Like the Latin alphabet (letters A to Z), the Cyrillic alphabet is a set of letters used to represent the basic sounds of a language. Used by Russian, Serbian, and other languages, the Cyrillic alphabet may look different from the Latin alphabet, but they share several traits and roots in ancient history.
Learn more about Cyrillic letters, languages that use this alphabet, and its history throughout the world. You’ll also get a few tips for learning the Cyrillic alphabet on your next language learning journey!
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What is the Cyrillic alphabet?
The Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system used to represent languages in Slavic and Turkic languages spoken in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, including Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ukrainian.
Depending on the language, there are between 30-33 letters that represent sounds in that particular language, including 24 letters incorporated from the Greek alphabet. Each letter represents a specific sound in the corresponding language.
Like the Latin alphabet used by English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and many other languages, the Cyrillic alphabet uses both capital and lowercase letters. The Latin and Cyrillic alphabets also share several letters, although they may have different sounds in different languages.
Letters in the Cyrillic alphabet
The number of letters of this alphabet varies by language. The Bulgarian alphabet is known as the most basic form of the Cyrillic alphabet, as it uses most letters that other Cyrillic alphabets also include.
Take a look at the letters that appear in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, as well as the Greek letters they come from and the closest English sounds that they represent.
| Cyrillic Letter | Greek Origin | English Sound |
| Аа | Aα | long A |
| Бб | Ββ | B |
| Вв | Ββ | V |
| Гг | Γγ | hard G |
| Дд | Δδ | D |
| Ее | Εε | short E (or “ye”) |
| Жж | “zh” | |
| Зз | Ζζ | Z |
| Ии | Ηη | short I |
| Йй | Ηη | Y |
| Кк | Κκ | K |
| Лл | Λλ | L |
| Мм | Μμ | M |
| Нн | Νν | N |
| Оо | Οο, Ωω | long O |
| Пп | Ππ | P |
| Рр | Ρρ | R (rolled) |
| Сс | Σσ | S |
| Тт | Ττ | T |
| Уу | Υυ | long U |
| Фф | Φφ | F |
| Хх | Χχ | “kh” |
| Цц | “ts” | |
| Чч | “ch” | |
| Шш | “sh” | |
| Щщ | “shsh” | |
| Ъъ | silent | |
| Ьь | silent | |
| Юю | “yu” | |
| Яя | “ya” |
Note that several Cyrillic letters look quite different from Greek letters, and have no Greek ancestry. These letters mainly come from the Glagolitic alphabet, the predecessor Slavic writing system, and other writing systems from nearby cultures. For example, the letter Ч is based on the Glagolitic Ⱒ, Ш comes from the Hebrew ש or Coptic Ϣ, and the letter Ю is a combination of Cyrillic letter I and Uk.
You may also notice that several Cyrillic letters look like Latin letters from the English alphabet. Some of these letters (such as A and E, known as “true friends”) have sounds similar to their matches in the Latin alphabet, while others (like H and Y, known as “false friends”) have different sounds altogether.
Cyrillic alphabet variations
The Cyrillic alphabet is the official writing system of nearly 300 million people speaking over 50 languages. Many of these languages have their own variations of the alphabet with letters that represent language-specific sounds, or that don’t include other letters that don’t appear in their language.
Russian
Modern Russian Cyrillic is the most common form of the Cyrillic alphabet used today (Britannica, 2025). It has 33 letters in total with specific Russian sounds added to the basic letters above, including:
| Letter | Letter Position | English Equivalent |
| Ёё | 7 | “yo” |
| Ыы | 29 | “ee” or “eh” |
| Ээ | 31 | short E |
These letters appear in many common Russian words, such as Рыба (ryba), meaning “fish,” and мёд (mod), the Russian word for “honey.” And while there’s no real English equivalent for Ы, the “eh” sound is somewhat close.
Serbian
The Serbian language uses two primary alphabets: Gaj’s Latin Alphabet (developed by Ljudevit Gaj in the 19th century) and Serbian Cyrillic. The 30 letters in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet include Cyrillic letters, Latin letters, and letters that represent Serbian-specific sounds, which were created by Vuk Karadžić in his 1818 Serbian-German-Latin dictionary Srpski rječnik (Serbian Lexicon).
| Letter | Letter Position | English Equivalent |
| Ђђ | 6 | soft J |
| Јј | 11 | Y |
| Љ љ | 14 | “li” (as in “million”) |
| Њ њ | 17 | “ny” (as in the Spanish Ñ) |
| Ћ ћ | 23 | “ch” (or Latin Ć) |
| Џ џ | 27 | soft G |
You’ll notice that the Serbian alphabet uses the Latin J, but with a different sound than it has in English (“yuh” instead of “juh”). The alphabet also adds additional Serbian letters, but it does not use traditional Cyrillic letters Й, Ь, Ю, or Я.
