The Russian alphabet has 33 letters: 10 vowels, 21 consonants, and 2 silent signs. The chart below gives every letter in dictionary order with its name, standard romanization, IPA value, and the closest English sound — printable, and free.
Dictionary order, upper and lower case. The romanization column follows the common English transliteration; IPA gives the standard pronunciation of the letter in a stressed position.
| Letter | Name | Romanization | IPA | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Аа | a | a | /a/ | a in "father" |
| Бб | be | b | /b/ | b in "book" |
| Вв | ve | v | /v/ | v in "vine" |
| Гг | ge | g | /ɡ/ | g in "go" |
| Дд | de | d | /d/ | d in "door" |
| Ее | ye | e / ye | /je/ | ye in "yes" |
| Ёё | yo | yo | /jo/ | yo in "yogurt" — always stressed |
| Жж | zhe | zh | /ʐ/ | s in "pleasure" |
| Зз | ze | z | /z/ | z in "zoo" |
| Ии | i | i | /i/ | ee in "see" |
| Йй | i kratkoye (short i) | y / i | /j/ | y in "boy" |
| Кк | ka | k | /k/ | k in "kite" |
| Лл | el | l | /l/ | l in "lamp" |
| Мм | em | m | /m/ | m in "map" |
| Нн | en | n | /n/ | n in "note" |
| Оо | o | o | /o/ | o in "more" when stressed |
| Пп | pe | p | /p/ | p in "pet" |
| Рр | er | r | /r/ | rolled r, as in Spanish "perro" |
| Сс | es | s | /s/ | s in "sun" |
| Тт | te | t | /t/ | t in "top" |
| Уу | u | u | /u/ | oo in "boot" |
| Фф | ef | f | /f/ | f in "fun" |
| Хх | kha | kh | /x/ | ch in Scottish "loch" |
| Цц | tse | ts | /ts/ | ts in "cats" |
| Чч | che | ch | /tɕ/ | ch in "cheese" |
| Шш | sha | sh | /ʂ/ | sh in "shut" |
| Щщ | shcha | shch | /ɕː/ | long soft sh, as in "fresh sheets" |
| Ъъ | tvyordy znak (hard sign) | " | — | silent — separates a consonant from a following vowel |
| Ыы | y (yery) | y | /ɨ/ | roughly i in "ill", but deeper in the mouth |
| Ьь | myagkiy znak (soft sign) | ' | — | silent — softens the preceding consonant |
| Ээ | e | e | /ɛ/ | e in "met" |
| Юю | yu | yu | /ju/ | u in "use" |
| Яя | ya | ya | /ja/ | ya in "yard" |
Russian vowels change with stress. A stressed о sounds like the o in "more," but unstressed it reduces to something close to the a in "about" — which is why Москва (Moscow) sounds like mask-VA, not mosk-VA. Stress is not marked in normal writing and can fall on any syllable, so learners usually memorize it word by word. The one exception is ё, which is always stressed.
Most Russian consonants come in hard and soft pairs. A consonant becomes soft — pronounced with the tongue raised toward the palate, adding a faint y-quality — when followed by е, ё, и, ю, я, or the soft sign ь. The difference matters: мат (mat, foul language) and мать (mat', mother) are separated only by that final soft sign.
Voiced consonants devoice at the end of a word: год (year) is pronounced "got," хлеб (bread) ends in a p sound. English speakers can safely ignore this when reading, but knowing it explains why what you hear on the street doesn't always match the spelling.
Cyrillic descends from the alphabet developed in the 9th-century First Bulgarian Empire by disciples of the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius, adapting Greek letters to Slavic sounds and adding new characters for sounds Greek lacked, like ш and ж. It reached the East Slavs with Christianity in the 10th century.
Peter the Great modernized the letterforms in 1708-1710 with the "civil script" (гражданский шрифт), deliberately reshaping the medieval letters to look more like Western European type — the reason modern Cyrillic and Latin print look like cousins. The last major change came with the 1918 orthographic reform, which dropped four letters (ѣ, і, ѳ, ѵ) and produced today's 33-letter alphabet.
The letter ё is the newest, introduced in 1783 and credited to Princess Ekaterina Dashkova. To this day it is usually printed as е with the dots omitted — a running controversy in Russian typography, since ёж (hedgehog) and еж without dots are technically different spellings of the same word.
33: ten vowels (а, е, ё, и, о, у, ы, э, ю, я), twenty-one consonants, and two silent signs (ъ and ь) that modify pronunciation rather than make sounds of their own. The count has been stable since the 1918 reform removed four obsolete letters.
It is usually the easiest part of learning Russian. About a third of the letters look and sound familiar (А, К, М, О, Т), a third look familiar but sound different (В = v, Н = n, Р = r, С = s), and a third are new (Ж, Ц, Щ, Ы). Most learners read Cyrillic comfortably within a week or two — the grammar is what takes years.
Both alphabets borrowed from Greek, then evolved separately. Cyrillic В comes from Greek beta, which by the 9th century was pronounced v — so Cyrillic kept the shape with the newer sound while Latin kept the older b. The same story explains Н (from eta) sounding like n and Р (from rho) sounding like r.
Both are Cyrillic with 33 letters, but the sets differ: Ukrainian has Ґ, Є, І, and Ї, which Russian lacks, and does not use Russian's Ё, Ъ, Ы, or Э. A Russian reader can sound out Ukrainian text but will stumble on exactly those letters — our Cyrillic comparison chart covers all the variants side by side.
Yes — use the Print chart button above the table (or your browser's print function). The page strips its navigation and colors for printing, leaving a clean black-on-white reference chart of all 33 letters with names, romanization, and sounds.