 'hut' or like 'you'—Russian has another letter for the 'you' sound]
Ф, ф	F
Х, х	KH [like 'ch' in German 'Buch' or Scottish 'Loch']
Ц, ц	TS [as in 'tsetse fly']
Ч, ч	CH [as in 'church'
Ш, ш	SH
Щ, щ	SHCH [as in 'fresh cheese']
Ъ, ъ	'Hard sign' [ignore it]
Ы, ы	I [as in 'bit' or 'dim']
Ь, ь	'Soft sign' [ignore it]
Э, э	E [as in 'bet' never as in 'beet']
Ю, ю	YU
Я, я	YA

* Think of the name Yeltsin. The Russian letter Е is sometimes pronounced YO when it is the stressed syllable in a word. Strictly speaking, in such cases the letter should have two dots over it; for example, ёлка ['yolka' = Christmas tree]. However, Russians are supposed to know when to say 'yo' and so the two dots are omitted, except in rare cases. So it is not really thought of as the 33^rd letter in the alphabet.

** When it is not in the stressed syllable the letter 'о' is pronounced more like 'а'. So, for example, the word for 'water' is 'вода'—pronounced 'vada' not 'voda'. In other words, an unstressed 'o' in Russian is not given its full value. We do something similar with certain vowels in English.

A Few Hints on Remembering Russian Letters

Speaking now in terms of recognition (not pronunciation), we can divide Russian letters into four groups. These are arbitrary, just a way of helping you memorize the Russian alphabet.

Those letters that look like our Latin letters and are in fact the same. This group, regrettably quite small, includes: А / Е / З / К / М / О / Т . We have included Е here, but remember the 'y' sound that precedes it, most particularly at the beginning of words and when it follows a vowel (as in Dostoyevsky).

Those letters that look like our Latin letters, but are not the same at all. This group includes: В / Н / Р / С / У / Х . As a test try to remember at this early stage what the English equivalents are: V / N / R / S / U ['oo' not 'yu'] / KH .

Those letters that look like Greek letters and were in fact borrowed from the Greek—see note at the end of this Guide on the origins of the Russian alphabet. This group includes: Б / Г / Д / И / Л / П / Ф . Again, as a test, try to remember the English equivalents of these letters (some should be very easy for 'Greeks'): B / G / D / I / L / P / F or PH .

And finally, those letters that look like nothing you have ever seen. This group includes: Ж / Ц / Ч / Ш / Щ / Ы / Э / Ю / Я . In fact, most of these were invented or changed over the years into their present form; some are also of Greek origin. In a few cases, they were based on letters in the Semitic languages (Arabic and Hebrew). For example, the letter Ш (SH) looks very much as though it was borrowed from the Arabic letter designating the same sound. The letter Ж is perhaps the strangest of the Russian letters; for generations beginning students have called it 'the spider'.

A Brief Test

Now to test your newly acquired skills in recognizing Russian letters not just isolation but in groups of words, in both capitals and lower case. See how many of the following words you can make out.

РЕСТОРАН

Борис Ельцин

ВОДКА

СПУТНИК

Аризона Вайлдкатс

Россия

Америка

ЭКЗАМЕН

САЙТЫ

КОМПЮТЕР

ФИЛОСОФИЯ

Достоевский

ГОЛЛИВУД

ТЕННИС

ТУАЛЕТ

БАЛЕТ

Джанет Рино

Now confess, that was not as difficult as you thought it might be. Of course, we cheated a little by using a lot of proper names and words that are similar to words in English (because they borrowed from us, we borrowed from them, or we both borrowed from a common source). But soon you should have little difficulty in reading the first word in the list above as a place to eat ['restoran'] and not some meaningless word or name ['pectopah']!

If you want to check your first effort at reading Russian words, here is the list in English: RESTORAN; Boris Yeltsin; VODKA; SPUTNIK; Arizona Vaildkats [Russians do not have a 'w' and usually substitute a 'v']; Rossiya; Amerika; EKZAMEN; SAITY [you guessed it—this means 'sites', as in Web]; KOMPYUTER; FILOSOFIYA; Dostoyevskiy; Gollivud [=Hollywood; Russians do not have an 'h' and traditionally have substituted a 'g', but you see more often now a 'kh', that is their letter Х because Russians today know it sounds closer to the English original]; TENNIS; TUALET [like us, the Russians borrowed the French word 'toilette']; BALET [another French word but the Russians dropped one 'L']; Janet Reno [Russians use 'ДЖ' for our letter 'J'; most would probably spell Reno as Рино because they know how the name is pronounced.

You might it useful to test yourself in the other direction; that is, to try to put English words and names in Russian. You can easily check your efforts by referring to the columns of letters above.

A Few Words on Stress

No, we don't expect you to get depressed. We are talking about the fact that every Russian word longer than one syllable has to have the correct stress placed when you say it (even silently to yourself). We have exactly the same rule in English. For example, when saying the word 'philosophy' we stress or place more emphasis on the first 'o'. Try pronouncing it stressing the second 'o' and you will quickly hear how strange it sounds, making it hard for people to understand us. It so happens that the Russian word 'filosofiya' is stressed on the second syllable. What is more, as a general rule, the Russian stress is more dynamic and more heavily emphasized than in English. So if you get the stress wrong, you can really cause even the best-intentioned Russian serious problems; he or she will have a hard time understanding you.

What all this means is that, as you progress in learning to recognize words in Russian, it is a great idea to note the correct stress and practice saying the word properly. It will help you remember it. You might try putting a dot or a French acute accent over the stressed syllable. Once you graduate to using a Russian dictionary, you will probably find the correct stress indicated.

Origins of the Russian Alphabet

The Russian alphabet is known as the Cyrillic alphabet in honor of Cyril (a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church), who is credited with creating it. In fact, Cyril (Kirill in Russian) did create an alphabet in the 9^th century when he and his brother Methodius (also canonized) were asked by the Byzantine Emperor to help proselytize the people of Moravia (roughly an area covering parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia today), who spoke a Slavic language. On the Slavic peoples and languages, see Part I of the Guide to Russian History in the ATHENEUM.

The two brothers were well equipped for this assignment because they came from Salonika (Thessaloniki) in northern Greece, which still contained many people of Slav origin. In fact, some suggest that the brothers had a Slavic mother, and that is why they themselves spoke a Slavic language so well. In any case, the brothers completed their task; the Moravian kingdom became Eastern Orthodox; and the liturgical texts could be translated into the local language with the new alphabet.

However, a series of wars led by rival Catholic states ended Moravia's independence and the local church, as the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity widened. The Orthodox Church and its Slavic liturgical language revived in the next century chiefly in Bulgaria. And it was at this point that the original Slavic alphabet (known as Glagolitic) was modified, chiefly with the inclusion of many more letters borrowed from the Greek. But St. Cyril was still honored as the original creator and so his name is still associated with the modified and more Greek alphabet that came to be used by a number of Slavic peoples, including the Russians.