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Lesson Transcript

Zdrastvuite, Ya Svetlana! Welcome to Russianpod101.com’s Алфавит Made Easy!
The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Russian Cyrillic alphabet: the Алфавит!
In the previous lesson, we continued introducing some “False Friends” - Russian letters that look like letters of the English alphabet, but sound completely different. We've already learned several, but do you remember how to read and write them? Taking the time to review the lessons will be the key to learning how to write in Russian!
In this lesson we'll finish up with our False Friends. Then we'll learn a few more words for you to add to your notebook. Ready to learn? Then let’s go!
Our first letter is “С”!
It looks identical to the English upper and lowercase See, right? Of course, the Russian “С” does not sound like the English See, although I guess sometimes it does! I mean, the English See can sometimes make an S sound, so it's kind of like a mostly-false friend, right?
Here’s the uppercase.
В (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
В (print, lower)
The cursive uppercase “С” looks like this. It's similar to the English cursive See, but thankfully it’s a bit simpler than most Russian letters. Uppercase “С” is a single stroke which connects easily to the next letter without lifting your pen or pencil.
As for the lowercase “C”, it's identical to the uppercase except for its size.
Now we’ll write them.
С (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
С (cursive, lower)
The second letter we'll learn in this lesson looks pretty familiar: “У”. As you can see, it looks similar to an English Why, with just small differences. Of course, it doesn’t sound like Why at all but at least it’s easy to pronounce. “У” makes an /u/ sound 100% of the time.
Here’s how to write the printed versions.
У (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
У (print, lower)
Now let's take a look at how to write “У” in cursive.
The uppercase version looks like this. As you can see, the cursive version of “У” looks similar to the English Why. It's written in a single stroke and connects easily to the next letter.
While the uppercase version does not dip below the line, the lowercase version does.
Handwriting time!
Р (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
Р (cursive, lower)
Let's learn one more letter!
The third letter we'll learn in this lesson should look pretty familiar, too: “Х”. As you can see, it looks identical to the English EX, but of course it doesn't sound like EX. Actually, this will be a new sound for most English speakers. “Х” makes a harder "H" sound -- (sound). “Х” makes this sound 100% of the time.
Here’s how to write the printed versions.
Х (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
Х (print, lower)
As you can see, the cursive version of “Х” is not at all similar to the cursive version of the English EX. It's written in two strokes and connects easily to the next letter.
Lowercase “Х” looks exactly like the uppercase version, but just a little smaller.
Let's write it!
Р (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
Р (cursive, lower)
And that's all! Wow, great job today. We've finally met the last of our False Friends!
We'll continue learning more letters in the next lesson, but for now let's practice using these letters in some new words.
First up is a word that uses two of our new letters – try reading it aloud. It should be easy.
It's pronounced “сахар” and means “sugar”. Russians love tea with sugar, so you will see this word a lot. Now let's try writing it. We'll use lowercase letters.
сахар (cursive)
Now let's try writing two sentences. As you know from a previous lesson, “он” means “he”. турок means “Turk” as in “someone from Turkey”. So the first sentence means “He is Turkish”. In the second sentence, we see “ест” which is an important word, meaning “eats”. And “халва” is a popular sweet in Russia originally from the Middle East, in English it's called “Halva”. The second sentence means “He is eating halva.”
Now let's try to write it! We'll start each sentence properly with an uppercase letter.
Oн турок. Oн ест халву. (cursive)
Now it's time for Svetlana’s insights.
You probably realized this, but the order we're learning the alfavit is not actually the correct order. We're using this order because it's easier to learn, but just be aware that it's not the way Russian children learn it, or how a Russian would recite the alfavit.
In the next Алфавит Made Easy lesson, we'll be introducing some interesting new letters that are going to be completely unfamiliar to you. Are you excited yet?
Пока Пока!

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