Russian
Writing Russian
The Cyrillic alphabet is the first gate, but it is not the biggest problem.
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. At first it looks unfamiliar, but it is still an alphabet, not a character system like Chinese or Japanese kanji.
A good approach is to separate the letters into three groups: letters that look and sound familiar, letters that look familiar but sound different, and letters that are completely new.
Familiar letters
Some Cyrillic letters are easy because they look and sound close to Latin letters.
- А sounds like a
- К sounds like k
- М sounds like m
- О sounds like o
- Т sounds like t
False friends
Some letters look familiar but represent different sounds. These are important to learn early.
- В sounds like v
- Н sounds like n
- Р sounds like r
- С sounds like s
- У sounds like u
New letters
Other letters look new, but they become natural with practice.
- Ж
- Ц
- Ч
- Ш
- Щ
- Ю
- Я