Map from Wikipedia article on where languages are spoken and written. Cyrillic speaking and alphabet areas in red. Greek in green. The Roman alphabet in blue.
Why bother learning Cyrillic? Why not Greek? Why Greek? You can get around England, Britain, most of Wesern Europe with the Roman alphabet.
Flag of Greece
Greek
Most British travellers would travel to the warm Medietteranean for a summer holiday, before the cooler cities of Russia. Yes, the Greek alphabet is useful in Greece, the area Green on the map. Also Greek speaking Cypruc, the island. G for Greece, g for green.
However, the Cyrillic alphabet, shown in red, covers a much larger area, many more countries. Bulgaria as well as Russia. R for red, R for Russia. As a traveller, learn Russian, and you can see a lot more cities where you can read the signs, road signs and station signs, newspaper names and headlines and restaurant names and menus. Add reading Russian to your skills.
Now, even better news. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets overlap, because Cyril and his brother devised their alphabet using some letters from the Roman alphabet, some from the earlier Greek alphabet and some from the even earlier Hebrew alphabet.
Flag of Greece
Greek
Most British travellers would travel to the warm Medietteranean for a summer holiday, before the cooler cities of Russia. Yes, the Greek alphabet is useful in Greece, the area Green on the map. Also Greek speaking Cypruc, the island. G for Greece, g for green.
However, the Cyrillic alphabet, shown in red, covers a much larger area, many more countries. Bulgaria as well as Russia. R for red, R for Russia. As a traveller, learn Russian, and you can see a lot more cities where you can read the signs, road signs and station signs, newspaper names and headlines and restaurant names and menus. Add reading Russian to your skills.
Brothers Cyril and Mehodius and the alphabet they devised. Picture in public domain from Wikipdia article on the brothers.
Now, even better news. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets overlap, because Cyril and his brother devised their alphabet using some letters from the Roman alphabet, some from the earlier Greek alphabet and some from the even earlier Hebrew alphabet.
Those annoying extra dots and mini lines and wavy lines above and below which look like extra things you have to learn are there to help you. Unlike English, which perplexes learners because a word spelled the same way can be pronounced differently, the little squiggles, called diacritcs, tell you how to pronounce the letter.
Here's the alphabet in Cyrillic.
I was struggling to learn the letters until I devised some English words which helped identify the differences between similar symbols.
For example, I muddled up the D and the P and the R.
Now, I imagine I am a traveller, alert for suspicous characters and unusual buildings.
The word alphabet is composed of the Hebrew letter aleph, a, and bet, b.
AB - the first two letters of the Bulgarian or Cyrillic. Sound the same, but look different. It's really easy.
A
First, the alphabet is similar to English. It starts with A. Same letter. Hurray, we know one letter. Next comes b. We start our journey full of hope.
B
How do you distinguish the b from the British or English or Roman b? Then the confusion with the similar looking letter which is pronounced V?
Those bloody Bulgarian letters and really nuisance Russian letters are just contrary. We have to learn the contrary letters, and like foiling a pickpocet, you have to look at those cheating letters and tell yourself, you can't fool me.
The b with the cap, a suspicious letter, unlike a real b, has come to burgle you. He has a forard facing cap. But you can't fool me with your added line at the top, facing forward. That\s a letter b.
V
Now we come to the Cyrillic letter B. A big bully pretending to be a B but is actually a quiet shy V. Yes, it's actually a V. You can't fool us. When we see a Cyrillic B we know it's a shifty character, really a V. That big bastard b is a Very shifty character, a V. Stand up to that written B and tell it, you can't fool me, you 'B', you are really a very little v. You B - you are a V!
G
Next comes a character which looks like a small r but its actually a great G. Written in such a hurry that the lower half of the angular G is missing. Great. Gr-eat. Before we try to say r we must remember the word Great. That letter resemlbing a small r is really a G. A bit like a C. ABC. But Cyrillic instead has ABvG. The Cyrillic alphabet, devised by devious Cyril, smuggles in a confusing v, very secret. But we know. Let's be positive.
Maybe Cyril was shy. Maybe he knew he was great, devising a whole new alphabet. Instead of C, the initial letter of his name, he used G for Great and Good. Good, we are learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
Cyril - who? Never heard of him. Forget the c.
Ah - Bulgarian is great, very Great! AB(V)G.
