Introduction
Learning a language with a whole new alphabet can seem daunting. The script can either be too foreign and totally alien, or, in the case of the Russian alphabet, just similar enough to be difficult (and even invoke some uncanny valley vibes like я and н). These letters can feel weird at first because they look familiar but not quite the same as the Latin letters we use daily.
The Russian alphabet is related to the Latin alphabet, both descending from ancient Near Eastern scripts and Greek. However, while the Latin alphabet does not directly descend from Greek, the Cyrillic alphabet is more transparently derived from Greek as it was developed in the 9th century.
What is the Russian Alphabet?
Russian has been a written language for a very long time. The Russian alphabet was built for Russian by ancient monks, using the Greek alphabet as a basis, and then adapting it for the peculiarities of Russian and related languages (the so-called Slavic languages).
Russian Cyrillic (yes there are different variants of Cyrillic, just like how some languages use a modified Latin alphabet with letters like “ç” that don’t appear in English) has 32-33 letters depending on how you count.
The Perks of Learning the Russian Alphabet
You may be asking, “why learn the Russian Alphabet”? Here are a few reasons:
- The Russosphere (areas where Russian is spoken natively or as a working language) is a highly literate part of the globe. It is not possible to function in these environments without literacy.
- Literacy in your target language is like rocket fuel for learning. Books have a large amount of language density, and expose you to massive amounts of the target language in a very short time.
