How it works
The Belarusian alphabet to copy: the 32 Cyrillic letters as capitals, then as small letters, each with its Latin letter and its Belarusian name. Г is h, Ж is zh and Ў, short u, is w.
Read the full guide
Hard or soft, by the vowel
A consonant is plain or softened, and the vowel letter after it shows which. С is plain in са, сэ, сы, со and су and soft in ся, се, сі, сё and сю; at the end of a word the soft sign does it, сь. An apostrophe keeps a plain consonant apart from the vowel: с'я.
Г, дж and дз
Г stands for /ɣ/ and is written h in Latin letters; /ɡ/ turns up only in borrowed and sound-imitating words. Дж and дз each write one sound with two letters, and some charts print them in brackets after Д.
- Ў was proposed in 1870. It follows a vowel and sounds like the w in cow: воўк, wolf.
- The apostrophe has three forms: ’ and ' on computers and, rarely, ʼ.
Questions and answers
How many letters are in the Belarusian alphabet?
32. It is based on the Cyrillic script and has had its present form since 1918. The apostrophe is not counted as a letter, and neither are the pairs дж and дз.
Which Belarusian letters are not in the Russian alphabet?
Two: І and Ў. Russian in turn has three letters the Belarusian alphabet does not: И, Щ and Ъ. Ў is used by no other Slavic language.
What is the letter Ў?
Short u, in Belarusian у кароткае, also called у нескладовае, nonsyllabic u. It stands for /w/ and is not a sound of its own: it is what /v/ and /l/ become when no vowel follows, before a consonant or at the end of a word.
How is Belarusian written in Latin letters?
The Latin letters on the tiles are those of the BGN/PCGN system of 1979, the one the United States and Britain use for place names. Each note adds the ISO 9 letter where it differs. A Belarusian Latin alphabet exists as well.