You can learn to read Russian in 75 minutes!   

• Key Benefits: Once you have studied this document, you will be able to read Russian and speak Russian! 
• Estimated time to master this is 75 minutes (spend fifteen minutes a day on this for the next five days). The author gave a 75-minute lecture at the Royal Museum of Scotland in 2005, at the end of which, the audience were confidently reading and speaking Russian words. It's simple...




© Copyright 1978-2008 David Petherick

Good ideas need proper care and attention. Please note that all rights are reserved for this document. You can't copy it or modify it. You are very welcome to link to it, however. I gratefully acknowledges the courtesy of The Russia House Ltd. and of Russian Language in London, for allowing reproduction of certain elements provided by them within this documentation. Life is all about learning. Enjoy life!

You can read this in 20 minutes, & learn the Alphabet in about 75 minutes

Virtually everybody who visits Russia or any of the countries of the former Soviet Union without ever learning Russian seems to wish they could at least decipher the Russian alphabet. Maps, building plaques, street names, menus - it’s all just too difficult, isn’t it? And besides, you really just don’t have the time!

No, it is not difficult, and you can make the time - 75 minutes is a reasonable estimate - split that up into 15 minutes a day over the next five days. Sections are marked A to E with Day numbers to help you – and day one is very simple – because you already know the letters from English – and they all look and sound the same in Russian. So it’s four days, and an hour.

This guide will close the gap between you and the Russian alphabet. Persevere, and you will be reading Russian in an hour!

You will be surprised at how easy it is to get the gist of words and signs in Russian - once you can decipher the letters, and have gained some idea of pronunciation from hearing Russians speak.

Read it through, keep it with you for reference; and your time in Russia, or meeting Russians will be made easier, more enjoyable, and who knows, perhaps more profitable.

Firstly: The individual letters of the Russian alphabet are introduced, not in their alphabetical order, but in groups, first according to their phonetic or visual closeness to English, and also, with the "non-English" letters, according to their origin or other criteria.

Secondly: Following each group of letters, real examples of individual Russian words are given using the letters thus far introduced. Wherever possible, these have been so selected as to be meaningful to you transliterating them. Out of a strange-looking cluster of Russian letters, you will soon be able to unearth the name of a Russian newspaper, a place name, a famous Russian writer or composer. All the words so used are "genuine", and as a visitor to Russia you will see several of them at the airport, or in your hotel, on notice boards, on the streets, and so on.  

Enjoy learning! And remember that only practice makes perfect. Your newly found skill will be sure to impress your colleagues, friends and relatives, and most importantly, your Russian prospects, clients or partners!

          Pocket Reference for the Russian Alphabet 

А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И (Й) К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ (Ъ) Ы (Ь) Э Ю Я 

Learning Tip: Copy and Print this section for quick reference

      A The Five English Letters (Day 1)

There are five letters in Russian that look like and (more or less) sound like their English counterparts. We told you this was easy to learn!

К M Т A O

 
K M T - as in English! Well done. That’s 3 down, just 29 to go!

A is pronounced as in "father", never as in "May".

O is much more round and open in Russian, sounding almost like the 'aw' as in "Shaw".

When the letter 'o' does not carry the stress in a word, it is pronounced rather like the first 'o' in "tomato". Listen to the Russian pronunciation of Moskva (Moscow), written МОСКВА, and it will sound like maskva, with the first 'o' very much "watered down".

Examples:

АКТ means ACT

ATOM means ATOM

КОМА means COMA

TAKT means TACT

М is what you’ll see on Male toilets

That’s not bad for your first day – almost nothing to learn!

The modern Russian alphabet is derived from the Cyrillic alphabet invented by St. Cyril of Thessalonica, who converted to Christianity in the 9th Century. It was St. Cyril who made the first translations of the scriptures into a Slavonic language, Old Bulgarian, which is a forerunner of modern Russian. The Russian alphabet; after many modifications over the centuries, today consists of thirty two letters.

         B The Seven False Friends (Day 2)

The next letters are those which look like English letters, but which have a totally different phonetic value.

В H P С X E У

 
The "key" for the first four consonants is as follows:

B is pronounced V, as in "Violet"

H is pronounced N, as in "Narrow"

P is pronounced R, as in "Red"

С is pronounced S, as in "Silver"

Examples:

КВАС Russian rye beer - kvass

КОСМОС Space, or the cosmos

МОТОР Motor

НОC Nose

СОУС Sauce

ТАНК Tank

ТАСС Tass, the Russian News Agency

ТРАКТОР Tractor  

X The letter X is traditionally linked to the ch as in "loch".

