What Is the Cyrillic Alphabet and Ought to You Be taught It?
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Just like the Latin alphabet (letters A to Z), the Cyrillic alphabet is a set of letters used to symbolize the fundamental sounds of a language. Utilized by Russian, Serbian, and different languages, the Cyrillic alphabet might look completely different from the Latin alphabet, however they share a number of traits and roots in historical historical past.
Be taught extra about Cyrillic letters, languages that use this alphabet, and its historical past all through the world. You’ll additionally get just a few suggestions for studying the Cyrillic alphabet in your subsequent language studying journey!
What’s the Cyrillic alphabet?
The Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system used to symbolize languages in Slavic and Turkic languages spoken in Japanese Europe and Western Asia, together with Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ukrainian.
Relying on the language, there are between 30-33 letters that symbolize sounds in that individual language, together with 24 letters integrated from the Greek alphabet. Every letter represents a particular sound within the corresponding language.
Just like the Latin alphabet utilized by English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and plenty of different languages, the Cyrillic alphabet makes use of each capital and lowercase letters. The Latin and Cyrillic alphabets additionally share a number of letters, though they could have completely different sounds in numerous languages.
Letters within the Cyrillic alphabet
The variety of letters of this alphabet varies by language. The Bulgarian alphabet is named probably the most fundamental type of the Cyrillic alphabet, because it makes use of most letters that different Cyrillic alphabets additionally embody.
Check out the letters that seem within the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, in addition to the Greek letters they arrive from and the closest English sounds that they symbolize.
| Cyrillic Letter | Greek Origin | English Sound |
| Аа | Aα | lengthy A |
| Бб | Ββ | B |
| Вв | Ββ | V |
| Гг | Γγ | exhausting G |
| Дд | Δδ | D |
| Ее | Εε | brief E (or “ye”) |
| Жж | “zh” | |
| Зз | Ζζ | Z |
| Ии | Ηη | brief I |
| Йй | Ηη | Y |
| Кк | Κκ | Okay |
| Лл | Λλ | L |
| Мм | Μμ | M |
| Нн | Νν | N |
| Оо | Οο, Ωω | lengthy O |
| Пп | Ππ | P |
| Рр | Ρρ | R (rolled) |
| Сс | Σσ | S |
| Тт | Ττ | T |
| Уу | Υυ | lengthy U |
| Фф | Φφ | F |
| Хх | Χχ | “kh” |
| Цц | “ts” | |
| Чч | “ch” | |
| Шш | “sh” | |
| Щщ | “shsh” | |
| Ъъ | silent | |
| Ьь | silent | |
| Юю | “yu” | |
| Яя | “ya” |
Word that a number of Cyrillic letters look fairly completely different from Greek letters, and haven’t any Greek ancestry. These letters primarily come from the Glagolitic alphabet, the predecessor Slavic writing system, and different writing techniques from close by cultures. For instance, the letter Ч is predicated on the Glagolitic Ⱒ, Ш comes from the Hebrew ש or Coptic Ϣ, and the letter Ю is a mixture of Cyrillic letter I and Uk.
You might also discover that a number of Cyrillic letters appear to be Latin letters from the English alphabet. A few of these letters (corresponding to A and E, referred to as “true mates”) have sounds just like their matches within the Latin alphabet, whereas others (like H and Y, referred to as “false mates”) have completely different sounds altogether.
Cyrillic alphabet variations
The Cyrillic alphabet is the official writing system of practically 300 million folks talking over 50 languages. Many of those languages have their very own variations of the alphabet with letters that symbolize language-specific sounds, or that don’t embody different letters that don’t seem of their language.
Russian
Fashionable Russian Cyrillic is the commonest type of the Cyrillic alphabet used right now (Britannica, 2025). It has 33 letters in complete with particular Russian sounds added to the fundamental letters above, together with:
| Letter | Letter Place | English Equal |
| Ёё | 7 | “yo” |
| Ыы | 29 | “ee” or “eh” |
| Ээ | 31 | brief E |
These letters seem in lots of widespread Russian phrases, corresponding to Рыба (ryba), that means “fish,” and мёд (mod), the Russian phrase for “honey.” And whereas there’s no actual English equal for Ы, the “eh” sound is considerably shut.
Serbian
The Serbian language makes use of two main alphabets: Gaj’s Latin Alphabet (developed by Ljudevit Gaj within the nineteenth century) and Serbian Cyrillic. The 30 letters within the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet embody Cyrillic letters, Latin letters, and letters that symbolize Serbian-specific sounds, which had been created by Vuk Karadžić in his 1818 Serbian-German-Latin dictionary Srpski rječnik (Serbian Lexicon).
| Letter | Letter Place | English Equal |
| Ђђ | 6 | mushy J |
| Јј | 11 | Y |
| Љ љ | 14 | “li” (as in “million”) |
| Њ њ | 17 | “ny” (as within the Spanish Ñ) |
| Ћ ћ | 23 | “ch” (or Latin Ć) |
| Џ џ | 27 | mushy G |
You’ll discover that the Serbian alphabet makes use of the Latin J, however with a unique sound than it has in English (“yuh” as a substitute of “juh”). The alphabet additionally provides further Serbian letters, but it surely doesn’t use conventional Cyrillic letters Й, Ь, Ю, or Я.
