One of the more frequent comments I hear about Russian in particular is the difficulty of learning a new alphabet. However, the Cyrillic alphabet can be learned rather quickly if we break it down into manageable parts. When I began studying Russian my senior year of high school, our teacher chunked the alphabet into four groups: Cognates, Greek Letters, "New" Letters, and False Cognates.
The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters--10 vowels, 21 consonants, and 2 letters without a designated sound and is a phonetic alphabet.
1. Cognates
This group is relatively easy for English speakers to remember, because the sounds are similar if not the exact same in English. I will write the letter in Cyrillic followed by the Latin equivalent in brackets following the International Phonetic Alphabet and transliterated in brackets.
А [a] /a/, К [k] /k/, М [m] /m/, О [o] /o/, Т [t] /t/
The only two sounds that bare more discussion are the two vowels: [a] and [o].
A [a] will sound more Italianate or as in ‘father’.
O [o] will always be pronounced as [o] when stressed, all other instances, [o] will be pronounced exactly like the letter A [a].
2. Greek origins
This group is also relatively easy for non-Slavic speakers since a good chunk of people have a basic understanding of the Greek alphabet (thank you, Greek life and math!)
The letters are as follows: Г [g] /g/, Д [d] /d/, Л [l] /l/, П [p] /p/, Р [r] /r/, Ф [f] /f/.
Г [g] is like the letter gamma.
Д [d] can be seen as a relative of delta.
The same can be said for the letter lambda, Л [l].
Perhaps one of the easiest is our friend, pi, П [p].
P [r], or rho, can be considered a false cognate, but let’s not make our lives difficult.
Ф or [f] is like the Greek letter phi.
3. New letters
The third group is probably the largest group and contains some tricky sounds that will be covered in forthcoming posts.
Б [b] /b/, Ж [ʐ] /zh/, З [z] /z/, И [i] /i/, Й [j] /j/ or /i/[1], Ц [ts], Ч [ch], Ш [ʂ], Щ [shch], Ъ (hard sign), Ы [ɨ], Ь (soft sign), Э [ɛ], Ю [ju], Я [ja]
The only letter that we will not focus on in this group is the first and third. [ʐ] or Ж, is very similar to the sound of the ‘s’ in measure. И is not pronounced like the word ‘eye’, but ‘ee’ as in bee [i]. Й, which looks a lot like the previous letter, forms diphthongs in words like in the name Nikolai /Николай/. The end of the name, in IPA, is written out [laj]. [ts] or Ц is similar to how you would call a cat or mimic hi-hats on a drum set. Ч can also be seen as ‘tch,’ eg. Tchaikovsky. Ш and Щ are related sounds, which merit their own post, but the latter is higher placed and longer than the former. Ы is a vowel, that will also need more time to be discussed. Э [ɛ] is the open-mid fronted vowel found in several European languages. Ю is another vowel and is the softened variant of [u]. The same goes for the letter Я or [ja], whose hard counterpart is the first letter of the alphabet, ‘A’.
The hard and soft signs, as you may have guessed, determine whether or not the preceding consonant is hard or soft. Yet another subject that is TBC.
4. False Cognates
В [v] /v/, Е [jɛ] /ye/, Ё [jo] /yo/, Н [n] /n/], С [s] /s/, У [u] /u/, and Х [x] /kh/ all make up our last group—the false cognates.
While small in number, the best way for learning this group and committing them to memory is through repetition and flashcards. When using a text solely in Russian, the editor may not delineate the difference between Е and Ё, which is the common practice in print. Be sure to consult a dictionary when in doubt. However, Ё will only occur in a stressed position.
[1] Common in transliteration of names such as Nikolai and Tchaikovsky.
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