Russian Alphabet to English Sounds

"Low-Shed" is Russian for "horse"

During our Russia trip our guide held some classes on the Russian language. Below is a copy of the handout that she provided which might be beneficial to anyone travelling to Russia. It will give you help in reading the signs correctly as well as the proper pronunciation of the Russian letters. What you see is not necessarily what you get. For example, a "p" to us is an "r" sound in Russian. Russian also has 33 letters in its alphabet. Some look quite alien to those of us who speak English.

"The Cyrillic alphabet has augmented from Greek uncial script, using the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not available in the Greek language. Cyrillic and Glagolitic were invented by Greek brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was considered that while Cyril may have enhanced Glagolitic, his students, possibly from the first literary school in the medieval Bulgarian Empire (Preslav Literary School), developed Cyrillic from Greek during the 890s as a more suitable script for church books. The Cyrillic alphabet became increasingly widespread over the 12th century. During the next ten centuries the Cyrillic alphabet was adapted because of changes with spoken language developing regional variations. You can find languages across Eastern Europe and Asia written using the Cyrillic alphabet." The Russian Alphabet with Free Download and Sound

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