Russian - Alphabet

Okay, I admit that one of the reasons I decided to learn Russian was because I thought the alphabet looked awesome! I'm a sucker for foreign writing systems.

Printed Russian isn't too hard to learn to read, but cursive can be a whole other animal. I'm not going to go into too much detail about cursive though. A lot of the below links have cursive lessons, so if you want to learn cursive then look there. :-)

YouTube Video → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZceOLBFR0_Y

Russian Lessons.net → http://www.russianlessons.net/lessons/lesson1_main.php

RusUSA → http://www.rususa.com/dictionary/alphabet.asp

Here's an image (from liveandlearnlanguages.com)

Now to break into the alphabet!

First I'm going to show you the letters that are the same as in English.

Аа = Ah

Кк= K

Оо = Oh

Мм = M

Сс = S (never like K)

Тт = T

These next letters have sounds like English but they have different letters

Бб = B
Вв = V
Гг = G
Дд = D
Ее = Yeh
Зз = Z
Ии = ee (like in meet)
Лл = L
Нн = N
Пп = P
Рр = R
Уу = oo (like in cool)
Фф = F
Чч = Ch
Шш = Sh
Ээ = Eh (like in pet)
Юю = Yu (like you)
Яя = Yah (like in yacht)

Lastly, here are the characters that have foreign symbols and new sounds (I really recommend sound files/videos for these babies)

Жж = Zh (like the j in French or the zh in pinyin. Sort of like a soft j sound)

Йй = i (this is only used for diphthongs. It has an ee sound like the y in play)

Хх = a guttural ch (like the ch in German and Gaelic. Similar to the ch in loch)

Цц = ts (this is like the ts in Japanese and Chinese. It is like a T sound followed by an S sound. Like the ts in cats)

Щщ = kind of like a blur of SH and CH. Very similar to Ш but a little stronger and more CH-ish.

Ыы = similar to и but more in the back of the mouth

Ъъ = The hard sign

Ьь = The soft sign

※ Note: for the hard and soft signs, I recommend you read some of the above links. They have no sound, rather they alter the preceding consonant. The hard sign is rarely used, but you will see the soft sign quite often.