Cyrillic

Кириллица

Alphabet · 33 letters

One letter per sound, vowels included, written in the line like consonants. This is the Latin system: the simplest to learn, and the quickest to pay off.

Open the guide

What pays off on the road

• The letters that name the country: Ї Є Ґ Ukraine, Ђ Ћ Serbia or Montenegro, Ѓ Ќ Ѕ North Macedonia, Ұ Һ Ә Kazakhstan. Bulgaria has none of its own: its Ъ is written in Russian too.
• Four Russian words that cut up an address: УЛИЦА street, ГОРОД city, РАЙОН district, ОБЛАСТЬ region.
• Reading a name: the six false friends first — В reads v, Н n, Р r, С s — and РОССИЯ stops reading “Poccnr”.

How it works

Twelve countries, thirty-three letters

No script pays off as well: Cyrillic covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia. That is a ninth of the land on Earth, and most of what a player sees without being able to read it.

One letter, one sound, and spelling follows pronunciation far more closely than French or English. A name transliterates letter by letter with no grammatical trap: Хабаровск gives Khabarovsk, and there is nothing else to know.

The six in disguise

В reads v. Н reads n. Р reads r. С reads s. У reads oo. Х is scraped like the Spanish jota. These six wear a Latin shape over another sound, and they are enough to turn РОССИЯ into "Poccnr" instead of "Rossiya".

The word СПОРТ is the best example: five letters, four of them in disguise, and it reads "sport". Remembering it is remembering half the family at once.

The letters that name the country

Each language added its own, and they beat any landscape cue: seeing a Ї or a Є means Ukraine, with nothing to weigh up. A Ў is Belarusian. A Ј, a Љ, a Њ are Serbian or Macedonian; a Ѓ, a Ќ, a Ѕ, Macedonian only. An Ә or an Ө are Kazakh.

The converse counts as much: Ы, Э and Ъ do not exist in Ukrainian or Serbian. A text carrying them is neither, and two letters then rule out half the map.

Bulgaria has no letter of its own: its Ъ, which it uses as a vowel, is written in Russian too. It is recognised by absence — neither the Russian Ы and Э, nor any letter of its neighbours.

This is the one place in the app where learning a letter directly earns you a border. The rest of the alphabet is for reading; this family is for placing.

The two letters with no sound

Ь, the soft sign, softens the consonant before it. Ъ, the hard sign, separates it from the vowel after. Neither is pronounced, and transliteration renders them as an apostrophe or as nothing.

Ignoring them never costs a place name: Тверь gives Tver, and nobody writes Tver'. Recognising them does save you from taking them for unknown letters and stalling.

The cursive is another script

Handwritten Cyrillic looks nothing like printed Cyrillic: т becomes an m, и a u, д a g. Graffiti, a restaurant board, a note on a window read differently, and this cheat sheet does not help there.

That is not a gap: signs, shop fronts and plates — everything that matters in a round — are printed. Cursive is a separate skill, and it pays almost nothing.

Cheat sheet

The ones you already read

Same shape as Latin, same sound. Six free letters, including the three commonest Russian vowels.

The false friends

Same shape as Latin, different sound. Six letters, and the whole difficulty of Cyrillic sits inside. The word СПОРТ holds four of them and reads "sport".

The shapes of its own

No resemblance to Latin, so no trap. Nineteen letters, four of them hushing sounds that English spells with two or three signs: Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ.

The letters that name the country

Each language added its own, and they beat any landscape cue: seeing a Ї means Ukraine, with nothing to weigh up. This is the one family in the app where learning a letter earns a border. Several were added afterwards, because real Kazakh and Macedonian town names would not transliterate without them; Ѕ was added to name North Macedonia.

The marks

Two letters with no sound of their own: they say how to read the consonant beside them. Ignoring them never costs a place name; recognising them saves you from stalling.

The words on signs

Countries

Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Kazakhstan · Kosovo · Kyrgyzstan · Mongolia · Montenegro · North Macedonia · Russia · Serbia · Ukraine

Guides · Countries