Russian Alphabet

Languages with substantially different alphabets are a huge barrier to most English speakers.   This could partially explain the limited popularity of Eastern languages in the West.   Despite the differences in the alphabets, Russian, as a language is not that difficult to learn from a structural perspective, and typically every letter is pronounced in every word.    The following is a chart showing the Russian letter and corresponding English sound.  Can you notice right away some of the similarities?

М, Б, Т, А, К  - These letters sound, more or less the same as their English equivalents, although Б does not truly look like the English B, it's close enough (Although the actual Russian B sounds different!)

Н, В, У, Х, О - The so-called 'false friends' - look like the English letters, but have a different sound altogether.

The rest are a combination of new and unique sounds, that are not hard to learn with practice.  My personal advice is to make certain that any text you select emphasizes Cyrillic (although phoenetic helpers are useful if included) - avoiding such texts as "Russian for Dummies".