First Lesson

Hello everyone,

I have been practicing and learning new russian letters the last few weeks and am now ready to share my learning with you.

There are 31 different letters and 2 pronunciation letters in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
They are as follows:

А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я

In the previous list you may notice some letters that look the same and some completely new looking letters. So I have decided to divide them into 4 sub-categories (I will cover two this post):

-Letters that look and sound similar (ex. A, K,...)
-Letters that look the same, but have different sounds (B, E,...)
-Letters that look weird, but sound like english letters ( Г, Л,....)
-Letters that look weird and have new sounds ( Ж, Ч,...)

First, the letters that look and sound the same:

-A: gives an 'ah' sound like in father or talk.
-K: gives a 'k' sound like in car or cat.
-M: gives a 'm' sound like in man or moon.
-T: gives a 't' sound like in today or top.

Next, the letters that look the same, but sound different:

-B: gives a 'v' sound like in vitamin or vet (B=V)
-E: gives a 'ye' sound like in yelp or yeti.
-H: gives a 'n' sound like in no or next (H=N)
-O: gives a 'o' sound, like in bore, when stressed (о) and a lax 'uh' sound when unstressed (o)
-P: gives a 'r' sound, but is rolled (P=R)
-C: gives a 's' sound like in snake or sit (C=S)
-У: gives an 'oo' sound like in boot or shoot.
-X: gives a 'h' sound, but often pronounced more like a 'ch' sound in Bach or loch.

If you want to cement your learning I would also suggest both practicing some of my excersises i will type for you below or visit either this site or this one for some practice (please notice some of these sites are more advanced than what I have taught so far).

Pronounce from russian to english (ex. PAT= RAT)
CAT  TYP   CAK

Convert english to russian (ex. RAT=PAT)
YET   CORE   ROOT

Try inventing your own phrases in either russian-->english or vice versa too

Thanks for checking in, I'll post the next 'half' of the lesson soon.

Welcome, Comrades

Privet, or hello, everyone.

First, I'd like to say thanks for visiting this page, and I hope that you will continue to follow my posts. I will post content weekly, if I can, and try to give you lots of helpful tips and resources in your, and my, journey to learn Russian.

Spasibo, or thank-you, for visiting.

Robert K.

Chief Editor