section_path: Alphabet
section_name: Alphabet
paragraph_text: Alphabet
  
  Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound:
  
  Older letters of the Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ (/je/ or /ʲe/); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩, which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ (/i/); ⟨ ѳ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ (/f/); ⟨ ѫ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ (/u/); ⟨ ѭ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ (/ju/ or /ʲu/); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩, which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/. While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated the pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/, /ĭ/.