Why not learn the Russian alphabet with the help of all Russian Holmses?
Do not be afraid of several pronunciations for some letters as I’ve simply dumped all the examples of how a letter is often transcribed to English – people indeed can translate Ханума into Hanuma or Khanuma and both would be right.
Some additional notes:
Ж/zh – basically, if you know French and how soft j is in je, that’s your guide to success.
И/i – since Irene can be pronounced both as Ee-ren and Ai-reen, I feel like I need to make that distinction: it’s ee.
Й is a bit difficult to explain on paper but it often appears in many last names, such as Янковский. Even though we keep writing Yankovsky, it’s not yankovski but more like yankovsk-yi, with that half an Y of Yorkshire.
Щ/sch sounds very intimidating but it’s literally the sh in shit. Literally. There’s a word щит (shield) and it’s legit pronounced as shit.
Soft sign ь is there to simply soften a letter. The way I can explain it I guess is how you can pronounce the name Miguel: either as it is, hard Miguel, or how Coco does it – Miguelle, so basically Miguel – Мигел, Miguelle – Мигель. Sometimes, depending on the softened letter, it might sound like a different letter, like softened В/v would be more like Ф/f.
No English equivalent for ы exists and there’s a high chance you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it anyway, unless you’re familiar with a Korean ㅡ. Korean names are one of those examples when a word might start with an Ы, for example Eunhyuk = Ынхёк.
ъ the hard sign is even more convoluted but it kind of sounds like Й in all honesty. Подъезд = podyezd, take the hard sign away: подезд – podezd.
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 