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:
“Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)