How to learn and remember the Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Russian alphabets

Flag of Russia, bordered, from Wikimedia Commons.
 

For years I have been wanting to learn the Russian alphabet (along with Greek and Hebrew). Cyrillic is name after Cyril, a monk, who, together with his brother, devised the Cyrillic alphabet used by Russia and with variations by Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Here are my memory aids.

Tilda

The tilda or wavy line in Spanish turns the n into a ny as in a Spanish or Spanish American canyon. In Cyrillic the tilda goes a step further and means the sound is y.

The p becomes an r, but not just any r, a trilled or thrilled r as in Spanish and Italian and Indonesian.rted t

H

The H looks like the lower half of the H.

The l looks like you started to write the lower case l but got called away in the middle when a letter fell through the letterbox.

B and V

The b is a v. But a real b has a little line like a shelf over a radiator across the top, or the tiny tray on top of a half tester bed. B with a line for b as in bed.

Memory Aid Recall

If you want to record your own memory aids and go to see other people's there is a system called memrise. You records your memory aids and choose whether to share them.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

https://duolinguists.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/ukrainian-alphabet-uk-grammar-portal/

https://app.memrise.com/signin?next=%2Fdashboard

How To Type And Pronounce Accents in French and other languages?

Problem
1 I can't type accents.
2 When I do, I still don't know what they mean. How do I look them up?
3 What are their names? In English French Spanish German, Russian, Czech, Norwegian Greek, Swedish

Answers
1 Typing
Hold down the vowel key on your laptop when you type and the letters with the accents appear. Sometimes you are offered a number and you press the number key at the top of your keyboard at the same time to select the correct vowel.
On a smart mobile phone without a keyboard, you slide your fingertip across to the vowel with your chosen accent in the pop-up box.

2 Diacritics
Check Wikipedia under diacritics.
Check Wikipedia under alphabet and the language you want.

3 Accents in general
Accents have two purposes. They tell you which syllable in the one you emphasize or accent. They change the pronunciation of a consonant or vowel.

alphabetically by name
acute - see French
cedilla - used in French and Romanian
circle - see Swedish
circumflex - see French
grave - see French
tilda - see Spanish
umlaut - see German

Alphabetically by language

Czech
The wedge or downward point over the letter c changes the pronunciation to ch as in the English words Chili and church. (Note that the word Czechoslovakian uses cz for the ch sound.)

English Accents
The double dot called an umlaut in German, also known as dieresis, is rarely used except in dictionaries and tells you to pronounce both letters as in coöperative. Pronounced co - op not coop. (Another English word with a double vowel sound is a vacuum cleaner, pronounced vac-you-um, although many people rush the word so it sounds like vac-ume. When giving a scientific paper at a conference you would be sure to pronounce the word vacuum.)

French Accents
Acute  - Goes upwards from left to right
Grave - Goes downwards from left to right
Circumflex (From the Latin meaning bent around, circum is around like circle, flexible bends. The symbol looks like a pointed Chinese coolie hat or a roof on a house.

When I was taught French at Grammar school by a native French speaker I was told the hat accent often indicates a missing s, as in the French word hôpital - so an English speaking person reading the French, like me and you, can guess the translation.

Table d'hôte is the table of the host, so often the dish of the day in a restaurant, with no choice. Therefore, you can also recognize île de France as the island of France.

German
unlaut - double dot

Hungarian

The sz looks confusing, but it's simply as, with a slight z sound as on bus stops with the sign BUSZ and more clearly in the girl's name Suszanna. 

Romanian

Spanish
Tilda - wave line turns n into a n+y sound as in canyon (in English) and piña colada prounced pinya colada in Spanish.

Swedish and Norse
Circle

Useful Websites
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Diacritical.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-185751,00.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_accent

I'm taking a tea break. I'll add more details shortly. Come back later.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, former school teacher and home tutor, polyglot learner of languages, and teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters International English and advanced and bilingual speaking groups and university and poly students and businesses.