What alphabet does Russian use?
Quick answer
Modern Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which has 33 letters in its Russian form. Cyrillic was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire around the 9th–10th centuries, based largely on the Greek alphabet, and is named after Saint Cyril, a missionary to the Slavs.
Who created Cyrillic?
In the 860s, the Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius created the Glagolitic script so Slavic peoples could read Christian texts in their own language. Their followers, working in Bulgaria, later developed a simpler script based on Greek capital letters, adding new letters for Slavic sounds. They named it after Cyril.
“False friends”: letters that look Latin
Some Cyrillic letters look like English ones but sound different:
| Cyrillic | Sounds like | Example |
|---|---|---|
| В | v | вода (voda) = water |
| Н | n | нет (net) = no |
| Р | r | Россия (Rossiya) = Russia |
| С | s | спасибо (spasibo) = thank you |
| У | oo | утро (utro) = morning |
| Х | kh (as in “loch”) | хорошо (khorosho) = good |
Russian also has letters with no Latin twin, such as Ж (zh), Ш (sh), Щ (shch) and Ы, plus two letters with no sound of their own: the hard sign Ъ and soft sign Ь.
The 1918 spelling reform
After the Russian Revolution, a reform removed four old letters, including Ѣ (yat) and І, making the modern 33-letter alphabet.
Languages that use Cyrillic
| Language | Main country |
|---|---|
| Russian | Russia |
| Ukrainian | Ukraine |
| Belarusian | Belarus |
| Bulgarian | Bulgaria |
| Serbian | Serbia (also uses Latin) |
| Macedonian | North Macedonia |
| Kazakh | Kazakhstan (switching to Latin) |
| Mongolian | Mongolia |
About 250 million people use Cyrillic, and it’s one of the three official scripts of the European Union, alongside Latin and Greek.
For how writing began, see the first writing system. For the Latin alphabet’s roots, see what language the Romans spoke.
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