Russian Alphabet made Easy! A B V - Go!

Problem
How do I read the Russian alphabet? Especially those station names.

Answer
The station names are the easiest and help you to remember letters. But I've finally devised a system for remembering each letter.

Russian Made Easy
Here's the whole alphabet in a neat box copied from Wikipedia. Thirty-three letters are in the box and several of them look the same as the Latin alphabet. Other have little dots or tags to help you remember how they are similar to the English sounds but not quite the same. The order of the letters is the same as the Latin and Greek, starting a b.

Advantages Of Learning Greek, Russian and Hebrew
Each of these languages helps you with the others and opens up more words you can read on your travels and when armchair travelling. You will see words in Hebrew in photos of Israel and synagogues and Jewish museums and biblical archaeological digs and mosaic worldwide. On the internet, you will have words in Hebrew on wines from Israel, Russian on Russian vodka, and Bulgarian wines. Greek is on boxes of Greek sweets and pastries such as Baklava, and restaurant menus, in museums with Greek and Roman coins - suddenly a world of new words opens up.

What's Cyrillic and why do I need it?
The Hebrew letters led to the Greek letters. The Greek letters led to the Russian letters.  Learning any one of these three difficult looking alphabets will help you learn the other three.

When you are travelling you get an enormous sense of achievement and feel you are in control if you can recognize even just a few letters. I recognized the word Exodus on the exit of a Greek plane. The word Athens was on every giant road sign on a coach going in and out of the city.

Then I started looking at the Russian alphabet and was thrilled to learn the word for park on the station for Victory Park. It's one of the main museum complexes and parks above a central station in Moscow.

How Do Hebrew and Russian Relate?
Hebrew helps you with Russian. Russian helps you with Hebrew.

When Would You See Hebrew?
Going back to the Hebrew, if you are not planning to go to Israel, and didn't fast for Yom Kippur and go to a synagogue this weekend ((October first, 2017) where would you ever see Hebrew? Actually, Hebrew letters are all over lots of foods and wines in supermarkets in London, England, and New York - everywhere.  Jewish or Israeli restaurants have Jewish words on menus. Even if you didn't go in, you'd see the sign using the word kosher in Hebrew in the window of the deli you pass in the high street (which in America would be called Main Street).  At least the word, the same goes for the USA, all the kosher restaurants in Jewish museums in places like Anne Frank's house museum in Amsterdam Holland, the Museum of Tolerance in Victory Park in Moscow.

You are likely to find a word or two, certainly the three letters for Kosher (c-sh-r, written right to left) in Hebrew on packets of matzoh (crackers) in the supermarket, or some packets of bagels. If the hummus has run out - nip over to the kosher section and there's the hummus with the word kosher on it. Even if you only knew this one letter, you could work out that a three letter Hebrew word with a sh in the middle might say kosher. The Hebrew SH letter, like a W is the same in Russian.

Hebrew Helps You Learn Russian
Now that you know that the Hebrew letter W is the middle letter SH in kosher, you can recognize one of the Russian letters, the one which looks like W and is pronounced SH. (Sh - don't tell anyone!)

Where Can I use Russian, or Rather The Cyrillic Alphabet?
The Cyrillic alphabet will help you follow your way around many other countries, such as Bulgaria, which uses Cyrillic.

The Cyrillic alphabet was devised by Cyril, a monk, with his brother and 'brother' monk, methodical Mehodius. They took the Greek alphabet and added about nine more letters for sounds which the Greeks didn't have.

Start reading across from the top left. 

The first letter A. That's easy. Our first letter!. The next one is B. It is a b like a bed, a four poster bed with a canopy.  Towards the end is the W which we know is SH.

B and V in Hebrew and Russian

Now go back to the beginning. In Hebrew, the B and V sign are the same with an added dot for one of them. In the Russian alphabet, the B and the V look almost the same. You can see that the Russian alphabet ends with a reversed r, like the r in toys are us. Just think of the Russians as reversing everything and taking all the Latin alphabet letters and reversing them, or adding little hooks or commas to make new letters. 

ABV in Russian

The English alphabet goes ABC, but the Hebrew and Russian alphabet go ABV. The letters for B and V are almost the same. Remember Russians Reverse. Instead of using the normal b for b they use the normal Latin b for V, whilst the four poster bed symbol is b.

ABVG - Go!

In English to start a race, we say: One, two, three, GO! The Russian alphabet is the same. The fourth symbol is G (for 'go' in English). The Russian G looks like a squared off and unfinished G. Upright with a pointer at the top, pointing to the right like a pointer of a starter gun held at head height for 'go'.

