Russian today, and the Cyrillic alphabet
Where it is spoken
| REGION | NOTES |
|---|---|
| Russia | Around 145 million |
| Central Asia | Widely used in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan |
| The Caucasus | Common as a second language |
| Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics | Large speaker populations |
| Israel, Germany, the United States | Substantial emigrant communities |
For a traveller or a businessperson, Russian remains the most useful single language across the whole of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Cyrillic is used for many languages
The alphabet was developed for Slavic languages and is now used for Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Mongolian and others. Learning it once gives you partial reading access to all of them.
Three groups of letters
| GROUP | LETTERS | NOTE |
|---|---|---|
| Friends | А К М О Т | Look and sound like Latin |
| False friends | В Н Р С У Х | Look Latin, sound different |
| New shapes | Б Г Д Ж З И Л П Ф Ц Ч Ш Щ Э Ю Я | Genuinely new |
The false friends are the dangerous group. В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, У is oo, Х is a throat scrape. Reading Russian with English values produces nonsense, and this is where every beginner stumbles first.
| RUSSIAN | NOT | ACTUALLY |
|---|---|---|
| РЕСТОРАН | “PECTOPAH” | restoran — restaurant |
| МЕТРО | — | metro |
| ВОДА | — | voda — water |
| СУП | “CYN” | sup — soup |
A quick win: international words in Cyrillic are often instantly readable once you know the letters — банк, такси, паспорт, отель, аэропорт, кафе, интернет, компьютер.