Symbols
89Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Russian alphabet
The 33 letters of the Russian alphabet in their own order, capital and small: 10 vowels, 21 consonants and the two signs Ъ and Ь, which have no sound of their own. Ё follows Е and Й follows И.
Letters dropped in 1918
The four letters of the old spelling that the 1917–1918 reform replaced: І and Ѣ became и and е, Ѳ became ф, Ѵ became и. You still meet them in old books, on signs and in retro brand names.
Quotation marks
Russian quotes with «ёлочки» (little fir trees); quotes inside quotes take „лапки“ (little paws), opening low and closing high.
Dash, number sign, stress mark and smile
The spaced dash: Москва — столица России. № before numbers: дом № 5. The combining acute goes right after a vowel to show stress: за́мок. And the bracket smile that Russians type instead of :)
Currency
The Russian ruble ₽, the Kazakhstani tenge ₸ and the Kyrgyz som ⃀. The Belarusian ruble has no sign of its own; it is written Br or руб.
Where Russian is an official language
Countries where Russian is an official or co-official state language, largest Russian-speaking population first.
On the map
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The Russian alphabet: 33 letters to copy and paste
Russian is written in the Cyrillic script, which grew up in the First Bulgarian Empire around the end of the 9th century and is named after Saint Cyril, whose disciples are credited with developing Cyrillic after he and his brother Methodius created the earlier Glagolitic alphabet. It reached the Eastern Slavs with Christianity in the late 10th century. Peter the Great simplified the letter shapes in 1708–1710 (the civil script, the ancestor of today's typefaces), and the spelling reform of 1917–1918 gave the alphabet its present form.
Today it has 33 letters, each with a capital and a small form: А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я. Ten are vowels (а е ё и о у ы э ю я), twenty-one are consonants, and two, Ъ and Ь, are signs with no sound of their own. The vowels come in pairs: а о у ы э usually mark a preceding paired consonant as hard, and я ё ю и е as soft, so мал 'small' and мял 'crumpled' differ only in how the м is said.
Russian spelling is fairly close to the sound, but not one letter per sound. Unstressed о is said almost like а (молоко 'milk' sounds like malako), and voiced consonants lose their voice at the end of a word (хлеб 'bread' ends in a p sound). Because stress is free and moves between forms of a word, plain spelling usually does not mark it, though the letter ё identifies a stressed syllable.
Ё, Й, Ъ, Ь and the other letters English does not have
Ё ё is always stressed and says yo: ёлка 'fir tree', мёд 'honey'. Most books and newspapers print it without the dots as е, so you have to know the word. The dots are required in dictionaries with stress marks, books for young children and textbooks for primary pupils or learners of Russian, and wherever leaving them out changes the meaning: все 'everyone' but всё 'everything'. On a page to copy from, use the real ё: names like Королёв and Пётр are spelt with it.
Й й, the 'short i', is the y sound of English boy; it closes syllables (мой 'my', чай 'tea'). Ь, the soft sign, usually marks the consonant before it as soft: брат 'brother' but брать 'to take'. Ъ, the hard sign, now does one job: it keeps a prefix apart from the е, ё, ю or я that follows, so that a y sound is heard, as in подъезд 'entrance', объявление 'announcement', съесть 'to eat up'.
Ы ы is a vowel made with the tongue pulled back, between the i of bit and the u of put; it tells мыло 'soap' from мило 'nice'. Э э is a plain e, used mostly at the start of words (это 'this', эхо 'echo') and in borrowings (мэр 'mayor'). Щ щ is a long soft sh, the last sound of борщ; Ц is ts, Ч ch, Ш sh, Ж the s of measure and Х the ch of Scottish loch.
Russian letters that look like English
Twelve capital letters look exactly like Latin ones: А В Е К М Н О Р С Т У Х. Some sound much the same (А, К, М, О, Т), but several are false friends: Е is ye, В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, У is u and Х is kh. Small у looks like y but says u, and small р and с look like p and c. So РЕСТОРАН reads restoran and СССР is SSSR, the USSR.
Look-alikes are different characters to a computer. A word that mixes Cyrillic and Latin letters, such as a Latin o inside a Russian word, may be missed by a search for its all-Cyrillic spelling or flagged by spell-checkers; fake web addresses use the trick on purpose. When you copy Russian letters, copy them from this grid or type them on a Russian layout.
Handwriting adds its own surprises. In Russian cursive, small т is written like an m, и like a u, д often like a g, and п like an n, so тип 'type' looks like mun. Many writers draw a bar over cursive т and under ш to keep the strokes apart.
Russian accent marks, quotation marks and punctuation
Russian has no accent marks in everyday writing; the only diacritics are part of the letters ё and й. In dictionaries, textbooks and children's books, an acute stress mark shows where the stress falls, because it can change the word: за́мок 'castle' and замо́к 'lock', му́ка 'torment' and мука́ 'flour'. In Unicode this is the combining acute accent U0301, typed right after the vowel it marks.
Quotations take the angle quotes «ёлочки», and quotes inside quotes take „лапки“: «Он сказал: „Привет“». Direct speech in novels and dialogue opens with a dash instead: — Привет, — сказала она. The spaced em dash — also stands where English uses 'is' between two nouns: Москва — столица России 'Moscow is the capital of Russia'.
