The Russian alphabet

Russian is written in Cyrillic, and the alphabet has 33 letters: 10 vowels, 21 consonants and 2 signs, ъ and ь, which have no sound of their own. That sounds like a lot, but a third of the letters will look familiar, and most of the work is unlearning what they "obviously" say.

Letters you already know: А, К, М, О, Т sound roughly the way an English reader expects. Кот is "cat", and you can read it on day one.

The false friends. These look Latin but stand for a different sound. They cause most of the misreadings in the first week, so drill them first:

A good first test is a word you know in disguise: РЕСТОРАН is "restaurant", МЕТРО is "metro". If you read the first one as "pectopah", the false friends got you.

Letters with no English counterpart: Ж [zh as in "pleasure"], Ц [ts as in "cats"], Ч [ch as in "church"], Ш [sh], Щ [a long, soft sh], Ы [a vowel between "i" and "u", made with the tongue pulled back], Э [e as in "bet"].

Four vowels hide a "y": Я [ya], Ю [yu], Е [ye], Ё [yo]. At the start of a word you hear the "y": Ялта, юг (south), ёлка (the New Year tree). After a consonant they usually make that consonant soft instead: мя́со (meat), люблю́ (I love), тётя (aunt). The exceptions are ж, ш and ц, which stay hard: жёлтый (yellow), цех (workshop); the page on hard and soft consonants has the details. Ё is usually printed without its dots in books and newspapers, so ёлка often appears as елка; you have to know the word. Learner texts, including this course, keep the dots.

Printed and handwritten letters differ. In cursive, т looks like an English m, д has a tail like g, and и looks like u. Russians write in cursive by hand, so a shopping list or a birthday card from a Russian friend will not look like the printed page.