This is the first of a series of posts that will cover the cyrillic alphabet that's used to write Russian, and that you may have already had encountered. If not, please check my russian expressions posts for samples.

Ok, let's start with a few letters that should be a piece of cake for everyone here *g*

Russian letter	Pronounciation	Transcription
А	in stressed position: "a" as in far, only shorter one before stressed position: "u" as in cut any other position: weaker "u" as in cut	a
Е	in stressed position: "ye" as in yet any other position: between "ye" and "yi"	e ye (at the beginning of a word)
К	"k" as in back	k
О	in stressed position: "o" as in port, only shorter any other position: "a" as in far, only shorter	o
М	"m" as in mail	m
Т	"t" as in top	t

See? Already 6 characters: that wasn't too hard, huh? Just pay attention to the place of the stressed syllable. The unstressed vowels are pronounced differently and more softly - see the table. Also, something that we'll see more in details later is that the consonant before a vowel like "e" is softened: "Te" is pronounced "Tye". I'll use an accent to show the stressed syllable in the transcription in this series, as in é, for instance....

That's it for now! Stay tuned for more coming up soon ^-^