Lesson: More about the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian cognates.

Why is it called the Cyrillic alphabet? The Russian alphabet was devised by a monk named St. Cyril (born in Thessaloniki, Greece, sometime around 827 A.D.) so we call it the Cyrillic alphabet in his honor.

There are some letters in the Russian alphabet that are the exact same as in English:

Aa, Ee, Kk, Mm (in print, hand writing is another story), Oo, Tt (in print)

Read the following words: мама, атом, Том, Матт


There are some letters that look like English letters but are completely different sounding:

Bb(Vv), Hh(Nn), Pp(Rr), Cc (Ss), Yy(Uu), Xx(Kh)

Russians spell North American names the way they sound. Try reading some why don't you? Сара, Марк, Анна

Note: If you haven't noticed yet, there is no J in the Cyrillic alphabet. In Russian you use "d" and "zh" to get a sound like "dzh" or "дж". So "Judy" would be spelled like "Джнды".

Now try some other J names: Джон, Джоы, and my personal favorite Джордж.

There are some letters in the alphabet that look totally different but sound the same as English letters:

Бб(Bb), Гг(Gg), Дд(Dd), Зз(Zz), Ии(Ii), Лл(Ll), Пп(Pp), Фф(Ff)

Try reading some more names in Russian: Адам, Роз, Линда, Кевин

Now try reading some easy cognates: лампа, папа, телефон, такси, парк

The Cyrillic alphabet has many "s" sounding letters that look and sound very different than English letters:

Жж(zh), Цц(ts), Чч(ch), Шш(sh), Щщ(shch)

Ready to try some more names? Челси, Чарлз, Шан, Шерон

Next are the yo-, yu-, ya's, different than the popular American singing group.

Ёё(yo), Юю(yu), Яя(ya)

When these letters are not at the beginning of a word, the sounds resemble o, u, and a.

Some additional sounds:

Йй(y), ы(i), Ээ(e)


And finally, the spelling signs:

ь - Мягкий знак - soft sign, doesn't have a sound or it's own but alters the preceding consonant into a soft or palatalized sound.

ъ - Твёрдый знак - hard sign, is sometimes used as a separating sign between the prefix and the stem of a word. Hardly any words have this sign.


The alphabet itself is fairly easy to read (once you have memorized the letters!) and many words sound the same or similar to English. These words are called Russian cognates. You can find a nice beginners list here. These words are also apparently known as "international words" (but I really can't verify that as I only know less than 2 languages haha). When you are first learning the alphabet, reading easy Russian cognates is totally the way to go. You don't need to memorize them (unless you want to), just practice reading them to help you learn the alphabet and get familiar with the way the letters look when grouped together.

Once you learn some cognates maybe you would like to take a brief look at some false cognates, or "false friends" as they are called in some circles.