Russian alphabet

Learning the alphabet is the first step to learning Russian. You will find it relatively easy to get started with the Russian alphabet because many letters remind those in English by look and pronunciation.

• Six Russian letters look and sound like their English counterparts
  
  
• Sixteen Russian letters do not exist in English but have familiar pronunciation
  
  
  
• Eight Russian letters look like their English counterparts or digits but have different pronunciation
  
  
• Three Russian letters do not exist in English and make new or no sounds
  
  

The table below will give you an idea of how Russian letters are pronounced and spelled using Latin characters.

Letter		Pronounced as	Symbol
a		a in car; u in cut	ah
б		b in bit	b
в		v in vine	v
г		g in go	g
д		d in do	d
e		ye in yet	yeh
ё		yo in yolk	yo
ж		s in measure	zh
з		z in zoo	z
и		ee in see	ee
й		y in boy	y
к		k in kiss	k
л		l in lady	l
м		m in mist	m
н		n in not	n
o		o in folk	o
п		p in pipe	p
р		trilled r in rrroll	r
с		s in soft	s
т		t in tie	t
y		oo in root	oo
ф		f in farm	f
х		ch in Scottish loch	kh
ц		ts in lists	ts
ч		ch in chapter	ch
ш		sh in shut	sh
щ		sh in sheep	shch
ь		is used to make the preceding consonant soft	'
ы		i in ill	i
ъ		is used to separate two parts of the word	'
э		e in net	eh
ю		u in use	yoo
я		ya in yard	yah

*parts of this text came from.... MasterRussian.com - Helping you to master Russian! ....as well as from LanguageDaily.com - The free community for teaching yourself a foreign language