D
The letter with the line at the bottom like a doorstep is D. As soon as you see the horizontal line at the bottom you think doorstep, D.
E
The e is e. That's easy. Same as english, English. The E is the same as English E.
Think of the word video. We should take a video of the first six letters. VgDE.
That's enough for one lesson.
Let's look at the alphabet again.
Where we have five English letters ABCDE, Bulgarian or Cyrillic as an extra letter.
Remember ABv G
DE
Now we can recognize A B V G D E. It is slow going. But we have got over our fear. We are nearly a wuarter of the way through the alphabet. Or we will be after the next two. But we are lazy. We stop at E and take things easy. We go back and revise.
Look out for the next post on Cyrillic. I also have previous posts on Cyrillic.
You can learn Russian through Duolingo. The alphabet is almost the same as Bulgarian. duolingo also adds the spoken sounds, spoken. Duolingo is free.
Useful Websites for travellers learning languages
Duolingo.com
About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, teacher of English and other languages. I can teach anything. I have written for enecyclopaedias for adults and children. I also give workshops for businesses. Less time and more money.
See next post on Cyril and Methodius.
Here's the alphabet in Cyrillic.
I was struggling to learn the letters until I devised some English words which helped identify the differences between similar symbols.
For example, I muddled up the D and the P and the R.
Now, I imagine I am a traveller, alert for suspicous characters and unusual buildings.
The word alphabet is composed of the Hebrew letter aleph, a, and bet, b.
AB - the first two letters of the Bulgarian or Cyrillic. Sound the same, but look different. It's really easy.
A
First, the alphabet is similar to English. It starts with A. Same letter. Hurray, we know one letter. Next comes b. We start our journey full of hope.
B
How do you distinguish the b from the British or English or Roman b? Then the confusion with the similar looking letter which is pronounced V?
Those bloody Bulgarian letters and really nuisance Russian letters are just contrary. We have to learn the contrary letters, and like foiling a pickpocet, you have to look at those cheating letters and tell yourself, you can't fool me.
The b with the cap, a suspicious letter, unlike a real b, has come to burgle you. He has a forard facing cap. But you can't fool me with your added line at the top, facing forward. That\s a letter b.
V
Now we come to the Cyrillic letter B. A big bully pretending to be a B but is actually a quiet shy V. Yes, it's actually a V. You can't fool us. When we see a Cyrillic B we know it's a shifty character, really a V. That big bastard b is a Very shifty character, a V. Stand up to that written B and tell it, you can't fool me, you 'B', you are really a very little v. You B - you are a V!
G
Next comes a character which looks like a small r but its actually a great G. Written in such a hurry that the lower half of the angular G is missing. Great. Gr-eat. Before we try to say r we must remember the word Great. That letter resemlbing a small r is really a G. A bit like a C. ABC. But Cyrillic instead has ABvG. The Cyrillic alphabet, devised by devious Cyril, smuggles in a confusing v, very secret. But we know. Let's be positive.
Maybe Cyril was shy. Maybe he knew he was great, devising a whole new alphabet. Instead of C, the initial letter of his name, he used G for Great and Good. Good, we are learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
Cyril - who? Never heard of him. Forget the c.
Ah - Bulgarian is great, very Great! AB(V)G.
D
The letter with the line at the bottom like a doorstep is D. As soon as you see the horizontal line at the bottom you think doorstep, D.
E
The e is e. That's easy. Same as english, English. The E is the same as English E.
Think of the word video. We should take a video of the first six letters. VgDE.
That's enough for one lesson.
Let's look at the alphabet again.
Where we have five English letters ABCDE, Bulgarian or Cyrillic as an extra letter.
Remember ABv G
DE
Now we can recognize A B V G D E. It is slow going. But we have got over our fear. We are nearly a wuarter of the way through the alphabet. Or we will be after the next two. But we are lazy. We stop at E and take things easy. We go back and revise.
Look out for the next post on Cyrillic. I also have previous posts on Cyrillic.
You can learn Russian through Duolingo. The alphabet is almost the same as Bulgarian. duolingo also adds the spoken sounds, spoken. Duolingo is free.
Useful Websites for travellers learning languages
Duolingo.com
Memrise uses mnemonics (memory aids) to learn vocabulary.
About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, teacher of English and other languages. I can teach anything. I have written for enecyclopaedias for adults and children. I also give workshops for businesses. Less time and more money.
See next post on Cyril and Methodius.
