Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic is the alphabet of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Mongolian, and many other languages—over 250 million people use Cyrillic worldwide. Russian uses 33 letters; other languages add or remove letters as needed. If you recognize Latin letters in Cyrillic, prepare for surprises: С looks like C but sounds like S, В looks like B but sounds like V, Р looks like P but sounds like R, and Н looks like N but sounds like H.

Many Cyrillic letters are obvious once you know the pattern. Е is almost like 'ye', Ю is 'yu', and Я is 'ya'. The tricky ones (Ё, Ъ, Ь, Ы, Щ, Ф, Ь) require learning. Once you know Russian Cyrillic, you can sound out 95% of Bulgarian and Serbian text with little extra study.

Cyrillic was created in the 9th century by Greek missionaries in Bulgaria, based on Greek uncial script but adapted for Slavic sounds. Legend credits Saints Cyril and Methodius's disciples, who needed an alphabet to translate Greek religious texts into Old Church Slavonic—we honor their work with letter names like 'az' and 'buki'.

Unlike Latin, which adapted to many languages but kept one basic set, Cyrillic evolved differently per language. Russian added Ё, Ъ, Ь, and Ы. Ukrainian kept some old letters and added apostrophes. Each national variant shows centuries of linguistic evolution in its alphabet shapes.