Ukrainian
There are 33 letters in the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, many of which differentiate the Ukrainian language from the Russian language in the aftermath of Soviet rule. These letters are based on traditional Cyrillic and Latin letters, but modified to reflect sounds in Ukrainian.
| Letter | Letter Position | English Equivalent |
| Ґґ | 5 | hard G |
| Єє | 8 | “yeh” |
| Iі | 12 | long E |
| Її | 13 | “yee” |
For example, the Ukrainian alphabet includes a modified Cyrillic letter for the Ukrainian sound “th” (Ґ based on the Cyrillic Г) and “yeh” (Є based on the Cyrillic E). The Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet also doesn’t include the letter Ъ, unlike Russian.
Other languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet
Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian are among the most common languages in the Balto-Slavic language family that use the Cyrillic alphabet, but they’re not the only ones. These languages currently use a form of Cyrillic as their primary writing systems, and include Slavic languages as well as Turkic and Mongolic languages.
- Avar
- Belarusian
- Bosnian
- Kazakh (transitioning to Latin alphabet)
- Kurdish
- Macedonian
- Mongolian
- Rusyn
- Tajik
History of the Cyrillic alphabet
Linguists believe that the Cyrillic alphabet was developed by the disciples of St. Cyril in the 9th-century First Bulgarian Empire. It combined the Greek alphabet with the Glagolitic script that initially depicted Old Church Slavonic texts, and became the writing system used by those in the Eastern Orthodox church.
The Cyrillic alphabet became the common writing system for many Slavic languages and languages of neighboring cultures, such as Romanian and Mongolian (Romanian later adopted the Latin alphabet in the 19th century). It was modified and reformed several times throughout the centuries to match languages of different countries, including the Russian Orthographic Reform of 1918 that standardized the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
Later in the 20th century, most countries in the Soviet Union used the Cyrillic alphabet as their primary writing system in legal documents, street signs, and other government communication. Today, many former Soviet countries still use the Cyrillic alphabet, while others, such as Uzbek, Azeri, and Kazakh, have either adopted the Latin alphabet or are in the process of moving from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet.
Cyrillic alphabet FAQs
Still curious about the basics of the Cyrillic alphabet, or eager to learn this writing system? Find the answers to these common questions.
How hard is the Cyrillic alphabet to learn?
If you’re used to the Latin alphabet, learning the Cyrillic alphabet can be difficult. It’s the alphabet for some of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, including Russian and Bulgarian, and includes many sounds that are not present in English. It also includes letters that don’t look like English letters. Many “false friend” letters in Cyrillic can be confusing for beginning language learners.
However, it’s certainly not impossible to learn a language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It will take more concentrated study and more hours of instruction, but once you’ve mastered the letters, you’ll be able to pick up a second Slavic or Turkic language much more quickly than the first one.
What’s the best way to learn the Cyrillic alphabet?
Discovering how to learn a new alphabet doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it can be fun! Go back to basics with Cyrillic alphabet resources meant for Russian or Eastern European children, such as kids’ books or television shows. Master one letter at a time (alphabetically is the best recommendation) and align them to English sounds, or work on developing the sound represented by that Cyrillic letter. Create flash cards for yourself, and practice writing in the Cyrillic alphabet as often as you practice your conversational Russian, Ukrainian, or any other language.
The most important part of learning the Cyrillic alphabet, or any new alphabet, is finding the method that works for you. Once you’ve mastered your new alphabet, language skills will develop even more quickly.
Are alphabets the only other types of writing systems?
Alphabets are the most common types of writing systems, but they’re not the only way to depict a language in writing. While alphabets use letters to show single sounds in a language, other writing systems depict their spoken vocabulary in different ways.
Nearly 6 billion people or 70% of the world’s population uses the Latin alphabet. When you add the 300 million people using the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s clear that the vast majority of the world writes using an alphabet.
However, other types of writing systems are also very common in world languages. Over one billion people use Chinese logographs, which show an entire idea or word with one character. Over 660 million people write with the Arabic abjad, which is a type of writing system that only represents consonant sounds in a word.
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