How long does it take to learn the Russian alphabet?

A week of ten to fifteen minutes a day for reading; the shapes are few and most sounds are familiar. Reading fluently, with the stress rules, takes a month or two of reading real words.

What do Ъ and Ь do if they have no sound?

Ь, the soft sign, softens the consonant before it (брат brother, брать to take); Ъ, the hard sign, separates a consonant from a following vowel so that the vowel keeps its y-onset (подъезд). Both change meaning, neither is pronounced by itself.

Do I need to learn cursive?

Not to read or type. Russian cursive is taught in schools and used for handwriting; learners meet it later, and the course focuses on the printed forms that you see and type every day.

The Russian alphabet: 33 letters, one week

A third of Cyrillic you can already read. Another third looks familiar and is not. The rest is new – and the whole thing takes a week.

Cyrillic has thirty-three letters. Six of them look and sound like their Latin counterparts (А К М О Т and, nearly, Е); seven look familiar but sound different – В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, У is u, Х is kh – and those are the ones that trip up beginners; the rest are new shapes for sounds most of which English already has (Б b, Г g, Д d, Л l, П p, Ф f, И i, З z) plus a few that need practice: Ж zh, Ц ts, Ч ch, Ш sh, Щ shch, Ы, and the two signs Ъ and Ь that carry no sound of their own.

Handwritten Russian differs from print more than English does, and the course teaches the printed forms first: they are what you read everywhere and what you type. Stroke order for printed letters is simple – top to bottom, left to right – and the tracer below shows it. The lower-case forms are shown next to each capital.

Russian is largely phonetic once you know the letters and one rule: unstressed о is pronounced like a short a, and voiced consonants at the end of a word are devoiced (хлеб sounds like khlep). The A0 level of the course covers the whole alphabet with sounds and stroke order in twelve lessons; A1 opens with greetings and the first dialogues.

The chart

Tap a character to watch it being written and to trace it yourself.

Letters

Start with the letters you already know, then the false friends: read ВОДА, НЕТ, РЕСТОРАН, and hear how different they sound.
Learn Ж Ц Ч Ш Щ as a group – the hushing sounds – and practise them in words: жена, цена, час, школа, щи.
Read signs and brand names in Cyrillic every day: МЕТРО, КАФЕ, ТАКСИ. Recognition comes before recall.

The lessons that teach it

The A0 level of the course, free: the letters, their sounds and the first words, with the same stroke animations and tracing exercises.

The Cyrillic Alphabet

Writing and sounding the first half of the Russian alphabet.

Reading Russian

The last letters, the two signs, and your first Russian words.

The whole course: Learn Russian together

Questions

How long does it take to learn the Russian alphabet?: A week of ten to fifteen minutes a day for reading; the shapes are few and most sounds are familiar. Reading fluently, with the stress rules, takes a month or two of reading real words.
What do Ъ and Ь do if they have no sound?: Ь, the soft sign, softens the consonant before it (брат brother, брать to take); Ъ, the hard sign, separates a consonant from a following vowel so that the vowel keeps its y-onset (подъезд). Both change meaning, neither is pronounced by itself.
Do I need to learn cursive?: Not to read or type. Russian cursive is taught in schools and used for handwriting; learners meet it later, and the course focuses on the printed forms that you see and type every day.