Learning Russian

Russian is not an easy language to learn. I believe that one of the hardest things to overcome when learning this language is understanding its alphabet. The Russian alphabet is made up of letters which you probably have seen before but the problem with this is that some of them are not pronounced the way you would normally say them, causing a lot of confusion when sounding out simple words. The alphabet is also made up of characters which you will not be familiar with nor are the sounds which you make when saying them. These are some things you will want to consider when you start learning the language, it probably won't come as quickly to you as learning Spanish or Italian but the language itself sounds so different that anyone who listens to you speak it will be amazed.

The Russian Alphabet or the Cyrillic Alphabet has gone through many changes over the centuries. The letters in the Cyrillic Alphabet can be seen to have some resemblances to the Ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew Alphabets. The Cyrillic Alphabet can be seen to the left. As you can see the first two letters represent the Cyrillic letters. The first being the capital letter and the next one its lower case. The letters in parenthesis are the English equivalents and have been transliterated into the sounds which you will be making when saying the letter out loud.

There are some letters which you won't have to pay any attention to because they are sounded out in English exactly like they are in Russian but there are a few curve balls thrown in there to keep you on your toes. Take a look at the top right column. The letter Pp and Cc, they are not what they appear to be at all the P is actually the Russian R and the C is the Russian S. This is why the alphabet can get confusing when you begin to write down words and speak it.

If you want to learn the Russian Language I advise you to FIRST learn the Cyrillic alphabet. Doing this will make it a lot easier for you in the long run.