Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet Reference
All 33 letters of the modern Russian Cyrillic alphabet with names, transliteration, and sounds.
Click any letter to copy it.
The modern Russian Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters — 10 vowels, 21 consonants, and two silent signs. It runs from А (a) to Я (ya) and includes the hard sign Ъ and soft sign Ь, which carry no sound of their own but change how the letters around them are pronounced.
The Russian alphabet at a glance
Cyrillic was developed in the 9th century from the Greek alphabet to write Slavic languages, and the modern Russian version settled at 33 letters after the 1918 spelling reform. The table above lists every letter in both cases with its name, Latin transliteration, and nearest English sound — click any one to copy it.
Vowels, consonants, and the two signs
Ten letters are vowels (а, е, ё, и, о, у, ы, э, ю, я) and twenty-one are consonants. The remaining two — the hard sign Ъ and the soft sign Ь — are never pronounced alone. The soft sign palatalises (softens) the consonant before it, while the hard sign keeps a consonant firm before a soft vowel.
“False friends” that look Latin but sound different
Several Cyrillic letters share a shape with the Latin alphabet but a completely different sound. Watch for В = V (not B), Н = N (not H), Р = R (not P), С = S (not C), У = U, and Х = Kh (not X). Reading them as their Latin look-alikes is the most common beginner mistake.
Cyrillic letters that mislead English readers
The look-alikes to memorise first — same shape as Latin, different sound.
| Cyrillic | Looks like | Actually sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| В в | B | V as in “van” |
| Н н | H | N as in “net” |
| Р р | P | R (rolled) |
| С с | C | S as in “sun” |
| У у | Y | U as in “boot” |
| Х х | X | Kh as in “loch” |
Transliteration is a guide, not a rule
The Latin transliterations above follow common practice, but several systems exist (BGN/PCGN, ISO 9, scientific), so the same name can appear spelled different ways — Чайковский is written both Tchaikovsky and Chaykovsky. Use the transliteration to learn the sounds, then rely on the actual Cyrillic glyph, which you can copy from the table.
Learning the alphabet
A useful path is to start with the letters that match Latin sounds (А, К, М, О, Т), then the false friends, and finally the uniquely Cyrillic shapes such as Ж, Ф, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ы, Э, Ю, Я. To hear how these letters combine, pair this reference with the IPA pronunciation reference, or compare scripts with the Greek alphabet.