42
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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 ...
- 19.6k
41
votes
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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"...
- 812
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 ...
- 26k
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.
- 1,955
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 ...
- 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.
- 1,293
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.
- 3,088
16
votes
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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.
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15
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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 ...
- 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 ...
- 26k
12
votes
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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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
- 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" (...
- 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 ...
- 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'.
- 1,675
8
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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, ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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
- 931
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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 19.3k
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 ...
- 19.6k
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. ...
- 16.1k
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