25. The Cyrillic alphabet
The Russian language is written with the Cyrillic alphabet. This writing system shares a few letters with the Latin alphabet used for English (among many other languages in Europe and the Americas), although they do not always represent the same sound. There are a bunch of other letters, as well - 33 in total, many based on the Greek alphabet. There are 10 vowels, 21 consonants, and a hard and soft sign that aren't pronounced. Apparently, Peter the Great himself personally designed some of the letters in the early 1700s when the script was modernized, although the origins of Cyrillic go back hundreds of years before that time.
Before I moved to St. Petersburg, I remembered many of the letters from my 2012 Russian vacation, although at the time I didn't quite learn the entire alphabet. In the last two months, without making too much of an effort, I think I managed to put 75% of the Cyrillic alphabet into my long term memory. My first ten hours of Russian language classes the last two weeks (plus several hours of additional studying) have pretty well drilled the remaining 25% of the alphabet into my brain.
I definitely recommend that any visitors to Russia should try to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. There are many cognate words between English and Russian, and quite helpfully, many of them are the ones written on street signs, storefronts, or in menus. A working knowledge of Cyrillic also helps to decipher Russian place names in maps. The names of American chain restaurants are written in Cyrillic, too (not that these remotely hold any interest for me, but I know that many American travelers do enjoy familiar reminders of home). So, a good working knowledge of Cyrillic will take you a long way here, even if you don't actually know any Russian words.
You may already know more Cyrillic than you think! See if you can figure out how to pronounce these words (hint: they're all very close to the English equivalent):
Before I moved to St. Petersburg, I remembered many of the letters from my 2012 Russian vacation, although at the time I didn't quite learn the entire alphabet. In the last two months, without making too much of an effort, I think I managed to put 75% of the Cyrillic alphabet into my long term memory. My first ten hours of Russian language classes the last two weeks (plus several hours of additional studying) have pretty well drilled the remaining 25% of the alphabet into my brain.
I definitely recommend that any visitors to Russia should try to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. There are many cognate words between English and Russian, and quite helpfully, many of them are the ones written on street signs, storefronts, or in menus. A working knowledge of Cyrillic also helps to decipher Russian place names in maps. The names of American chain restaurants are written in Cyrillic, too (not that these remotely hold any interest for me, but I know that many American travelers do enjoy familiar reminders of home). So, a good working knowledge of Cyrillic will take you a long way here, even if you don't actually know any Russian words.
You may already know more Cyrillic than you think! See if you can figure out how to pronounce these words (hint: they're all very close to the English equivalent):
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