Russian Chat Alphabet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Russian Chat Alphabet is used in Russia and those countries where Russian is used regularly to communicate via mobile phone and chat room, an alternate and free style of transliteration has arisen.
The main reason that transliteration is used with Russian, especially in Russia, is that in text messages you get more Latin characters for your money: usually 160 Latin characters per charged message versus 60/70 Cyrillic characters. Obviously the onus is on getting one Latin symbol (of which there are 26) for each Cyrillic symbol (of which there are 33 in Russian, and extra symbols in Ukrainian and other Cyrillic-based languages). Only those used for Russian are exemplified here.
(Where variants are given, the first is most common and the last is less common - although trends change quickly and differ from person-to-person.)
- А - a
- Б - b
- В - v
- Г - g
- Д - d
- Е - e (and ye, je, occasionally in initial or post-ъ or -ь position)
- Ё - e, yo, jo
- Ж - zh, g, *, j
- З - z
- И - i
- Й - i, y, j
- К - k
- Л - l
- М - m
- Н - n
- О - o
- П - p
- Р - r
- С - s, c
- Т - t
- У - u, y
- Ф - f
- Х - h, x, kh
- Ц - c, ts
- Ч - ch, 4
- Ш - sh, w, 6
- Щ - sh, w, sch, shh, shch, shsh
- Ъ - ' (apostrophe), " (quote marks), [not transliterated]
- Ы - y, i
- Ь - ' (apostrophe), [not transliterated] - usually only transcribed with "ль"
- Э - e
- Ю - yu, u, iu, ju
- Я - ya, R, ia, ja