The number sign is everyday Russian: дом 5, школа 12, поезд 7; the English # is not used this way. And online, Russians smile with brackets alone: Спасибо) is a friendly thanks, ))) a big grin and ((( sadness; the more brackets, the stronger the feeling.
How to type Russian letters on Windows, Mac and phone
The standard Russian keyboard is called ЙЦУКЕН after its top row, and it is a different layout, not a transliteration: ф sits on A, ы on S, в on D. Add Russian in Windows (Settings, Time & language, Language & region) or on a Mac (System Settings, Keyboard, Text Input, Edit), and switch with WinSpace or AltShift on Windows and CtrlSpace or the Globe key on a Mac. On the Windows Russian layout ё is on the key left of 1, is Shift3, and the full stop and comma share the key right of ю, the comma with Shift.
If you do not know ЙЦУКЕН, macOS offers Russian – QWERTY (often called Russian – Phonetic), which maps most letters phonetically, while Windows offers Russian – Mnemonic, which uses dead-key combinations for some letters. On an iPhone or Android phone, add the Russian keyboard; ё is a long press of е and, on the iPhone, ъ a long press of ь.
On an English Windows keyboard the punctuation has Alt codes: Alt0171 «, Alt0187 », Alt0132 „, Alt0147 “, Alt0151 —. In HTML write « » —, and № for and ₽ for . The ruble sign was chosen by the Bank of Russia in 2013 and added to Unicode in 2014; prices are written with the sign after the number, 500 , or with руб.
Where Russian is spoken, and its Cyrillic neighbours
CLDR estimates about 200 million Russian speakers, about 130 million of them in Russia. It is an official language of Russia , Belarus (alongside Belarusian) and Kyrgyzstan ; in Kazakhstan , it is officially used alongside Kazakh in state organizations and local self-government bodies. It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Large Russian-speaking communities also live in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, the Baltic states, Israel, Germany and the United States; the CLDR estimates for Ukraine (around 16 million) and Kazakhstan (around 15 million) are the largest outside Russia.
Russian shares its script with other languages, each with its own letters. Ukrainian has і, ї, є and ґ and uses an apostrophe where Russian writes ъ; Belarusian has і and ў; Bulgarian uses ъ as a vowel; Serbian and Macedonian have ј, љ and њ. Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Mongolian write Cyrillic with their own letters such as ө and ү, and Tajik has ғ, ӣ, қ, ӯ, ҳ and ҷ. Each has its own collection on fsymbols, and the country pages for Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus collect their flags, food and national emoji.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyRussian Alphabet & Letters combos
14Worth knowing
- Ulyanovsk, the city once called Simbirsk, has had a monument to the letter Ё since 2005; the historian and writer Nikolay Karamzin, who helped make the letter popular, came from that region.
- Before 1918 every word ending in a hard consonant took a silent ъ (хлѣбъ, домъ). The business daily Коммерсантъ still keeps that final Ъ in its name.
- Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, with Arabic, Chinese, English, French and Spanish.
- One plausible reason for the bracket smile is the keyboard: on the Russian Windows layout the colon sits on Shift6, so :) takes an awkward stretch, and a lone ) is quicker to type.
Questions people ask
8How many letters are in the Russian alphabet?
33: 10 vowels, 21 consonants and the two signs ъ and ь. Each has a capital and a small form, from А а to Я я.
How do I type Russian letters on an English keyboard?
Add the Russian keyboard in Windows or macOS settings and switch to it with WinSpace or CtrlSpace. If you do not know the ЙЦУКЕН layout, choose Russian – Mnemonic on Windows, where some letters use dead-key combinations, or Russian – QWERTY on a Mac, which maps most letters phonetically. Or copy the letters from the grid above.
Does Russian have accent marks?
Not in normal writing. The only marks are the dots of ё and the breve of й, which are parts of those letters. Dictionaries and textbooks add an acute stress mark (за́мок, замо́к) to show where the stress falls; it is the combining acute U0301, in the grid above.
Which Russian letters look like English letters?
А В Е К М Н О Р С Т У Х in capitals, and а е о р с у х in small letters. Only some sound alike: В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, Х is kh and у is u. Only some sound alike: В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, Х is kh and у is u.
What were the old Russian letters before 1917?
The old spelling had four more letters: І і (written like и before vowels), Ѣ ѣ (yat, said like е), Ѳ ѳ (fita, said f) and Ѵ ѵ (izhitsa, said i), plus a silent ъ at the end of words. The 1917–1918 reform replaced them with и, е and ф and dropped the final ъ.
How do you type Russian quotation marks?
On the Russian Windows layout « and » are not on the keyboard, so use Alt0171 and Alt0187, the « and » HTML entities, or copy « » „ “ from this page. Word can turn straight quotes into «ёлочки» automatically when the language is set to Russian.
Why do Russians use ) at the end of sentences?
It is a smile without eyes. Russians usually drop the colon of :) and type only the bracket: one ) is friendly, ))) is laughing, and ((( is sad. It is not a typo or an unclosed parenthesis.
What is the Russian ruble symbol?
, chosen by the Bank of Russia in 2013. It goes after the number: 500 . In text you will also see руб. and the code RUB.
