Speaking Russian is a useful skill that will help you unlock Russia's unique culture, art and literature, learn about its rich and varied past and converse with Russian speakers who are now shaping the country's increasing importance on the world stage.
Russian is the official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and it’s considered an unofficial lingua franca in many former Soviet countries. As Russian belongs to the Slavic family of languages, there are certain linguistic similarities among the Slavic languages that can help you communicate with people from Eastern Europe. That's a lot of people to speak to and do business with. I took full advantage of being a Russian speaker when I was in sunny Dubrovnik recently.
From Vladivostok to Dubrovnik, the Russian language is undoubtedly in use across a vast geographical area. However, it is English that will continue to be a global language, at least for the foreseeable future. Russian, on the other hand, will perhaps remain a more exclusive language, a language of new opportunities for those making the effort to learn it to develop their business or career or enrich their life experiences.
Learning Russian starts with learning the Russian alphabet.
About the Cyrillic Alphabet
Russian has over a thousand years of history behind it. The Russian letters are based on the Cyrillic script created by St. Cyril, a Christian monk from the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century.
There are a total of 33 letters in the modern Cyrillic alphabet — that's seven more letters than in the English alphabet. Some Russian letters look familiar to English speakers —
Е, К, А, T. Other Russian letters, such as Ж, Щ, Ы, Ц, do not resemble any English characters at all. Learning the Russian alphabet is clearly no easy feat but, with the right strategy, it might not be as difficult as you think.
War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Master and Margarita — some of the world’s greatest novels were written in Russian letters. One day, you too will join millions of Russian speakers who enjoy reading these books in the original.
Now, test your knowledge of Russian trivia with this quiz!
Learn the Russian Alphabet
Want to learn the Russian letters in under 2 hours?
My Russian Alphabet course makes learning the Russian letters fun, easy, and convenient — whether at home or on the bus, you’ll progress fast with this audiovisual course.
To design this course, I drew from my extensive experience as a Russian language tutor. Fundamentally, we learn through repetition and connection. This course focuses more on making connections that will help you remember the Russian letters more easily and quickly.
Some of the techniques I used were:
Breaking down the Russian letters into meaningful chunks
Drawing memorable illustrations
Storytelling
Audio pronunciation
Quizzes
My Students Review the Course
This is what my students are saying about the course.
I loved the course and thought it was very clear. I definitely found this approach very helpful and easier to digest. Great audio and fab style of illustrations definitely made me learn it faster. It took me 2 hours to complete the course, not long at all. I can now read Russian! I got 80% in the quiz, with only one word wrong in the last section - so I’m very happy! My next steps in learning Russian is having lessons with Yana to help me with my conversation, reading and grammar (I’ve had a couple already and they have been great!). I would definitely recommend the course to other students.
- Amy, England
I found this course very engaging. It's really straightforward and well-structured. In this course, the Russian alphabet is broken down into meaningful chunks. Students start with the easiest set of the Russian letters and progress to more complex letters. This approach was well thought out, and I would definitely recommend this way of learning. The illustrations helped me memorise the letters faster. Whenever I see a Russian letter now, I immediately recall the English word it was used in to represent its sound. For example, the letter "Ж" in TreaЖure. It took me about 2 hours to complete the course. I can now read Russian, even if slowly. I would highly recommend this course to anybody. Even my boyfriend got hooked and sat next to me learning the Russian letters with me. He too found it really engaging and fun.
- Andrea, Budapest
As someone that had tried numerous resources to self-teach the Russian alphabet, I found it incredibly difficult to memorise. However having completed this course, I genuinely do feel a noticeable improvement very quickly in my ability to read Russian text which I feel will be strengthened with repetition and increased exposure to Russian Reading. The course is fantastic, and would highly recommend it. The organiser of the course, Yana, is also absolutely fantastic as a tutor and would definitely recommend her to anyone wanting to learn this beautiful language.
- Ravi, England
There are only 33 Russian letters to learn. Learn them today, and find out exactly what Dostoevsky meant when he wrote: "Красота спасёт мир".
So are you ready to start learning the Russian alphabet? You can preview video lessons 1 and 2 before enrolling in the course.
Lesson 1. Introduction to the Russian alphabet.
Lesson 2. Identical Twins.
Want to keep learning? Enrol now!👇
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