How to Write Russian Words

To write Russian words, you need to learn a new alphabet.

Russian is a Slavic language with approximately 144 million speakers around the world. It also is spoken as a first or second language by millions of people throughout eastern Europe. Russian is written with a Cyrillic alphabet, which is named after the missionary St. Cyril, and has been in use since the 10th century. It contains a mixture of letters from the Greek and Latin alphabets. To be able to write Russian words, you first need to master this alphabet.

Instructions

1. Download a Cyrillic alphabet chart such the one on the Omniglot language website, and print it out. Practice drawing the Russian letters one by one, paying special attention to those that do not exist in English. Understand that some letters look the same in English and Russian but have different sounds. The letter "B," for example, represents the sound "v" in Russian, and the the letter "H" corresponds to the sound "n." Once you have mastered the Russian alphabet, you will be able to write any word in Russian.

2. Find some Russian words to practice writing. Visit the Master Russian website at masterussian.com to view a list of the 1,000 commonly used words in Russian. Write some of these words on a piece of paper to practice your command of the Cyrillic alphabet. Be aware that the Cyrillic letters you have learned are the printed form of the alphabet. Handwritten Cyrillic letters may differ from this in the same way that the English letter "a" looks different in its typed and written forms

3. Master Cyrillic handwriting. Once you are confident with the alphabet in its printed form, study the handwritten versions of the letters. Use online resources such as the Russian handwriting pages on the University of Chicago website to review the handwritten forms of the letters, and follow the instructions for writing them yourself.

4. Learn to type Russian words. Use a free website such as Typeit, which enables users to type Russian words without a Russian keyboard. Click on the buttons above the text box to insert the illustrated characters in your text, or point your cursor at each letter to see the keyboard shortcut required to type it manually.

References

• Ethnologue: Russian
• Omniglot: Russian
• Omniglot: Cyrillic Alphabet
• University of Chicago: Russian Handwriting

Resources

• Omniglot: Cyrillic Alphabet Chart
• Master Russian: 1000 Most Common Russian Words
• Typeit: Type Russian Letters