The Russian Alphabet

The Russian Cyrillic alphabet was named after its creator, the ninth-century monk St. Cyril. There are 33 letters in the modern Russian alphabet.

In 1914, the Russian Empire Academy of Science created a new simplified alphabet of the Russian language, but the reform was not carried out until year 1917 because of World War I. After 1917, the Bolsheviks adopted the new alphabet system as an achievement of the Soviet Revolution.

Before 1917, the Russian alphabet had one more letter, the letter “ять ”. It had never been pronounced and on the whole was not really needed.

There is no complete concordance between letters and sounds in the Russian alphabet. There are fewer letters than sounds (41 soft and hard sounds).

Letter “ ё ” has a special position in Russian spelling. It cannot be seen in every text. It is needed only in certain literature; for example, in the Russian textbooks for children or foreigners, in dictionaries or in personal names, which cannot be read without this letter (i.e. the name of the French city Байё). Words beginning with the letter ё are usually listed in dictionaries, together with the words beginning with the letter е. The letter ё is the youngest in the Russian alphabet. By 1997 it had been in use for 200 years. In 1797, the Russian writer and historian, Nicolay Karamsin, published a book of poems entitled Aonida, in which he first used the letter ё. In Old Russian, this letter was not needed, as the sound (o) never followed soft consonants. Instead of мёд, or слёзы Russians pronounced them мед, слезы.

Letter э is comparatively young, too. It appeared in the alphabet in 1735, although many writers were against this innovation. The writer Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov called this letter a “freak”, and Russian scientist and poet, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov did not include it in his first textbook of Russian The Russian Grammar. He stated that people do not need a special letter for writing foreign words, and that “if we invent new letters for all foreign words, our azbuka [old Russian for alphabet] will look like a Chinese writing system”.

There are two letters in the Russian alphabet which are not pronounced as separate sounds. These letters are ъ (hard sign) and ь (soft sign). Ъ is used to make the next vowel harder and Ь softens the consonant.

The easiest way to memorize Russian letter is to divide them in several groups.

Group 1: letters that resemble English letters. They are letters а , м (m), е (ye), ё (yo), о (o), к (k), т (t).

Group 2: so called “false friends”. These letters resemble English letters, but are completely different. These letters are в (v), с (s), н (n), у (oo), р (r).

Group 3: letters that do not resemble English letters at all. They are б (b), з (z), л (l), г (g), и (ee), п (p), д (d), й (y’), ф (f), ж (zh), ч (ch), ш (sh), щ (scch), х (kh), ц (ts).

History of the Russian Language

Russian is one of the Eastern Slavic languages and is considered to be one of the most popular languages of the world. It is the means of communication between the nations of the former Soviet Union. Russian is spoken by 250 million people.

The Russian language split from the Old Russian language in the 14-15th centuries, as well as Ukrainian and Belo-Russian. In the 16th century, numerous Russian dialects started forming into the Russian language in Moscow, which was the crossroads of the Great Northern and Southern dialects. However, at that time, two literary languages existed in Russia, Church Slavic language and the Russian literary language. In the 18th century, the literary bilingualism was eliminated, and strict literary norms were created. The Church Slavic language, which played a great role in the development of the speech culture in previous centuries, preserved only some elements. Church Slavic words now make up less than 10% of all the Russian vocabulary.

The defining stage of development of the Russian national language was the 18th century, the period of rapid development of industry, transformation of the government system, and the rise of science and literature. At that time, Russian language was vastly influenced by the Western European (especially French) languages. There was a unique linguistic situation in Russia among the nobility in the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Knowledge of French was considered compulsory, and though the official language of the country was Russian, Russian nobility spoke and wrote in French. Russian historian Lotman described in one of his books how a 16-year old Nikita Muravyev, “in an outburst of patriotism ran away to the active army without his mother's permission. On his way he was detained by peasants, because he spoke Russian poorly and they took him for a French spy”. Lotman also wrote that Alexander Pushkin had more books in French than in any other language in his library. Even Duke Andrey in Tolstoy’s War and Peace discusses military actions in Russian, then switches to French, as it was a more habitual language.