Romanization of Russian

The romanization of Russian is writing Russian using Latin-script letters instead of its usual Cyrillic-script letters.

Transliteration table

Below is a table featuring four ways to romanize Russian.

On the far left is the original Russian letters.
The first romanization is the International Phonetic Alphabet, a way to write pronunciation of the letters as said by people; it does not account for irregular spellings, pronunciation only.
The second romanization is the scientific romanization, and it is used in scientific contexts.
The third romanization is Wikipedia’s romanization; this is the one most commonly used in the English Wikipedia and the Simple English Wikipedia.
The fourth and final romanization is the official romanization system used for Russian passports; officially, it is called the ICAO system.


Original Cyrillic	I.P.A.	Scientific romanization	Wikipedia’s romanization	Passport / ICAO
А а	[a]	a	a	a
Б б	[b] or [bʲ]	b	b	b
В в	[v] or [vʲ]	v	v	v
Г г	[ɡ] or [gʲ]	g	g	g
Д д	[d] or [dʲ]	d	d	d
Е е	[j e] or [ʲ e] or [e]	e	e / ye	e
Ё ё	[j o] or [ʲ o]	ë	yo	e
Ж ж	[ʐ]	ž	zh	zh
З з	[z] or [zʲ]	z	z	z
И и	[i] or [ʲ i] or [ɨ]	i	i	i
Й й	[j]	j	y	i
К к	[k] or [kʲ]	k	k	k
Л л	[ɫ] or [lʲ]	l	l	l
М м	[m] or [mʲ]	m	m	m
Н н	[n] or [nʲ]	n	n	n
О о	[o]	o	o	o
П п	[p] or [pʲ]	p	p	p
Р р	[r] or [rʲ]	r	r	r
С с	[s] or [sʲ]	s	s	s
Т т	[t] or [tʲ]	t	t	t
У у	[u]	u	u	u
Ф ф	[f] or [fʲ]	f	f	f
Х х	[x] or [xʲ]	x / ch / h	kh	kh
Ц ц	[t͡s]	c	ts	ts
Ч ч	[t͡ɕ]	č	ch	ch
Ш ш	[ʂ]	š	sh	sh
Щ щ	[ɕː] or [ɕ]	šč / ŝ	shch / sch	shch
Ъ ъ	none	”	(omitted)	ie
Ы ы	[ɨ]	y	y	y
Ь ь	[◌ʲ]	’	y	⠀
Э э	[ɛ] or [e]	è	e	e
Ю ю	[j u] or [ʲ u]	ju / û	yu	iu
Я я	[j a] or [ʲ a]	ja / â	ya	ia

These are some of Russian’s archaic letters, and their romanization.

The yus letters, or jus letters, are former Cyrillic letters. Below is their romanizations.

↑ That romanization system was made official in 2013 when Order № 320 was passed.
↑ This letter, Ъ ъ, is intentionally never pronounced because it is used to avoid palatalization, which is the making the consonant before it more y-like.
↑ ICAO probably used ‘ie’ as the romanization of Ъ due to Bulgarian, but the Federal Migration Service of Russia still uses it as the official romanization for passports.
↑ When using Wikipedia’s romanization, the romanization for this letter, Ь ь, is omitted when it is followed by one of four vowels (е, ё, ю, я), when at the end of a word, or when followed by a consonant. When followed by one of the other vowels (а, и, о, у, ы, э), it is romanized as the letter y.
↑ Ь is not written in the passport romanization.
↑ Those letters were used historically, but they’re not used anymore.
↑ Big Yus; pronounced as [ɛ̃]
↑ Iotated Big Yus; pronounced as [j ɛ̃] or [ʲ ɛ̃]
↑ Little Yus; pronounced as [ɔ̃]
↑ Iotated Little Yus; pronounced as [j ɔ̃] or [ʲ ɔ̃]

↑ Federal Migratory Service (27 March 2013). "Order No. 320 (15 October 2012)" (in Russian). No. 6041. Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Archived from the original on 12 March 2017. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
↑ List of letters in the Russian alphabet, Simple English Wikipedia
↑ Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic, English-language Wikipedia
↑ Romanization of Russian, English-language Wikipedia
↑ Post-revolution reform of the Russian orthography, English-language Wikipedia
↑ Early Cyrillic alphabet, English-language Wikipedia