Ukrainian
There are 33 letters within the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, lots of which differentiate the Ukrainian language from the Russian language within the aftermath of Soviet rule. These letters are primarily based on conventional Cyrillic and Latin letters, however modified to replicate sounds in Ukrainian.
| Letter | Letter Place | English Equal |
| Ґґ | 5 | exhausting G |
| Єє | 8 | “yeh” |
| Iі | 12 | lengthy E |
| Її | 13 | “yee” |
For instance, the Ukrainian alphabet features a modified Cyrillic letter for the Ukrainian sound “th” (Ґ primarily based on the Cyrillic Г) and “yeh” (Є primarily based on the Cyrillic E). The Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet additionally doesn’t embody the letter Ъ, not like Russian.
Different languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet
Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian are among the many most typical languages within the Balto-Slavic language household that use the Cyrillic alphabet, however they’re not the one ones. These languages at the moment use a type of Cyrillic as their main writing techniques, and embody Slavic languages in addition to Turkic and Mongolic languages.
- Avar
- Belarusian
- Bosnian
- Kazakh (transitioning to Latin alphabet)
- Kurdish
- Macedonian
- Mongolian
- Rusyn
- Tajik
Historical past of the Cyrillic alphabet
Linguists consider that the Cyrillic alphabet was developed by the disciples of St. Cyril within the Ninth-century First Bulgarian Empire. It mixed the Greek alphabet with the Glagolitic script that originally depicted Outdated Church Slavonic texts, and have become the writing system utilized by these within the Japanese Orthodox church.
The Cyrillic alphabet grew to become the widespread writing system for a lot of Slavic languages and languages of neighboring cultures, corresponding to Romanian and Mongolian (Romanian later adopted the Latin alphabet within the nineteenth century). It was modified and reformed a number of instances all through the centuries to match languages of various nations, together with the Russian Orthographic Reform of 1918 that standardized the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
Later within the twentieth century, most nations within the Soviet Union used the Cyrillic alphabet as their main writing system in authorized paperwork, road indicators, and different authorities communication. Right this moment, many former Soviet nations nonetheless use the Cyrillic alphabet, whereas others, corresponding to Uzbek, Azeri, and Kazakh, have both adopted the Latin alphabet or are within the strategy of transferring from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet.
Cyrillic alphabet FAQs
Nonetheless curious concerning the fundamentals of the Cyrillic alphabet, or wanting to study this writing system? Discover the solutions to those widespread questions.
How exhausting is the Cyrillic alphabet to study?
If you happen to’re used to the Latin alphabet, studying the Cyrillic alphabet might be troublesome. It’s the alphabet for a few of the hardest languages to study for English audio system, together with Russian and Bulgarian, and contains many sounds that aren’t current in English. It additionally contains letters that don’t appear to be English letters. Many “false buddy” letters in Cyrillic might be complicated for starting language learners.
Nevertheless, it’s definitely not not possible to study a language that makes use of the Cyrillic alphabet. It’ll take extra concentrated research and extra hours of instruction, however when you’ve mastered the letters, you’ll be capable of decide up a second Slavic or Turkic language way more rapidly than the primary one.
What’s the easiest way to study the Cyrillic alphabet?
Discovering the right way to study a brand new alphabet doesn’t should be difficult. The truth is, it may be enjoyable! Return to fundamentals with Cyrillic alphabet sources meant for Russian or Japanese European kids, corresponding to youngsters’ books or tv exhibits. Grasp one letter at a time (alphabetically is one of the best advice) and align them to English sounds, or work on growing the sound represented by that Cyrillic letter. Create flash playing cards for your self, and apply writing within the Cyrillic alphabet as usually as you apply your conversational Russian, Ukrainian, or some other language.
An important a part of studying the Cyrillic alphabet, or any new alphabet, is discovering the strategy that works for you. When you’ve mastered your new alphabet, language abilities will develop much more rapidly.
Are alphabets the one different forms of writing techniques?
Alphabets are the commonest forms of writing techniques, however they’re not the one strategy to depict a language in writing. Whereas alphabets use letters to indicate single sounds in a language, different writing techniques depict their spoken vocabulary in numerous methods.
Almost 6 billion folks or 70% of the world’s inhabitants makes use of the Latin alphabet. If you add the 300 million folks utilizing the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of the world writes utilizing an alphabet.
Nevertheless, different forms of writing techniques are additionally quite common in world languages. Over one billion folks use Chinese language logographs, which present a whole thought or phrase with one character. Over 660 million folks write with the Arabic abjad, which is a sort of writing system that solely represents consonant sounds in a phrase.
