I’d like to learn how to read the Cyrillic script, as it is used in Mongolia, Russia, Bulgaria and a couple of other places. What’s the easiest, most convenient way to do that? There’s plenty of apps to learn Russian etc., but I couldn’t find one that focused on the script itself.
A guy from Ukraine referred me to this. I’ve not mastered it yet, but I’m learning. I’m Not focusing a lot of energy on it now either, so YMMV.
damn, link won’t work. google it.
http://www.ryanestrada.com/russian/
works now
I learned to read Greek (though didn’t actually learn any words), but even that much really helps.
Was with some friends, saw a Greek poster and immediately said “Hey, that says Thessaloniki!” and proceeded to transliterate the rest of the poster. We figured out it was an upcoming EDM concert with some european big names.
I would love to do the same with Russian.
Honestly? I just looked at the alphabet and memorized the letters. There’s really not a whole lot of memorization you need to do, as a good number of the letters correspond to their Latin script counterparts. And if you know Greek letters at all (I learned them through math and I guess we had enough sororities and frats on campus that by osmosis I ended up learning many of the letters), you’re probably about 85% of the way there.
I would look for the nearest college or university with an appropriate foreign-language program. For example, I think even the local University of Hawaii at Manoa has such programs. (Dunno if it’s true any longer, but back when the wife and I were students, I learned UH Manoa had the most foreign languages taught of any US university.)
Barring that – and I’m not being completely facetious – try to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in such a country. I think they do have those now, I’m thinking Bulgaria in particular, and the language training is great. That’s how I learned to read and write Thai, being sent to Thailand in 1988 as a PCV.
I think the OP is just trying to learn the script, no? That does not require that extensive a training. Seriously, this is something you can pick up in a couple of afternoons, and some individuals could probably pick it up in a single afternoon. Plenty of Youtube videos on the alphabet. Just go through those. Do note that there are slight variances between the various Slavic countries and their use of the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s largely the same, but there are letters in some languages that don’t exist in others, and vice versa.
Here you go: Russian handwriting
ETA I suppose one should practice reading/writing lines, of course, not just individual letters
Samples of actual script: http://feb-web.ru/feb/litnas/pictures/l43-803-.jpg
Autograph manuscript of a poem by Mikhail Lermontov reproduced in Irakly Andronnikov s book Lermontov Stock Photo - Alamy
https://www.tg-m.ru/catalog/sites/default/files/catalog/2.-dram.sceny_.jpg
https://24celebs.com/public/media/2018/3/5/01-iiqm4yh.jpg
Note the letters are joined up… Some text where you can refer to a printed version could be helpful if you are studying on your own. I don’t know that you could master it in just a single afternoon.
Oh, if actual cursive is meant, that is a bit trickier. You can still learn the basics in an afternoon or two, but reading examples such as yours is much harder.
Like, for example, this is a little bit easier to make out, though there are a lot of letters that look similar and take getting used to.
I guess the question is whether the OP means this, or just the Cyrillic alphabet. I interpreted it as the latter, but I guess it could be the former.
That third link of yours looks like the best one for understanding Russian handwriting as it is used today - at least, it’s the closest to the Russian I learnt at school thirty years ago. There are some subtleties like for instance whether the character ё (with the umlaut) exists (I hear Stalin has some responsibility for that one), and I see what looks like a theta in the 19th century scripts, which isn’t used today.
Going back to the OP - Memrise, which is a free memorisation site I like a lot has a Cyrillic Alphabet set.
I’m not sure there’s much point in learning to read cursive cyrillic script if you don’t speak any of the languages involved.
Basic mastery of the alphabet is often useful so you can, e.g., read street names, metro signs, maps and the like (a friend of mine returned from St. Petersburg convinced that it is built on the River Heba) and so that you can recognise proper names. But it’s hard to think of many likely scenarios in which you need to scrutinise handwritten documents but have no interest in knowing what they say.
As others have noted, it depends what the OP means by “the Cyrillic script, as it is used in… Russia”. I figured he or she had some textbook knowledge of Russian but wanted to practice reading more day-to-day Russian documents, in which case it’s a matter of finding enough images of such.
If it’s just a matter of not knowing the language but memorizing enough to be able to make out street signs as a tourist, a chart with upright and italic, majuscule and minuscule versions of all the letters is probably enough, and that can be reinforced with a few words written on flashcards.
About 19th (or earlier) century versus contemporary alphabet charts, the main difference is that at some point some letters fell victim to spelling reform and are no longer used in Russian, e.g., theta, iota, upsilon, and yat. However, other languages besides Russian were mentioned, and some of them are still used; eg Ukrainian still has the “i”, and Mongolian Cyrillic has a letter which looks like theta but isn’t.
It’s simple to learn to read Cyrillic. You can memorize the sounds of all the letters in an hour or so, and at that point you can read, albeit very slowly. Unfortunately, that won’t bring you any closer to actually understanding the languages.
I used Rosetta Stone. I was on an IT implementation project in Russia so wanted to show willing as regards learning the language.
This.
I studied Russian decades ago and people would always remark how difficult it must be, what with all these weird letters.
Actually, no. The alphabet isn’t the most difficult thing about the Russian language by far. If you really work on it, you can read alright (not understand, mind you) in a week. I always say the alphabet is one third Latin, one third Greek and one third weird. Yes, I know the pronunciation of the vowels can change drastically depending on where the stress falls, but if you just want to know which sound each letter stands for, it really is something you can do on your own rather quickly.
Yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you all for your suggestions, that was very helpful. I like the cartoons, Qadgop!
Me too. I learn best by comic book style, these days. A pity my medical education modules aren’t done that way; I’d learn more.