That's enough for one lesson. We have dealt with five Russian letters, ABVG and SH! Time for a coffee break. Come back to the next post for some more Russian letters.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. See my previous posts on learning Russian. Please bookmark your favourite posts and follow me and share links with your family and friends.

PS - Watch out for my two new travel websites coming soon. One will be on destinations. The other will be on what to pack and wear. I shall announce it on one of my posts on this website within a week. This website has the words Angela Lansbury and travel. One of the new ones will contain the word travel.

Recognising The Greek Alphabet - Alpha Beta

THE BIG GREEK LETTERS
I turned on the Greek alphabet which I had installed and now appears when I click on the English flag at the top of my screen and down drop the flags and names of the other alphabets.
I accidentally typed in Greek letters the English words:

ΤΗΕ ΒΙΓ ΓΡΕΕΚ ΛΕΤΤΕΡΣ

Here are Greek small letters for The small greek letters

Τηε σμαλλ γρεεκ λεττερσ -

There are two ways to learn the Greek alphabet. One is by recognising single letters. The other is by recognising common words.

I learned to read English as a toddler in kindergarten from a sentence starting 'John and Janet went for a walk'. It continued something like: 'They walked with a cat and a dog. They stopped under a tree. They sat down for a picnic.' Each sentence was on a different page and illustrated.

Learning Using Initial Letters
When I visited Greece for the first time on a trip for youngsters I learned to speak words which I heard repeatedly such as Kali mera (Good morning) and Kali spera (Good evening). I remembered that m for morning was m for mera, and the other word was evening.

Whilst typing this I thought of another memory aid. S for Spera and S for Stars which come out at night.

When I returned to Greece a few years later on a press trip to Thessalonika I sat on a coach coming back into Athens and saw the same word written on overhead gantries several times, a word with a big oval in it. I eventually asked the guide to tell me what the word said. The word was Athens. I looked again and realised that the word contained the letter Theta. I was so pleased that I had recognised it.

On the plane coming home I looked at a sign over the door. I recognised that it was Exodus, for exit. Exodus - the word from the bible.

So, these stories illustrate that there are three ways to learn Greek, by hearing it, by seeing whole words, and by learning the alphabet, letter by letter.

Most of the free systems on line try to teach the letters quickly or not at all, whilst then moving onto whole words and a button you can click on to get the sound.

But when it comes to typing in your answers, you need to know the letters. I have always wanted to learn the alphabet and am now devising mnemonics (memory aids).

Again there are two ways you can do it. One is by rote: Alpha beta ... Keep learning a new letter at a time until you can say the whole alphabet.

The other is to move out the letters you already know. (Such as Alpha is A.) I is Iota. K is Kappa.
Then look at the sets of new letters, work out:

1 OLD SHAPE NEW SOUND - P
Which letters you confuse with the same sign but different pronunciation in English.  Easy to recognise - but hard to remember what the new sound is.
Greek Rho or R is written as an English P. Starting with the English, I learn P is R, 'PR' as in the initials for Public Relations reminds me that when I see P in Greek writing it is R.
He is Eta like the word Heater.


2 Simple New Letters which are totally new.
The easy ones are simple combinations of two strokes. Lambda or L looks like an A missing the horizontal bar. I tried remembering it as an L turned on its side, but that memory aid didn't stick. However, when I visualised it as a pair of legs, a man standing with feet apart, I found that easily remembered.  L for Legs:

Gamma is like a signpost pointing right for GO!

3 Confusing New Letters
I confused phi or F which looks like a circle with a line through it vertically (overhanging the O) but that looks similar to the O with a horizontal sign through the middle. One if F and the other is Th. Which is which.

Theta looks like your tongue horizontal between your teeth saying TH.  Theta has the horizontal which you see across the top of the letter T and half way up the letter H.

You can start by remembering the other one is F simply by process of elimination. If it is not TH it must be f.  It looks like a fish mouth opening and trying to eat something too large to swallow. Oh (four letter word starting with F). Phi, F.

5 Weird Curves
PSI
Psi pronounced ps, looks like two snakes painting in different directions, making a threatening s sound, ps. Or, if you don't like snakes, think of two whispering human lookouts, one is looking left, the other looking right. They are whispering PS! Short for PSST.

5 Letters which you can recognise when they are capital letters but look different in small size (lower case) or handwriting.

More tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, English teacher, language teacher, speaker.