PHEW PRONUNCIATION HOW TO

“Red Square, Moscow, Russia” by Aurelien Romain© Learn how to pronounce the Russian alphabet Thus, the updated letters became closer to those of the Latin alphabet. Several archaic letters were completely removed and others were personally designed by Peter the Great himself. The Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed in the early 18 century by Peter the Great. It is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented with letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and was named in honor of the two brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet. The Early Cyrillic script was commissioned by the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I the Great in the 9th century AD to replace the Glagolitic script and became official shortly after, in 893. The Cyrillic script is the national script in various Slavic-, Turkic- and Iranic-speaking countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Northern Asia. His writings, in which he combined the colloquial and Church Slavonic styles, were decisive in establishing the best style for literary use. Then, the 19th-century poet Aleksandr Pushkin determined the further development of the Russian language we know today. Russian has been greatly influenced by Old Church Slavonic and – since the westernizing policies of Tsar Peter I the Great in the 18 century – by the languages of western Europe. As a matter of fact, the term “Old Russian” is generally used to describe the East Slavic languages in use before the Middle Russian period. Russian and the other East Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Belarusian) were not very different from each other until the Middle Russian period (late 13th century to the 16th century). Moreover, Russian the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and the unofficial lingua franca in Ukraine and many other former Soviet countries. A short history of the Russian language and the Russian alphabetĪs you already know, Russian is an East Slavic language and one of the world’s major languages: it is one of the six official United Nations languages and the 8th most spoken language in the world with a total of 260 million speakers. So let’s uncover the mysteries of this alphabet together so you can move on to more important things like… learning Russian with Mondly.

To put it simply, once you master the Russian alphabet, you’ll know how to pronounce the majority of the Russian words. And you know what’s the best thing about it? Almost all the words in Russian can be pronounced the same way they are written. Consisting of 33 letters – just 7 more than the Latin alphabet – it uses the Cyrillic script to write the Russian language. Although it may seem a bit daunting in the beginning, the Russian alphabet is not the hardest alphabet in existence (I’m looking at you, Japanese).

Phew pronunciation