How Russian writing works

Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. It runs left to right, with spaces between words.

Here are mum and house. Tap play and listen. These pages have no test, and you can come back to them whenever you need.

Russian uses 33 Cyrillic letters. A letter represents a sound, while vowel letters can also tell you that a preceding consonant is soft. Two signs, ь and ъ, have no sound of their own.

Printed capitals mostly resemble the small forms. Changing case does not change the sound.

Start by looking at the Russian shapes. A familiar shape can hide a different sound: р is r. Every new letter is shown and heard before you are asked to retrieve it.