Thread: Help with russian alphabet

I am not quite beginner to the russian language but i could use a chart that i could maybe print off that has all the russian letters and their english translation. I used to know the letters and when i was young it would be fun to translate an english word into russian but it has been so long and now it is mostly forgotten. I can't afford a language course and so would be teaching myself with maybe help from this forum. Any help would be appreciated! Spacibo!

http://www.langintro.com/rintro/first.htm

this guy makes it easy. u could learn the alphabet in like 2 hours with this site if u sit down and commit to it.

2 hours? Does it take so long to learn an alphabet?

Originally Posted by Rtyom

2 hours? Does it take so long to learn an alphabet?

if u never learned another language, yerh, its pretty fast.

Thus, you state the more you learn, the more you forget?

I guess cuz you totally lost me!

Thanks dogboy. It may take me a little longer as i have 2 young children to take up my time

Originally Posted by Rtyom

2 hours? Does it take so long to learn an alphabet?

I'm still having trouble reading words written in cyrillic.. i've spent far longer than just 2 hours on it..

I keep going back over the alphabet before I start on whole words nearly every time I start reading or attempting to sound something out because I keep either getting sounds mixed up or I read things like "H" as the english sounding "H" if that makes sense..

I sound like a 5 year old child when I sound words out.. lol I take forever..

I wonder if it helps to write English phrases Cyrillic-like and try to decipher them. Like in: иф ю кэн рид зис, ю ноу рашн лэтаз (if you can reed this, you know Russian letters).

lol! I could read that, it just took forever to remember what is what.. I understand practice makes perfect, but I don't seem to be getting any faster at it.

Just to make sure I had the alphabet tacked down I studied it for 3 days - ten letters a day and 13 on the final day. I still, even now, have some trouble remembering what some of the letters are, except for letters like П or Я. Those I see all the time.

The way I've seen this handled in a few textbooks has been to start with a lot of geography words which are almost the same in Russian and English. Just take the time to practice reading the cyrillic to decipher them. You don't NEED to be perfect to move on in your studies though. As long as you have most of it, you should probably move on. You can always refer back to an alphabet chart when you need to. God knows I refer back to noun declension tables ALL THE TIME.

Some other ideas (as they are practical to you). Get a Russian only text of some kind and just try to read it out loud. Find a set of lyrics to a song in Russian and try to sing along. Easier if the song isn't too fast.

I don't know whether you've gone to college, but if so you will undoubtedly be familiar with the Greek alphabet. Well, between English and Greek you've got about half the letters already. To wit:

Code:

АБВГДЕЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ
Α ΒΓΔΕ    ΚΛΜΝΟΠΡ ΤΥΦΧ

I only have a problem with "small letters" n => п m => т
Al the mails, text on the internet, our handbook is in "big letters".

http://www.roxana.spb.ru/alf.gif

Print a copy for all your books, Use it between the English -> Russian and Russian -> English sections of your dictionary. How do you learn the влфабит? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall, Practice, Practice, Practice. It's like multiplication tables, practice. not only will you know how to say them, you'll know how to find words in a dictionary, with practice.

Since were in a rote memorization mode, I suggest you do the same with numbers. Count repetitive things working from 10, then 20 etc. Counting telephone poles during a commute is one way to practice.

http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/r ... umbers.htm

Did I mention practice?