Russian Alphabet
Listen to the Russian letters and example words by clicking the picture.
The letters above are presented in alphabetical order. There are 31 sounds:
- 21 consonants: б, в, г, д, ж, з, й. к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х, ц, ч, ш, щ and
- 10 vowels: а, е, ё, и, о, у, ы, э, ю, я.
- The consonant й (short i) is sometimes called a semivowel.
The soft sign ь and hard sign ъ do not have a sound of their own. Ъ is relatively rare and occurs only in a limited number of words that start with a prefix ending in a consonant. There it is placed between the prefix and the word stem, as in объявление (announcement) and съезд (conference).
Ь is placed after consonants for softening them. Listen to a few examples:
Regardless of the different alphabet, the Russian sounds are very similar to English and are therefore easy to learn.