Victory Day festivities

Okay, now that we, hopefully, learned the alphabet let's have a rest and watch how Russians celebrated Victory Day. 

Victory Day Pyrotechnics Show

Victory Day festivities held in Moscow throughout Sunday were topped off by a spectacular fireworks display. A record 4,500 fireworks lit up the Moscow sky as crowds watched from a variety of sites in the capital. The tradition dates back to the World War II years of 1943-1945. At that time, fireworks marked all the victories reported in the media. That was a way to boost the morale of the nation and encourage the troops.

Light show

Russian alphabet

The Russian alphabet has 33 letters. It descended from the Greek alphabet, so while some may appear like the English alphabet, the pronunciation might be very different. It consists of 21 consonants and 10 vowel letters. The last two, ь, and ъ , are neutral, as they do not designate sounds.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33
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
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		ы		э	ю	я
Similar to English: easiest to grasp, their sound resembles the English sound
Hard and soft signs
"Greek" letters: easy for people that know Greek. Л is pronounced like Lambda.

Listen to the alphabet

Basic pronunciation rules

Notes on the Alphabet and Pronunciation of Russian

1. While Russian has a mostly phonetic orthography, there are a few exceptions:
   • The letter "г" between the letters "e" and "o" and between two "o"'s it is pronounced as /v/, e.g. "его" (his, him) is pronounced /jevo/. This rule only applies when "его" is at the end of the word. Note that this applies only to the case endings (genitive and accusative), there are words that fit this description but are pronounced normally, e.g. "много" /mnogo/ - many, much, a lot (of)
   • Voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts lose their voicing at the end of a word, e.g. "строганов" (stroganoff) is pronounced /stroganof/.
   • Voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts become unvoiced before voiceless consonants, e.g. "водка" (vodka) is pronounced /votka/.
   • Similarly, voiceless consonants with voiced counterparts become voiced before voiced consonants, e.g. "футбол" (soccer/football) is pronounced /fudbol/.
   • Vowel is only fully pronounced when it is under accent. In the non-accented (weak) position, vowel is "reduced" to the neutral sound. Spelling, on the other hand, doesn't depend on whether position is accented or not. This particularly applies to the 'o'.
2. The hard sign (Ъ/ъ) indicates that the preceding consonant is not palatalized. However, it has been very rarely used since the spelling reform of 1918.
3. The soft sign (Ь/ь) indicates that the preceding consonant is palatalized.
4. The vowels Е/е, Ё/ё, И/и, Ю/ю, Я/я make the consonants before them palatal consonant. This means that one pronounces the consonant with the middle of the tongue raised, pressing against the hard palate.

Pronunciation mnemonics

1. Letters identical to their latin equivalents : к о м е т а (comet)
2. "Greek" letters: г л ф (as in Gamma, Lambda, Phi). Try also, the Russian word, флаг, which means "flag".
3. да (da) нет (nyet): two easy Russian words that show you how д, н and е are pronounced
4. суши-бар (sushi-bar): these are popping up all over the place in St. Petersburg... this word is a very useful way of learning how с, у, ш, и, б and р are pronounced
5. хип-хоп (hip-hop): actually, the х is a much harsher sound, like the "ch" in Scottish "loch", but otherwise хип-хоп music can help you learn х and п
6. союз (Soyuz): useful for learning the ю and the з (which you should just think of as a cursive latin Z)
7. я (ya/I;) and вы (vy/you): pronouns you'll be using most often when talking with strangers, as in "do you speak English? I do not speak Russian". Unlike English, pronouns can be ommited due to context in the present and future tenses.
8. царь (tsar) and чай (chai): for keeping your ц and ч straight

Source: Wikipedia

Old Russian ABC by Elisabeth Bohm

Old Cyrillic alphabet illustrated by Elisabeth Bohm (Елизавета Меркурьевна Бём; 1843-1914), a Russian painter and the most successful prominent author of postcards in 19th century Russia.

Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic script is an alphabet developed in the 9th century in Bulgaria, and used in the Slavic national languages of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and Mongolian. It also was used in past languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Siberia.

The Cyrillic alphabet is also known as azbuka, derived from the old names of the first two letters of most variant Cyrillic alphabets. Since the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek alphabets.

The picture above is a page from Azbuka, the first Russian textbook, printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet.

Below you can see distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet worldwide. This map shows the countries in the world that use the Cyrillic alphabet as the official script in dark green and as one of multiple official scripts in light green.



Read the full article on Wikipedia