Letters eliminated in 1917–18
• і — Identical in pronunciation to ⟨и⟩, was used exclusively immediately before other vowels and the ⟨й⟩ ("Short I") (for example, ⟨патріархъ⟩ [pətrʲɪˈarx], 'patriarch') and in the word ⟨міръ⟩ … See more

Most consonants can represent both "soft" (palatalized, represented in the IPA with a ⟨ʲ⟩) and "hard" consonant phonemes. If consonant letters are followed by vowel letters, the soft/hard … See more

Hard sign
The hard sign (⟨ъ⟩) acts like a "silent back vowel" that separates a succeeding "soft vowel" (⟨е, ё, ю, я⟩, but not ⟨и⟩) from a preceding … See more

The numerical values correspond to the Greek numerals, with ⟨ѕ⟩ being used for digamma, ⟨ч⟩ for koppa, and ⟨ц⟩ for sampi. The system was abandoned for secular purposes in 1708, after a transitional period of a century or so; it continues to be used in See more

The Russian alphabet contains 10 vowel letters. They are grouped into soft and hard vowels. The soft vowels, ⟨е, ё, и, ю, я⟩, either indicate a … See more

Because Russian borrows terms from other languages, there are various conventions for sounds not present in Russian.
For example, while Russian has no [h], there are a number of common words (particularly proper … See more

The Cyrillic alphabet and Russian spelling generally employ fewer diacritics than those used in other European languages written with the Latin alphabet. The only diacritic, in the proper sense, is the acute accent ⟨◌́⟩ (Russian: знак ударения 'mark of stress'), which marks See more