Russian Alphabet

There are 33 letters in the Russian Alphabet: 10 vowels, 21 consonants, and 2 signs (Ь, Ъ).

Russian is widely spoken language in Europe and with 260 million speakers in Russia and other 30 other countries.

Cyrillic alphabet looks similar to the following languages:

Slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rusyn, Serbo–Croatian (for Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin).  

And in some of the Non-Slavic languages: Abkhaz, Aleut (only church texts), Bashkir, Chuvash, Erzya, Kazakh, Kildin Sami, Komi, Kyrgyz, Mari, Moksha, Mongolian, Ossetic, Romani (few dialects), Sakha/Yakut, Tajik, Tatar, Tlingit (only church texts), Tuvan, Udmurt, Yuit (Siberian Yupik), Eritrean, Ethiopian (in Africa) and Yupik (in Alaska).

Check out our “24 min of Reading course”, and repeat after speaker imitating the pronunciation as closely as you can. 

We are showing you the alphabet as it is but we kindly suggest you not to concentrate your mind on studying names of the letter. Because if your goal is to know of how to read Russian then we highly recommend you to study ONLY the sound!

Click on the audio icon to hear how it can be pronounced.

Letter (Capital/Small)	Cursive	Approximate pronunciation	The sound of the letter	Example	Example’s name
		[a]			арбуз
		[b]			банан
		[v]			волк
		[g]			гусь
		[d]			дом
		[ye]			енот
		[yo]			ёж
		[zh]			жук
		[z]			заяц
		[ee]			игла
		[y]			йогурт
		[k]			кот
		[l]			лук
		[m]			мышь
		[n]			ножницы
		[o]			очки
		[p]			помидор
		[r]			рыба
		[s]			стул
		[t]			топор
		[u]			утка
		[ph]			фонарь
		[h]			хомяк
		[ts]			цепь
		[ch]			чашка
		[sh]			шар
		[sch]			щётка
				*Hard sign	твёрдый знак
		~ [i]
				*Soft sign	мягкий знак
		[e]			экскаватор
		[yu]			юла
		[ya]			яблоко

*In Russian language, we have letters that cannot be pronounced but they influence other letters that goes with soft or hard signs.

Russian language keyboard

Russian alphabet

Basically Russian alphabet can be called Azbuka, which is written with the Cyrillic script. Cyrillic script looks similar to the following languages: Slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rusyn, Serbo-Croatian (for Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin). And in some of the Non-Slavic languages: Abkhaz, Aleut (only church texts), Bashkir, Chuvash, Erzya, Kazakh, Kildin Sami, Komi, Kyrgyz, Mari, Moksha, Mongolian, Ossetic, Romani (few dialects), Sakha/Yakut, Tajik, Tatar, Tlingit (only church texts), Tuvan, Udmurt, Yuit (Siberian Yupik), Eritrean, Ethiopian (in Africa) and Yupik (in Alaska).

Russian handwritten letters

Russian handwritten letters which are also called cursive letters are written in your copybooks and notebooks. Different people write in different ways because of the individual style. It’s the same as you would draw the picture and even if you draw the same picture that others do, it will have individual style of it. In Russian language, we have the main pattern of letters and how you should write them. You can find Russian handwritten letters in the table of Russian alphabet.

How to read in Russian?

This question always occurs when new learners start to study Russian language. How to read Russian? How to pronounce each letter? Should I study the names of the letters? or I have to be focused on sound of each letter? This question is answered in our FREE video course “24 min of Russian Reading course” where you can simply watch the video and start reading Russian in 24 min.

How many letters in Russian language?

There are 33 letters in Russian alphabet.

How many consonants in Russian alphabet?

Russian alphabet consists of 21 consonants (б, в, г, д, ж, з, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х, ц, ч, ш, щ).

How many vowels in Russian alphabet?

Since Russian alphabet is part of Russian language there are 10 vowels in Russian language. The 10 vowels in Russian alphabet are (а, э, ы, у, о, я, е, ё, ю, и).

How many signs in Russian alphabet?

Russian language has 2 signs (ь and ъ).