# Cyrillic



## COF

I want to learn Russian and I think it would be best to start by learning the Cyrillic alphabet. But I'm not sure where to start and dunno which forms to learn.

The handwritten forms or the printed forms.


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## übermönch

Printed forms certainly. You can hardly use the handwritten forms unless you want to write something or have some italic text in front of you. At best learn both at the same time. They aren't that different. First of all, remember all the letter which are similar in latin and cyrillic (a,o,e,k,m...); then the ones which are similar in Greek and Cyrillic(п,ф,л,д,х...), then there will be only very little left It's not really that hard. You may want to take a look at the "resources for learners" in this very forum first!


EDIT: try to deciffer these:
 Папа, Мама


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## COF

Thanks for the advice . Also, just how phonetic is Russian Cyrillic? Some say it is, some say it isn't?

I mean, is it any more phonetic than say English or French?


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## Crescent

That's a good question! I can tell you that the general rule is that constonants in Russian _are _phoenetic, where as vowels _aren't_. In fact, there are many rules in russian which even the natives have to use in order to do a little mental check of how a word is spelt before writing it down, concerning mainly vowels. I do it all the time, if I know the rule! 
Good luck to you!


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## Lemminkäinen

I suggest learning both - if you want to write in Russian you'll need to know the cursive, as writing the printed letters will look funny (think handwritten 'a' just like that).

I'm not quite sure I understand the "how phonetic" question - do you mean how close the Russian written form is to how it's pronounced?


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## Outsider

COF, check out the Resources sticky in the Slavic Languages forum.


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## COF

Lemminkäinen said:


> I'm not quite sure I understand the "how phonetic" question - do you mean how close the Russian written form is to how it's pronounced?



Yeah, that's what I mean .


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## Lemminkäinen

COF said:


> Yeah, that's what I mean .



Ah. Well, then I think *Crescent* explained it fairly well


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## beclija

But it _is_ more phonetic than English and French.... not a hard job, by the way. There are things you just have to know (like where the accent is, quite arbitrary and not marked in spelling, and it changes the way all the vowels are pronounced). I usually don't know these things, which is why I tend to say I sort of can read Russian (yes, much more than is self-explanatory from the similarities with the Slavic language I know better), but don't speak a word.


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## Brian P

EDIT: try to deciffer these:
Папа, Мама [/quote]

"decipher" Jana!


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