42 votes
Accepted

What are these Russian characters that aren't in the alphabet in my learning material?

-small m = т -и with line on top = й -g = д -mirrored s = г These are handwriting-style characters, but some of them (m, -и with line on top and mirrored s in particular) are also used in the ...
Баян Купи-ка's user avatar
41 votes
Accepted

What Russian letter is this?

The character "д" is the lowercase italic version of "Д", which both derive from the greek letter Delta (compare with "Δ", "δ"). In most fonts the straight lowercase letter is written as "д", while "д"...
Dmitry Grigoryev's user avatar
30 votes

Why is the letter "г" in some Russian words pronounced [v]?

The Russian orthography is based on morphological-historical principles, which means it tries to write morphemes the same way all the time and keep the historical spellings of those morphemes (the ...
Yellow Sky's user avatar
29 votes

What are these Russian characters that aren't in the alphabet in my learning material?

Those are cursive forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cursive The letters you were surprised by are, in order listed, Тт Йй Дд Гг.
Roman Odaisky's user avatar
19 votes

What are these two words with obsolete letters?

First word (Уездная) has an obsolete letter "yat" ("ять") in cursive, so it looks different form its typical form (ѣ). Second word (Нарымъ) has no obsolete letters, although the first letter "Н" is ...
Alexander's user avatar
  • 4,319
19 votes
Accepted

Why does ы have a soft sign in it?

The letter ы is a ligature of ъ and і. In the past, these were both vowels (something like /ɤ̞/ and /i/) and ы was considered as some mixture of those two vowels.
Omar and Lorraine's user avatar
16 votes

What Russian letter is this?

It is a valid letter "д", the fifth letter of the alphabet. The glyph in the example is produced with a cursive/italic font. The other one is a glyph from a regular straight font.
Vitaly's user avatar
  • 3,088
16 votes
Accepted

What are these two words with obsolete letters?

The first word is Уездная (County, district). The second word is Нарым. It's a geographic title, no translation.
Dmitry's user avatar
  • 8,346
15 votes
Accepted

What is "Э оборотное"?

"Э оборотное" is just other name for "э". The reason why it's called "оборотное" (sort of reversed) is that modern Russian "е" initially was written as "є" - well, more strictly among other form this ...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 37.9k
13 votes

What is the first letter in the first name and in the surname in Cyrillic?

As Alissa correctly said, the first letter in both words is Я, and the first name is Янъ (Yan). But the first word is "Явился". It is neither a first name nor a surname, it means "[there] came". The ...
Yellow Sky's user avatar
12 votes

"И" versus "Й" in Russian

Oй rhymes with "joy" and ои rhymes with "Joey".
Навозник's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

"И" versus "Й" in Russian

Russian "и" is a vowel and sounds more like the 'ee' in "tweet", while "й" is a consonant and sounds more like the first sound of "young". Btw, you could try ...
QuasiRus's user avatar
  • 136
11 votes

What is the difference between the letters Е and Э?

Russian letter 'Е' sounds differently when it's the first letter of a word, or when it follows a consonant in the middle of a word. Letter 'Э' sounds the same in any part of the word. Both letters are ...
Vitaly's user avatar
  • 3,088
10 votes
Accepted

What is the difference in how shah and schchah are written (by hand) in practice?

This is an incorrect (and poor quality) picture. These letters look different in every script. Like this: Ш ш Щ щ Ш ш Щ щ
Zeus's user avatar
  • 3,098
9 votes

Why does the word "четверг" sound as "четвергх"?

Well, while V.V is not wrong about voicelessness, there's actually something else out there. What you seem to hear is actually an evidence of so called "явления придыхательности глухих согласных" (...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 37.9k
9 votes

What is the difference between the letters Е and Э?

The consonant letter resembling a vowel by its form is З з (like number three), so your friend might inintentionally mistake the З з for Э э. The letter Э э is closer to the first part [ε] in the ...
Manjusri's user avatar
  • 4,502
9 votes

What are these Russian characters that aren't in the alphabet in my learning material?