For the best guide to how this sound is pronounced, listen to the much used word kharasho (ХОРОШО), which means 'fine, well, good, OK'.

E The Russian E sounds like the 'ye' as in "yet", not as the 'e' in "bend", for which there is a separate letter (Э).

Everyone knows that the Russian word for no is nyet. The Russian is, however, a three, not a four letter word: НЕТ.

Of all the Russian consonants it is the Т and Д (‘D’, introduced later under The Greek Orthodox Nine) which undergo the most marked audible change when followed by the letter E. Т, when followed by E, sounds similar to the t in "lecture", and Д, when followed by E, to the d in "endure". 

There is another unsettling point about the letter E: in some circumstances it is pronounced as the 'yo' in "yonder". Sometimes to distinguish the 'yo' - mainly for the benefit of learners - the E is printed as Ё. But in normal use, it is not differentiated in this way. One of the most important words with 'yo' is ВСЁ, meaning 'all' or "everything". Listen out for the frequently used expression ЭТО ВСЁ (eta vsyo), "that's it", "that's all". And just to keep the fun going, ВСЁ (vsyo) means everything, but ВСЕ (vsye) means everyone. Sorry. 

У is pronounced as the 'oo' in moon and is transliterated by the letter 'U'.  

Examples:

МЕТРО Metro

МОСКВА Moscow

НЕВА Neva, St Petersburg's river

НЕРВ Nerve

ОМСК Omsk

РЕСТОРАН Restaurant

ТОМСК Tomsk

ИРКУТСК lrkutsk

НУ Well (as a highly informal question - ‘well then?’)

         C The Greek Orthodox Nine (Day 3)

The next letters to be introduced are the remaining ones which have been derived from Greek; consonants first:

Б Г Д 3 Л П Ф И Й

 
Б is pronounced as В, as in "boy"

Г is pronounced as G, as in "great"

Д is pronounced as D, as in "dish"

3 is pronounced as Z, as in "fizz'

Л is pronounced as L, as in "late"

П is pronounced as Р, as in "peach"

Ф is pronounced as F, as in "fear"

The vowel И is equivalent to the 'ee' as in "see".

The Й is only used following a vowel to produce a diphthong, as the 'y' in "boy" or "May". It never stands independently, and thus is not pronounced separately.

Й is usually transliterated in English by the letter 'y', and often appears at the end of a word to slightly soften the sound.

Examples:

АРБАТ ' Well known street for taking a walk in Moscow.

АППЕТИТ Appetite

БЕРЁЗКА 'Beriozka' – a small birch tree

ВИНО Wine

ВОДКА Vodka

БОРОДИН 19th Century Russian composer who wrote 'Prince lgor'.

ГАРДЕРОБ c.f. the French 'Garderobe’ or wardrobe

ДА Yes

НЕТ No

ДОСТОЕВСКИЙ Author of 'Crime and Punishment'

ИДИОТ Idiot - another novel by Dostoyevsky

ИНТУРИСТ Intourist - Russian travel agency

КОММУНИЗМ Communism – don’t see this word in so many phrasebooks now

КОФЕ Coffee

ЛЕНИН Lenin

ЛЕНИНГРАД Leningrad - the city is now called St. Petersburg, but the region surrounding the city retains the name ‘Leningrad Region’

МИР Name of the former space station – Mir, which means ‘world’, and also ‘peace’.

ЛИКЁР Liqueur – watch out for the dots above the E (see page 11).

ЛИФТ Lift

ПРОСПЕКТ Wide boulevard in Russian cities

ПУДИНГ Pudding

РИМСКИЙ-КОРСАКОВ Wrote ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee'.

РОСТБИФ Roast beef - best with Yorkshire ПУДИНГ of course

РУССКИЙ Russian

СПУТНИК Satellite

СУП Soup

ТОЛСТОЙ Author of 'War and МИР'

ТУАЛЕТ Toilet

ПАСПОРТ Only one 's' in the Russian word for passport

ТАКСИ Taxi

          D The Hebrew Five (Day 4)

Next come some of those funny letters that look impossible.

Ж Ч Ш Щ Ц

 
Fear not. First let us consider the so-called "hush sounds" - ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and the ‘s’ as in "pleasure". Each of these sounds is conveyed in Russian by its own letter.

Ж represents the 's' as in "pleasure".

This letter is normally transliterated by 'zh' in English.

Ч represents the 'ch' as in "cheese".

