Russian alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is often viewed as one of the stumbling-blocks on the way to learning Russian. But this task can be accomplished in much less time than you might think.

The Russian alphabet is composed of 33 letters, but fortunately, most of them are either identical to their Latin counterparts, or similar to Greek letters you may have met in mathematical notations. For example, the Russian equivalent of ‘p’ is written ‘п.’

More good news is that once you learn the sound of the thirty-three letters, you can read Russian words comprehensibly; unlike English, it is generally safe to say that Russian words are pronounced as they are written.