In some fonts you might also encounter 'mirrored 6' which is 'small д'.
yury10578's user avatar
  • 1,675
8 votes

Is there a difference between "эго" and "это" or the are the same?

These are two completely different words. Эго is a noun which means ego. In most cases, it means a (usually boosted) sense of self-importance, for example у него непомерно раздутое эго. In Russian, ...
user31264's user avatar
  • 8,542
8 votes
Accepted

Alternate shapes of cyrillic letters?

The word prelude "прелюдия" is printed with an older font. Hence glyphs are slightly different from the modern fonts. In the future you can check such glyphs against the table of Old Cyrillic ...
Vitaly's user avatar
  • 3,088
8 votes
Accepted

Why are the dotted i (І/і) and yi (Ї/ї) from Ukrainian not present in Russian?

The Russian alphabet had both і and ї in the past, but they became obsolete. "Изменялись также правила относительно числа точек над І: Пётр отменил было их; затем было предписано ставить по две ...
Alexander's user avatar
  • 4,319
7 votes

Why does the word "четверг" sound as "четвергх"?

Consonants in Russian (and in all other languages) are either voiced or voiceless. The consonants in each pair below are pronounced in exactly the same manner, the only difference being in the ...
V.V.'s user avatar
  • 21.4k
7 votes

What are these Russian characters that aren't in the alphabet in my learning material?

Nobody posted these letters italicized yet, so here you go: Тт Тт Йй Йй Дд Дд Гг Гг Examine this answer's markdown by clicking "edit" to make sure I didn't trick you :ь
user1306322's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

Names of pre-1918 letters

Поскольку ответы в одно предложение, насколько я помню, против правил (в таких случаях рекомендуется дать больше информации), даю название всех букв. Названия букв в старой орфографии. В квадратных ...
user31264's user avatar
  • 8,542
6 votes

Why is the letter "г" in some Russian words pronounced [v]?

Historical phonetics, I guess. In some southern dialects of Modern Russian, the letter Г г is still pronounced as [ɣ] almost in any position (as in modern Ukrainian). For some times, the Russian koine ...
Manjusri's user avatar
  • 4,502
5 votes

Is it considered a mistake to write "его" and "ето" instead of эго and это?

Yes, because E e at a beginning of a word is heard as [je]. Moreover, это = this / it эго = Ego (as in Freudian personality theory). I haven't ever seen ето written instead of это by a native ...
Manjusri's user avatar
  • 4,502
5 votes

Is there a difference between "эго" and "это" or the are the same?

My intuition is that perhaps you meant его (as a Single Genitive Case of он(о)) instead of эго, which is more likely to be 'used almost in the same context' as это, or perhaps него. The differences ...
Manjusri's user avatar
  • 4,502
5 votes

What Russian letter is this?

Every language has its quirkiness. With Russian,this is evident when one starts typing texts on a PC - and then formatting parts of it. Hence, the сведения seems to differ from "сведения". But, this ...
GB-UK's user avatar
  • 51
5 votes

Why does the word "четверг" sound as "четвергх"?

Would you describe it as [-rx] or as [-rkʰ]? If it's the first, it's not just a четверг thing, but a Southern pronunciation feature where the final /г/ is pronounced [x] instead of simply devoicing to ...
Nikolay Ershov's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Church Slavonic lettering style

If i'm not mistaken it must be титульный шрифт (from the obsolete титул - title, since it was used to inscribe book/chapter titles), or титульная вязь, which i'm not sure is an accurate name because ...
Баян Купи-ка's user avatar
5 votes

Should "йе" after vowel be pronounced [jje]?

Gemination is a bit fuzzy in Russian: Words such as касса, масса, тонна, ванна, Мекка, поддать, Приенисейе [йй] have 'true doubles': saying them with a single consonant can hinder understanding. ...
Sergey Slepov's user avatar

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