Ш represents the 'sh' as in "shin".

There is a fourth hush sound in Russian: this is written Щ, and is in fact a combination of Ш and Ч i.e. sh and ch, as in "fish and chips".

English speakers often have difficulty pronouncing this. Think of it in practice pronounced as a ‘long’ Ш. Alternatively, drink a few too many vodkas, and you’ll find you can produce this sound perfectly, even if you can’t make other sounds

All of these letters are derived, it is thought, from Hebrew script, as is the last letter in this group

Ц represents the sound 'ts' as in "hits".

Examples:

БИФШТЕКС Despite the 's', only one portion of beefsteak!

БОРЖОМИ Georgian mineral water

БОРЩ Beetroot soup

ЖУКОВ Famous Russian 2^nd World War Marshall

Inside Information: Russians refer to the 2^nd World War as The Great Patriotic War

СОЦИАЛИСТ Socialist (USSR was СССР)

ЧАЙКОВСКИЙ Composer of 'Swan Lake' and ‘The Nutcracker’

ЧЕХОВ Author of 'The Cherry Orchard' and ‘The Three Sisters’

ШАМПАНСКОЕ Russian champagne is very palatable

ЩИ Russian cabbage soup

ПТИЦА Bird

Ж Sign on Female Toilet

          E The Six Russian Stragglers (Day 5)

Finally, there are the stragglers, the last six letters to learn in the Russian alphabet. You’ve got this far – and the last two you can really forget at this stage, so there are just four more letters to learn to complete your knowledge.

Э Ю Я Ы Ъ Ь

 
Э, corresponds to the 'e' in "Edinburgh" or “Eric”.

(Remember, the Russian E sounds like the 'ye' as in "yet". Э and E are different sounds, but in English, are almost always represented by the single letter “e”) Air travellers will have seen "АЭРОФЛОТ", the name of the Russian national airline writ large on the side of Tupolevs, Antonovs and Ilyushins. Э also occurs in the very frequent word "ЭТО" meaning "this".

Remember the meaning of “ЭТО ВСЁ”?

Ю represents 'yu' as in "yule", or as the 'u' in "unicorn". The Soyuz (meaning “Union”) of spacecraft fame is spelt СОЮЗ.

Я, the R back-to-front, is pronounced 'ya' as in "yarn". Just on its own, the letter ‘Я’ means “I”, as in “Me, myself, I”.

The final three letters are a little more difficult to describe.

Ы - or the "sixty-one", as it is sometimes known - is a "hard" vowel, corresponding to the English pronunciation of 'er' as in "butter".

You can always get by with pronouncing the Ы as as the 'i' in "it".

Listen to the frequent Russian word ВЫ, which means "you", or МЫ, meaning "we"; it will strike you that the sound is markedly different from the 'i' in "vim" or "milk". Normally Ы is transliterated in English by the letter ‘y’ (for example, in Petrovsky) which, as we have already noted, is also used to represent И).

The Ъ and Ь are called the hard and soft signs. The Ъ is not very common and can be ignored for your present purposes: it can be considered as a silent letter. The soft sign Ь softens the consonant which it follows. Until you can clearly establish, through careful listening, what the effect is of the soft sign, it is safe to ignore it. And ignore the hard sign until you’ve had a vodka or two.

Examples:

АНГЛИЯ The Russian for "England"

ГУЛЯШ Not always Hungarian Goulash

ИЗВЕСТИЯ The Russian newspaper Izvestia

ИНТЕРВЬЮ Interview

КОКТЕЙЛЬ Cocktail, please Mr. Molotov

КОНТРОЛЬ At the airport you will see ПАСПОРТНЫЙ КОНТРОЛЬ - Passport Control

КОНЬЯК Not necessarily French cognac – What is known in Russian as Armenian cognac is excellent.

МЕНЮ You should be able to read this by now - the menu!

РОССИЯ Russia - and the name of the vast hotel near Red Square

(БЫВШИЙ) СОВЕТСКИЙ СОЮЗ (former) Soviet Union 

 Now, you can officially say that you can read (and of course speak) Russian! 

Congratulations!  

• I hope that you enjoy learning to read and speak Russian using the Clarocada system, and that your further understanding of Russian language, and Russia’s culture and people, is made just a little easier.
• Russia is a huge country full of amazing people, and you will appreciate both better with the knowledge you have gained here.
• Please feel free to contact me if you'd like more information, or if you have any suggestions or feedback for this Knol.
• You can follow me via Twitter with username Clarocada
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Director The Russian Communications Company Ltd.