Characters
| Cyrillic letter | Latin look-alike | Actual pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Б | B, G, numeral 6 | /b/ as in "boy" |
| Г | Lowercase R, T, F | /ɡ/ as in "goat" |
| Д | A | /d/ as in "day" |
| Ж | X, K | /ʐ/ similar to "treasure" |
| З | E, numeral 3 | /z/ as in "zoo" |
| И | N | /i/ as in "machine" or /i/ as in "tin" |
| Л | J, JI | /l/ as in "love" |
| П | Lowercase N, H | /p/ as in "pond" |
| У | Y | /u/ as in "rule" |
| Ф | O, numeral 0 | /f/ as in "fox" |
| Ц | U, Y, V | /ts/ as in "cats" |
| Ч | Y, U | /tɕ/ similar to "check" |
| Ш | W | /ʂ/ similar to "shrunk" |
| Щ | W | /ɕɕ/ (Russian; like "sheep", but longer), ʃt͡ʃ (Ukrainian and Rusyn; like "fresh cheese"), /ʃt/ (Bulgarian; like "schtick") |
| Ы | Lowercase BL | /ɨ/ similar to "roses" in some dialects |
| Ь | Lowercase B | indicates the palatalization of the previous consonant as in "union" as opposed to "unite" |
| Э | E, numeral 3 | /ɛ/ as in "echo" |
| Ю | IO | /ju/ as in "you" |
| Я | R | /ja/ as in "yard" |
The letters А, В, Е, Ѕ*, І*, Ј*, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, Ү*, Ғ*, Ѵ*, and Х are strongly homoglyphic to Latin letters, to the point that their substitution may not be noticed, unlike those listed above. If compatibility issues arise that limit mixing of scripts, these can be used with faux Cyrillic letters in lieu of their Latin counterparts. In addition, C may be replaced by Archaic Ҁ. (Letters with a *, however, are not used in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.)
Read more about this topic: Faux Cyrillic
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)