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Russian spaceflight glossary: Introduction

On the English-to-Russian pages, I use the English transliteration of Russian acronyms first in filing order, so these do not always match the English translation, eg. “Functional Cargo Block” is FGB, using the transliteration of the Russian acronym, and “Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya” is filed under RKK Energiya (using the Russian acronym).

I have provided a brief guide to the Russian/Cyrillic alphabet on this page (further down).

A few Russian letters have no English equivalent, so I have filed these under the English phonetic equivalent. See table below for where they are filed in the English glossary:

Russian Transliteration Filed under
в v V
е e, ye E
ё e, yo E
ж zh Z
у u U
х kh K
ц ts T
ч ch C
ш, щ sh, shch S
ю, я yu, ya Y

A few terms are obscure technical ones I got from various technical training manuals and stuck in.

Russian alphabet guide

The Cyrillic alphabet is not as intimidating as it might first appear; it is a matter of learning to associate each letter with its sound, and if you keep repeating the letters each day they will stick in your head and eventually you will find that those mysterious symbols all now make sense. (Well, it’s how I learned the alphabet!).

I have to confess that I am a bit lazy and haven’t taken it any further since I began my websites, so I know the alphabet and a few words, and that’s about it, to date (though I would still like to learn the language, if I can motivate myself to!). Learning the grammar system is much more challenging though (it’s different to English in that word endings change depending on whether they are a noun, verb, etc.), as is the vocabulary! Russian is generally more difficult than the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) but not as challenging as languages such as Chinese! I am embarrassed that I can only speak English when so many people are multilingual.

Russian alphabet table
Cyrillic English transliteration Pronunciation Russian Pronunciation
Аа * a ah а
Бб b beh бэ
Вв v veh вэ
Гг g geh гэ
Дд d deh дэ
Ее * e or ye yeh е
Ёё * yo yoh ё
Жж zh zheh жэ
Зз z zeh зэ
Ии * i ee ии
Йй * i or y or j i kratkoe (short ee) й краткое
Кк k kah ка
Лл l ell эль
Мм m ehm эм
Нн n en эн
Оо * o oh о
Пп p peh пэ
Рр r airr (rolled or trilled, like Scottish r) эр
Сс s ess эс
Тт t teh тэ
Уу * u oo у
Фф f ef эф
Хх kh or h hah ха
Цц ts tseh цэ
Чч ch cheh чэ
Шш sh shah ша
Щщ shch shshah ща
Ъъ ” tvirdyi-znak (hard sign) твйрдый знак
Ыы * y yerih ы
Ьь ’ myagkii-znak (soft sign) мягкий знак
Ээ * e eh э
Юю* yu yoo ю
Яя * ya yah я

Vowels in the table above are marked with an asterisk (*); other letters are consonants.

Letter groups

To learn the Cyrillic alphabet, the letters can be divided into four groups:

Letters that look and sound like English
Cyrillic English
А a
К k
М m
О o
Т t
Letters that look like English ones, but have different sounds
Cyrillic English
В v
Е ye
Н n
Р r
С s
У u
Х kh
Letters that look unfamiliar, but have familiar sounds
Cyrillic English
Б b
Г g
Д d
Ё yo
З z
И i
Й i/y (forms dipthongs)
Л l
П p
Ф f
Э e
Ю yu
Я ya
Letters unique to Cyrillic
Cyrillic English
Ж zh
Ц ts
Ч ch
Ш sh
Щ shch
Ъ hard sign (silent)
Ы y
Ь soft sign (y)

Alphabet notes

  • Ъ, the hard sign, has no sound of its own but indicates a very short pause.
  • Ь is the soft sign – pronounced “y” as in “yet”, but pronounced simultaneously with the letter before it, so НЬ sounds like the “ny” in “canyon”.
  • Ыis pronounced “i” as in “bit”, but with the tongue further back in the throat.
  • These Cyrillic letters are in a different form in their handwritten/italic version: б, и, й, т. (б, и, й, т). (The italic letters may or may not show in a web browser, depending upon the font used.)

Dipthongs

Dipthongs are two vowel-sounds pronounced as one. The letter Й is used to create these:

ОЙ
sounds like “oy” in boy
УЙ
oui
ЯЙ
yi
ЭЙ
ai
ЕЙ
yay
ОЙ
oi (stressed), ay (unstressed)
ИЙ
eee
ЫЙ
y

Transliteration

Transliterating Cyrillic letters to English can be confusing because there are several transliteration systems in use, and these may or may not reflect how the letters are pronounced; e.g. the Russian е is pronounced ye, but can be transliterated as the English e. A transliteration table from the Cyrillic alphabet into several European languages can be found at the Scramble.nl aviation site.

From the Foton page at ESA:

Terminology

Foton is the direct transliteration (i.e. the conversion from Cyrillic into Latin letters of the spelling) of the Russian word “Фотон”. In Western publications the spacecraft is sometimes referred to as Photon, which is the translation (i.e. the conversion of the meaning of the word from Russian into English) of the word “Фотон”. Traditionally, the Russian names for space vehicles are transliterated, not translated. That is why we call Yury Gagarin’s capsule Vostok instead of East, and speak about the Soyuz rocket rather than the Union rocket. Therefore, Foton is better than Photon.

Punctuation

  • In Cyrillic writing, long conversations between people are represented with a dash ( – ) in front of the start of each person’s speech, rather than enclosed in quotation marks as in English. They can also be represented with guillemots: «».
  • Names for inanimate objects such as ships are sometimes italicized in English, but enclosed in quotation marks or guillemots in Cyrillic; e.g. Soyuz in English and “Союз” or «Союз» in Cyrillic. (Quotation marks are used if the typist does not know how to produce guillemots as described in the following note.)
  • Guillemots are not marked on the keyboard; they are produced using:
    • ALT and 0171 for « (escape code: «)
    • ALT and 0187 for » (escape code: »)
  • In Russia (as in Europe), commas are used rather than decimal points, e.g. 2,5 = 2.5 (two-and-a-half).

Acronyms

  • NASA Station acronym page. I do recall seeing on some NASA web page a reference to “Document 5025: Dictionary (English-Russian) of U.S.-Russian space programs” and “Document 5026: Dictionary (Russian-English) of U.S.-Russian space programs”. If these were online, they would be a very useful resource!
  • Space-40 Spacecraft Encyclopedia: this Czech site has a huge list of spaceflight and scientific/technical acronyms. After entering the site, click on the bottom “Výběr rejstříku” frame, then select “zkratky” from the pull-down menu.
  • Spacefacts acronyms page

Russian language

Translators

Online translators. Computer translations are imperfect as they only translate words literally, not in context as a human translator would (so you still have to do some “tidying-up” of the translation).

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