ВГД

Reading Russian

Reading Russian is very easy because in most cases letters are pronounced in the only one way. When my children were very small I was teaching them to read and they began reading at two years of age. I'm sure you are more clever then then two year old children.
Here are some letters of Russian alphabet that are easy - you must only remember how they sound, and they have analogues in English

as the 2-nd sound in "cup"

as the first sound in "book"

as the first sound in "van"

as the first sound in "glass"

as the first sound in "dad"

as all the sounds before "s" in "yes"

Й + О

as the 2 sound in "Jane" (if the first is "d")

as the 1 sound in "zoom"

as the 2 sound in "link"

as the last sound in "toy"

as the 1 sound in "Kate"

as the first sound in "land"

as the first sound in "Mike"

as the first sound in "Nick"

as the second sound in "Tom"

as the first sound in "Polly"

as the first sound in "rat"

as the first sound in "Sam"

as the first sound in "Tom"

as the second sound in "look"

as the first sound in "face"

as the first sound in "hurry"

as all the sounds after first two in "cats"

as the first sound in the word "child"

as the last sound in the word "flash"

as the first sound in the word "shut"

described below

this sound will be the third in "drink" if you'll try pronouncing it deep in the throat

it is not a sound, it makes other letters sound softer. For example "l" in "value" sounds as if this letter is standing after it in the following way: ЛЬ

as the 2 sound in the word "lady"

as the word "you"

as the sound by which the Germans say "yes" - "Ja"

To explain to you the last difficult letter of the Russian alphabet Ъ, I'll have to teach you reading before. As you understand sounds are not pronounced separately, they are pronounced together, so that words appear.

For example, if we try to write the word "cat" in Cyrillic letters it'll be written in the following way: КЭТ

So try to read two surnames that I'm sure you know (if you are interested in Russia):
ПУТИН
ЕЛЬЦИН

If you find in the table how each letter sounds, you'll read it easily. And now we move to the letter Ъ. When it stands after some letter, it means that this letter is pronounced separately. For example, the word СЕЛ, when all the sounds are pronounced together, means that somebody sat down (or got to prison).

And the word СЪЕЛ, where the first sound is pronounced separately means that somebody ate something - so it's significant, you see.