So You Want to Read Russian in Five Minutes?

So You Want to Read Russian in Five Minutes?

As someone who’s taught English in Russia more than once, I’m always amazed by this:
Give someone five minutes with the Russian alphabet, and suddenly they can read half the country.

Why?
Because Russian is phonetic — what you see is (mostly) what you say.
Each letter maps cleanly to a sound, with just enough quirks to keep things interesting.

Spend a few minutes learning the basics, and you’ll be reading Макдоналдс (McDonald’s), Метро (Metro), and even Горбачёв (Gorbachev) like a pro.

I’ve put together a stripped-down alphabet and pronunciation guide below.
If you want to read Russian signs, menus, or street names — start there.
No grammar, no verbs, no stress. Just read the letters.
It’s like cracking a code... and the reward is instant.

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Russian Has 33 Letters: The Perfect Cipher for the Curious

Russian uses 33 letters in its Cyrillic alphabet, but here’s the trick to unlocking it fast: it’s basically a beautiful hybrid cipher. Split it this way:

• 11 Greek-based letters — the mathematical backbone (like П, Ф, Д),
• 11 Latin-lookalikes — familiar shapes with familiar sounds (like А, К, М, Т),
• 11 wild cards — the cryptic symbols (Ж, Ы, Щ) that look like they were dreamed up in a monastery over mushrooms and metaphysics.

That’s because Cyrillic was, quite literally, designed by monks—Saints Cyril and Methodius—who wanted to encode sound with precision, translating spoken Slavic into written form using the best of Greek geometry, Latin clarity, and Slavic soul.

The result? A phonetic language that’s refreshingly logical: once you learn what each letter sounds like, you can read it. No silent letters like “knight” or weird vowel soup like “through.” Just honest, crisp sounds. So if you spend five minutes with a chart, you can decode signs, menus, and even read "Макдоналдс" (yes, that’s McDonald’s).

Russian isn’t hard—it’s just encrypted. And once you crack the code, you’ll see the world a bit differently.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet—it looks intimidating, but it’s actually really phonetic. That means once you know the letters, you can pretty much sound out everything.

Here’s the full Russian alphabet:
А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я

But guess what?
If you’re just trying to read or sound out common Russian words, you can ignore a bunch of them—because 44 Cyrillic-based languages don’t even use all of them.

Let’s trim the fat.
Remove these for basic phonetic reading:
Ё, Й, Ц, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э

That leaves you with a core set of letters that behave consistently and phonetically.
Let’s walk through just a few that matter most:

Example: Макдоналдс and Горбачёв

Now read this:
Макдоналдс

• М = M
• А = A
• К = K
• Д = D
• О = O
• Н = N
• А = A
• Л = L
• Д = D
• С = S

Mak-don-alds. You just read McDonald's in Russian.
And you didn’t break a sweat.

Solving "Gorbachev" in Cyrillic (Горбачёв)

If you know your Russian letters, here’s how to break it down:

So, Горбачёв = Gor-ba-CHYOV