So, based on reader feedback, I got a bit ahead of myself by jumping deep into grammar before actually, you know, explaining how to read.  So today, I’m going to walk you through standard Cyrillic, and the modified versions used to write the different languages seen here in Kyrgyzstan!

Cyrillic is an alphabet used by over 250 million people in Europe and Asia, about half of whom live in Russia.  It evolved primarily from the Greek alphabet, a few others, and apparently here and there, some runes even.

If “it’s all Greek to you,” then you’ll be happy to know that you’ll recognize a lot of letters in Cyrillic from Greek and Latin!  To start out our lesson, here’s the letters that are the same as English:

Same: А, Е/Э, К, М, О, Т (In lower case, а, е/э, к, м, о, т)

Practice: Аке, Кеме, Каток, Тема, Токмок

Mostly Same:

• Б (it looks like a B, but it’s a little different – see below for why this is important)
• З (it’s the same as English cursive Z)
• С (it is always pronounced S)
• Х (always pronounced as “kh”)
• In lower case: б, з, с, х

Practice: Томск, Самса, База, Сом, Собака, Сок, Азат, Тост, Сотка (Additional practice here)

Here’s the letters that are false friends:

• В – This is actually “V” (and easy to confuse with Б)
• Ё – This is “Yo”
• И – This is actually “EE”
• Й – This is actually “EEY” (shorter than И, like an English Y)
• Н – This is actually “N”
• Р – This is actually “R”
• С – This is always “S,” and hard “K” sounds are always К
• У – This is actually “OO”
• Я – This looks like R, but is actually pronounced “Ya”
• In lower case: в, ё, и, й, н, р, с, у, я

Practice: Россия, Я, Нирвана, Восток, Якутия, Комитет, Кабинет, Самолёт (pronounced “samalyot”), Сумма, Театр, Кинотеатр, Айт, Бар

And then there’s the HUH WHAT letters that we all scratched our heads about:

• Г – “G.” Easy to remember since it’s a gamma (as in Delta Gamma)
• Д – “D.” Derived from the letter delta (also as in Delta Gamma)
• Ж – “Zh,” or in Kyrgyz, this is pronounced as a hard “J” (In Russian, hard J is represented by combining Дж, just as French combines Dj to make the sound.  This is transliterated as Dzh.
• Л – “L”
• П – “P.” Easy to remember since it’s Pi (as in AE Pi)
• Ф – “F.” Easy to remember since it’s Phi (as in Alpha Phi)
• Ц – “Ts”
• Ч – “Ch”
• Ш – “Sh”
• Щ – “Shch.”  Learning to hear this letter as different than Ш is actually quite hard.
• Ы – “ih.”  This sound doesn’t exist in English, but it’s sort of halfway in between “sheep” and “ship.”  Smile as wide as you can, and then say “uhhhhh” while smiling like that.
• Ю – “Yu.”  Not “Yo” like you’d think.  Yo is actually Ё.
• In lower case: г, д, ж, л, п, ф, ц, ч, ш, щ, ы, ю

Практика: Гамбургер, Джинс, Курманжан Датка, Аэрофлот, Кыргызстан, Памир, Алай, Ош, Бишкек, Каракол, Нарын, Талас, Маршрутка, Стол, Стул

The HUH WHAT letters are what need the most practice for a lot of people, but they become comfortable with time.  What’s really nice is that each letter has one sound, and only one sound, and apart from the whole Russian-O-becomes-A-when-it’s-unstressed rule, the orthography is blessedly phonetic.

Now, I’m also going to add in 3 Kyrgyz letters!

• Ң/ң – This is “ng,” which is thankfully present in English as well!  In city dialects, this is just pronounced as “N”
• Ө/ө – This is ö (the same sound as German and Turkish), not “th” like you’d think (that sound doesn’t exist in Russian/Kyrgyz).
• Ү/ү – This is ü (the same sound as German and Turkish)

Практика: Кандайсыңар, Өзбек, Өзгөн, Түндүк, Жакшы барыңыз

You can also practice with these:

Now, you’ve probably noticed that, thankfully, these letters are actually the same when they’re lower case!  But, unfortunately, a few of them actually look VERY different when they’re written in italic or cursive, in fact becoming false friends in a few cases.  Unlike the US, though, that’s a big deal – people use cursive exclusively when they write, never print.

• а/а
• в/в
• г/г
• д/д/g – Depending on the font, the writer, or the language, D can look like a delta, a lower case Latin d, or a lower case Latin handwritten g.
• и/и and й/й
• п/п
• т/т – Again depending on font and language, this might also be written as T in all cases, or as ш with a bar over it.

The only other differences between bring and handwriting worth noting are that D is almost never handwritten with the print form – only the cursive forms.  With M, it is always written with rising strokes instead of falling strokes, and Л loses the bar on top (becoming just a single peak).  Ч is written the same way that cursive “r” is written in English.

This all, of course, comes to an extreme with the Russian word Лишили (Lishili) which literally just looks like scribbles in handwriting, as does “chinchilla.”

Here’s my handwriting of many of the above practice words from earlier in the lesson, along with some examples of the script forms I was talking about:

Now reading these fluidly takes practice.  But hopefully this has given you enough of a foundation to begin making sense of a marshrutka sign or three, or an ad you see on the street!