Are you ready to begin your Russian language journey? Let's jump right in!

Resources for further reading:

• The top ten tips to fast-tracking your Russian
• Improve your Russian pronunciation

The Russian alphabet uses the Cyrillic writing system, named after the Greek missionary St. Cyril and his brother St. Methodius, the creators of the first Slavonic alphabet. Some letters in this system are derived from the Latin alphabet, while others come from the Greek alphabet. Apart from Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet is also used in some other Slavonic languages, such as Serbian, Bulgarian and others.

Once you have mastered the letters and their corresponding sounds, it will be easy for you to read Russian as the letters don’t usually change in format or pronunciation. In this sense the Russian language is much easier to follow than the English language!

Now on to the letters: there are 33 letters in the Russian alphabet two of which are silent. Let’s start with the letters that are similar to their English equivalents:

Beware of these next five letters! They look just like the English ones but sound completely different. Sometimes they are called "false friends."

The following letters are all foreign to the English alphabet. Some of them are similar to Greek letters, but most of them only exist in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Now for the last two letters that are always silent:

Ь – the soft sign

The soft sign changes the sound of the preceding consonant, making it sound softer.

Ъ – the hard sign

The hard sign, as the name suggests, does exactly the opposite, it separates two letters and prevents certain vowels from making preceding consonants soft. You will not see this letter very often.

Check out the quick cheat sheet below for the whole alphabet:

Standard	Pronounced as in English
А a	car
Б б	book
В в	verge
Г г	go
Д д	dog
Е е	Yell
Ё ё	your
Ж ж	measure
З з	Zoo
И и	street
Й й	boy
К к	take
Л л	long
М м	much
Н н	none
О о	for
П п	pork
Р р	rise
С с	set
Т т	tin
У у	spoon
Ф ф	fish
Х х	his
Ц ц	rats
Ч ч	bench
Ш ш	ship
Щ щ	dish chips
Ъ ъ	hard sign
Ы ы	pig
Ь ь	soft sign
Э э	get
Ю ю	you
Я я	yarn

Now that you are familiar with the Russian alphabet, it won't be a problem for you to write or read (just make sure you invest some time into checking the next few lessons on pronunciation rules). However, there is one more thing to learn if you truly want to master Russian writing, handwriting.

Nowadays, as people widely use smartphones, tablets or computers for written communication, many students of foreign languages choose not to pay much attention to handwriting. But unlike in English, where handwritten letters look very similar to printed letters, Russian handwriting is very different from typed fonts.

Some handwritten letters are completely different from their typed counterparts. Furthermore, handwritten messages are still commonly used in Russia between friends, relatives or colleagues who wish to exchanging notes, cards, etc.

If you would like to find out more about the differences between the handwritten and typed alphabets and wish to practice your Russian handwriting, check out the sample "Writing Lessons" in the Rocket Russian free trial.

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