The Russian alphabet (, or , more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, Old Slavonic. Initially an old variant of the Bulgarian alphabet, it became used in the Kievan Rusʹ since the 10th century to write what would become the modern Russian language.
The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ), a semivowel / consonant (), and two modifier letters or "signs" (, ) that alter pronunciation of a preceding consonant or a following vowel.
Letters
An alternative form of the letter De (Д д) closely resembles the Greek letter delta (Δ δ). An alternative form of the letter El (Л л) closely resembles the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ).
Historic letters
Letters eliminated in 1917–18
— Identical in pronunciation to , was used exclusively immediately before other vowels and the ("Short I") (for example, , 'patriarch') and in the word ('world') and its derivatives, to distinguish it from the word ('peace') (the two words are actually etymologically cognate and not arbitrarily homonyms). ѣ — Originally had a distinct sound, but by the middle of the eighteenth century had become identical in pronunciation to in the standard language. Since its elimination in 1918, it has remained a political symbol of the old orthography. ѳ — From the Greek theta, was identical to in pronunciation, but was used etymologically (for example, "Theodore" became "Fyodor"). ѵ — From the Greek upsilon, usually identical to in pronunciation, as in Byzantine Greek, was used etymologically for Greek loanwords, like Latin Y (as in synod, myrrh); by 1918, it had become very rare. In spellings of the eighteenth century, it was also used after some vowels, where it has since been replaced with or (rarely) . For example, a Greek prefix originally spelled (equivalent to English ) is now spelled in most cases and as a component in some compound words.
Letters eliminated before 1750
corresponded to a more archaic pronunciation, already absent in East Slavic at the start of the historical period, but kept by tradition in certain words until the eighteenth century in secular writing, and in Church Slavonic and Macedonian to the present day. and derived from Greek letters xi and psi, used etymologically though inconsistently in secular writing until the eighteenth century, and more consistently to the present day in Church Slavonic. is the Greek letter omega, identical in pronunciation to , used in secular writing until the eighteenth century, but to the present day in Church Slavonic, mostly to distinguish inflexional forms otherwise written identically. Two "yuses", "big" and "small" , used to stand for nasalized vowels and . According to linguistic reconstruction, both become irrelevant for East Slavic phonology at the beginning of the historical period, but were introduced along with the rest of the Cyrillic script. The iotated yuses, and , had largely vanished by the twelfth century. The uniotated continued to be used, etymologically, until the sixteenth century. Thereafter it was restricted to being a dominical letter in the Paschal tables. The seventeenth-century usage of and (see next note) survives in contemporary Church Slavonic, and the sounds (but not the letters) in Polish. The letter was adapted to represent the iotated in the middle or end of a word; the modern letter is an adaptation of its cursive form of the seventeenth century, enshrined by the typographical reform of 1708. Until 1708, the iotated was written at the beginning of a word. This distinction between and survives in Church Slavonic.
Although it is usually stated that the letters in the table above were eliminated in the typographical reform of 1708, reality is somewhat more complex. The letters were indeed originally omitted from the sample alphabet, printed in a western-style serif font, presented in Peter's edict, along with the letters (replaced by ), , and (the diacriticized letter was also removed), but were reinstated except and under pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church in a later variant of the modern typeface (1710). Nonetheless, since 1735 the Russian Academy of Sciences began to use fonts without , , and ; however, was sometimes used again since 1758.
Although praised by Western scholars and philosophers, it was criticized by clergy and many conservative scholars, who found the new standard too "Russified". Some even went as far as to refer to Peter as the Anti-Christ.