Russian Cyrillic Alphabet Table
| Letter | Name | Say it as | Translit | Watch out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| А а | a | ah as in father | a | true friend |
| Б б | be | b as in bed | b | |
| В в | ve | v as in van | v | looks like B |
| Г г | ge | g as in go | g | |
| Д д | de | d as in door | d | |
| Е е | ye | ye at word start, eh mid-word | e | looks like E |
| Ё ё | yo | yo as in yolk | yo | the optional letter; print often writes Е |
| Ж ж | zhe | zh, the s in measure | zh | |
| З з | ze | z as in zoo | z | |
| И и | i | ee as in meet | i | a mirrored N |
| Й й | i kratkoye (short i) | y as in boy | y | |
| К к | ka | k as in kite | k | true friend |
| Л л | el | l as in lamp | l | |
| М м | em | m as in map | m | true friend |
| Н н | en | n as in no | n | looks like H |
| О о | o | o as in more | o | true friend |
| П п | pe | p as in pen | p | Greek pi shape |
| Р р | er | r as in run | r | looks like P |
| С с | es | s as in sun | s | looks like C |
| Т т | te | t as in top | t | true friend |
| У у | u | oo as in boot | u | looks like Y |
| Ф ф | ef | f as in fit | f | true friend |
| Х х | kha | kh, the ch in loch | kh | looks like X |
| Ц ц | tse | ts as in cats | ts | |
| Ч ч | che | ch as in chip | ch | |
| Ш ш | sha | sh as in ship | sh | |
| Щ щ | shcha | shch, a longer sh | shch | |
| Ъ ъ | tvyordy znak (hard sign) | silent - keeps the consonant hard | - | sign |
| Ы ы | yery (yeru) | i as in bit, further back | y | |
| Ь ь | myagky znak (soft sign) | silent - softens the consonant | ' | sign |
| Э э | e (turned e) | e as in met | e | |
| Ю ю | yu | u as in use | yu | |
| Я я | ya | ya as in yard | ya | a mirrored R |
| Looks like | Actually says | So |
|---|---|---|
| B | В = V | Вода (voda) is water, not boda |
| E | Е = YE | Нет (nyet) is no |
| H | Н = N | Нос (nos) is nose |
| P | Р = R | Рука (ruka) is hand |
| C | С = S | Сон (son) is dream |
| Y | У = OO | Утро (ootro) is morning |
| X | Х = KH | Хор (khor) is choir |
| mirrored N | И = EE | Чай (chay) is tea |
Russian runs on 33 Cyrillic letters, and the table decodes all of them - but the honest headline is that an English reader already recognizes about half of them wrongly. The letters that look familiar are frequently false friends: В is V not B, Н is N not H, Р is R not P, С is S not C, and У is U not Y. The genuinely new shapes (Ж З И Й Л Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я) carry sounds English spells with clusters - sh, ch, ya - which is why Russian words look longer than they sound.
The alphabet's shape tells its origin: Cyrillic is Greek's descendant, drawn by disciples of the brothers Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century, which is why А К М О Т match Greek and Latin directly while Б В Г Д descend from Greek beta, gamma, delta. Beyond Russia the same letters serve Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kazakhstan and more - each with its own additions and trims, so this table is the Russian set, the reference point every other Cyrillic orthography edits.
How to use
- Learn the letters in three passes: first the true friends (А К М О Т and the vowels Е О), then the false friends where shape lies (В=V Н=N Р=R С=S У=U), then the genuinely new letters (Ж zh, Ч ch, Ш sh, Щ shch, Я ya, Ю yu). Three twenty-minute passes cover the table; reading real words is what locks the false friends in.
- Watch the sign letters: Ъ (the hard sign) and Ь (the soft sign) name no sound of their own - they mark whether the preceding consonant stays hard or palatalizes soft, and Ь also separates in words like семья. They are the two letters most often dropped in passwords and usernames, and the reason Russian words sometimes end in consonants that seem to lead nowhere.
- Type it without a Russian keyboard: every letter's Unicode code point sits in the Cyrillic block (U+0410-U+044F, plus Ё at U+0401), Windows and Mac both ship phonetic keyboard layouts (ЯВЕРТ or ЙЦУКЕН), and online transliterators map latin keys to Cyrillic live. For one-off words, copy from this table - the code points guarantee the right glyph, not a lookalike.
Frequently asked questions
How many letters are in the Russian alphabet?
Thirty-three: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and the two sign letters Ъ and Ь that carry no sound. The count moves across Cyrillic-using languages - Ukrainian runs 33 with its own letters (І Ї Є Ґ), Serbian reshapes several, and Kazakh and other Central Asian languages extend the set - but the Russian 33 is the base set every table starts from, and the set this page lists letter by letter.
Why do some Cyrillic letters look like Latin but sound different?
Because the shapes were inherited from Greek and reused for different sounds as the language evolved: В came from Greek beta and stayed V, Н from eta became N, Р from rho became R, С from sigma became S. English speakers read them as B, H, P, C and U on sight - the false-friend problem - and the only cure is deliberate relearning, which is why the table splits the letters into true friends, false friends and new shapes.
What are Ъ and Ь used for?
They are markers, not sounds: Ь (the soft sign) palatalizes the consonant before it (мать - mother, vs мат), and Ъ (the hard sign) preserves a hard consonant before a vowel-starting ending. Ь also breaks consonant-plus-vowel ambiguities (семья uses it between м and я). Neither can start a word: the soft sign lands in a meaningful slice of everyday words while the hard sign survives mostly in longer compounds, and both are the first letters lost in texting-style abbreviation.
Is Ё really part of the alphabet?
Yes - Ё (yo, U+0401) is official, but it is the alphabet's famous optional letter: everyday print substitutes Е because the distinction rarely changes meaning (все everybody vs всё everything is the classic pair). Dictionaries, textbooks and children's books keep Ё marked; newspapers often drop it. Learners should treat Ё as always present in speech and merely unmarked in lazy writing.
How is Cyrillic related to the Greek alphabet?
Directly: Cyrillic was built in the ninth century from Greek uncial letters plus invented glyphs for sounds Greek lacked (Ш Щ Ж Ц Ч). The name honors St. Cyril, though scholars credit the script to his disciples in the Preslav school. That ancestry is visible row by row in the table - А В Г Д К Л М П О descend from alpha, beta, gamma, delta, kappa, lambda, mu, pi, omicron - and it is why Greek readers decode Cyrillic street signs faster than Latin-alphabet readers do.
How do I type Cyrillic letters?
Switch to a phonetic layout: Windows and macOS both ship Russian layouts (the mnemonic ЯВЕРТ or the standard ЙЦУКЕН), and phonetic variants map QWERTY keys to lookalike Cyrillic letters so А sits on A. For occasional words, the code points in the table copy-paste cleanly (every Russian letter lives at U+0410-U+044F, with Ё at U+0401 and lowercase U+0430 onwards), and browser transliteration tools convert latin typing live.