Search online for “Russian alphabet” and you’ll find dozens of sites providing you straight transliteration, and even some that give clues for how the pronunciation of Russian characters sound.

But, in my own personal experience, looking at it from a purely transliterative perspective, you lose any chance at understanding the nuances of some of the character’s sounds, which is what I intend to do here.

Before we begin, though, it’s important to note that the Cyrillic alphabet is not as scary as it might seem. In actuality, it makes much more sense than our own. Instead of using letters whose pronunciations change vastly dependent upon placement and combination, they use letters that represent all the sounds they make without duplications. The best example of this is the English letter “C.” I ask you this: Why do we have it? It either sounds like an “S” or a “K.”

The other interesting thing about the differences between these alphabets is that the English names for them do not always indicate the sound it most frequently makes. Many of our consonants’ names are harder than the sounds they actually make. Compare the letter “B” to how the b sounds in “bear” to understand what I’m getting at, and then consider the rest of our consonants. Most, if not all, follow this pattern.

The Russian alphabet, on the other hand, is composed of the actual phonemes they use in language. Instead of the letter “B,” they have the letter “Beh-ya,” which is how their b’s sound. Also, instead of combining letters to make a distinctive sound like we do (”th,” “ch,” “tion,” etc.), Russians have letters that constitute this already.

And finally, there are characters that transliterated, appear repetitive, but are actually the difference between “hard” and “soft.” At first this concept was difficult for me to grasp. But, a loose English comparison would be the hard character “Z” against the softer character “S”. Say “zoo” versus “soo” and you’ll hear the slight, but all the same important, difference. There are two character sets that have distinctive characters to indicate this, but there are also characters that signal hard or soft pronunciation.

Without any more ado, let’s start with the characters in the Russian alphabet that transliterate rather well into English — the easy ones.

A - A (though softer, more like “ah” than our hard “A”)
Б - B (”beh-ya”)
В - V (”veh-ya”)
Г - G (”geh-ya”)
Д - D (”deh-ya”)
З - Z (”zeh-ya”)
И - I (”ee”)
К - K (”keh”)
Л - L (”ell”)
М - M (”emm”)
Н - N (”enn”)
О - O (”o-uh”)
П - P (”peh-ya”)
Р - R (but you must roll it!)
С - S (”ess”)
Т - T (”tee”)
Ф - F (”eff”)
Э - E (”eh”)

So there are the simple ones. Some are difficult at first, particularly the B, P and H which are equivalent to English sounds, but correspond to different characters.

The rest bear a little more explanation.

Е - “ye”
This vowel is usually rather expressive and necessitates that you pull your jaw down and to the left for the proper, elongated sound (you could do the right, but it typically sounds deeper than it should that way).

Ё - “yo”
As for this vowel, to pronounce it properly, it is best to form your mouth into an “o” (the Russian way! see above).

Ж - “zheh-ya”
This is one of those characters that create what would in English be a sound “combination” of z and h to make “zh.” This one is fairly easy to pronounce correctly looking at that transliteration of “zh.”

Й - “e”
Think of this vowel as a staccato “И.” It is the same basic sound, but cuts off rather abruptly. Known as the “И Краткое” or “short e.”

У - “oo”
This is almost like our own vowel “u,” except it always makes an “oo” sound. It’s almost like the combination of “ou” in “soup,” except much more pronounced. You want to to pucker your lips and feel your lower jaw expand to get the full effect.

Х - “kh-ah”
While the Russians don’t have an “h,” this is the closest they get to it, and it’s a little more gutteral. To pronounce it properly, you’ll want to feel a slight “scraping” of air in the back of your throat as you say it. In English our “h” is more of a soft exhale of air, and in Russian there’s is a “harder” exhale of air.

Ц - “ts-eh”
This is another “letter combination.” If you pronounce it “ts,” you’ll get it pretty close to right on your first try. It’s basically the “s” sound with a sharper “t” at the beginning. It almost turns the “s” into a “z,” but instead adds another staccato sound to the beginning.

Ч - “che-eh”
“Letter combination.” This time “ch.” It’s basically exactly the same as the “ch” in “change.”

Ш - “sh-ah” & Щ - “sch-yah”
I put these two together because it’s easier to talk about them in a pair. They fall right next to each other in the alphabet and for the longest time, what made them different baffled me. In essence, they both make the “sh” sound, while one is hard and the other soft. Ш is pronounced more like “shu” in “shut”, while Щ is pronounced more like “sha” in “sheep.” The difference is very slight.

Ъ - hard sign
If you see this character after a consonant, the consonant preceding it must be pronounced with a hard emphasis. Called the “твёрдый знак” (tvyordiy znak).

Ы - “uii”
This letter is firstly not a b and an l, it is one, unified character. And at first listen, sounds a lot like И. But the difference is in where you pronounce it. While И is a lot like our vowel “e,” (if we were to pronounce it as it sounds by name all the time), to properly pronounce Ы, you must almost make a gulping motion with the front of your mouth while saying “e.” You should feel the front of your lower jaw expand as you motion to “swallow” the e. It takes a bit of practice, but you’ll soon get it and hear the difference.

Ь - soft sign
If you see this character after a consonant, the consonant preceding it must be pronounced with a soft emphasis. Called the “мягкий знак” (myahkiy znak).

Ю - “yoo”
Said like our own vowel “u” all the time. As in, this vowel will not change based on placement. No matter what, it is always pronounced “yoo” or “u.”

Я - “yah”
This one is pretty simple, just “yah.” And never refer to it as that “backwards R.” That’s not what it is — it’s “yah,” the Russian equivalent for the personal pronoun “I.”

The alphabet in order:

А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

You should be able to say them all now!