Russian cursive is a connected writing system used for most Russian handwriting. It can be difficult for non-native speakers to read, as some letters look different from their printed equivalents. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters and is descended from an older alphabet based on Greek. Russian cursive emerged in its modern form during the 17th century. It is learned early by Russian schoolchildren and can be difficult for non-native speakers to read, especially when writers omit parts of letters or use similar-looking letters.
Russian cursive is a technique for handwriting the letters of the Russian alphabet. In this writing system, as in most cursive types of writing, most of the letters are connected to each other, allowing a single line to be used to write many words. This style of writing can be somewhat difficult for a non-native speaker to read, as some cursive letters look very different from their printed equivalents, and some writers cut corners even further by omitting parts of the written letters.
The Russian Cyrillic alphabet contains 33 letters, two of which are signs that change the pronunciation of other letters but have no sound. This alphabet is descended from an older alphabet, invented by Cyril and Methodius, which was largely based on Greek. This first alphabet was quite bulky and contained many more letters than modern Cyrillic. It also relied on hand-printed scripts rather than a cursive writing system. Russian cursive emerged in something like its modern form as part of Peter I’s reform campaigns during the 17th century.
Most of the letters in the Russian cursive alphabet look like the printed letters they’re based on, but there are a few exceptions. The capital “D” in italics looks like its capitalized equivalent in print. The lowercase version of the same letter looks like a cursive English “g,” however, and bears no real resemblance to the lowercase printed letter “d,” which is simply a smaller version of the capital letter. The cursive form of the letter “T” is also very different from the printed form and more closely resembles an “M”.
The vast majority of handwriting in Russian is in Russian cursive rather than hand-printed block letters. Cursive is learned early by Russian schoolchildren, who master this form of writing much earlier than English-speaking students typically learn cursive writing. Russian speakers often cut corners when using Russian cursive, which can make this script difficult for non-native speakers to read.
Different groups of letters, such as “m” and “l” or “p” and “t” are difficult to distinguish from each other in Russian cursive writing. Special signs are used to indicate these letters, and some other often confused pairs, in writing. Native speakers generally find these additional signs superfluous and tend to omit them when writing in italics. Foreign speakers of Russian are less able to do without these additional signs and may have difficulty reading hastily written cursive Russian script.
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