Cyphernaut - Russian Alphabet

If you were an American growing up during the Cold War era, everything about Russia and the Soviet Union appeared mysterious including the Russian language. When you saw words like Гла́сность (glasnost), Перестройка (perestroika), or Советский Союз (Sovetsky Soyuz or Soviet Union), you probably scratched your head and wondered how anybody could understand it. But Russian is understandable. It has many phonetically similar sounds to English. The first step to comprehending Russian is by learning the Russian alphabet.

This is a Flash guide for browsing the Russian alphabet. The Russian alphabet is a variant of Cyrillic script which was developed during the 9th century by Greek missionary St. Cyril. It consists of 20 consonants, 11 vowels and 2 non-vocalized pronunciation signs. In the browser, vowels are indicated with a reddish tint and signs have a greenish tint. The non-vocalized signs have two different functions. The hard sign, Ъ, is rarely used and indicates that the preceding consonant is not palatalized. The soft sign, Ь, indicates a softened sound on the preceding consonant or a slight 'y' sound after the consonant.

Try to decipher the following Russian names of well known locations within Russia, Belarus and Ukraine using the Russian alphabet browser. Sound out the words phonetically and you should be able to figure them out. Please note Belarusian and Ukrainian are different languages from Russian and are currently not covered on this site.

Волгоград (formerly known as Сталингра́д)
Санкт-Петербург (formerly known as Ленингра́д)
Чернобыль
Москва
Минск
Ки́ев