RussianAround

Russian Around is a progressive learning game that eases you into learning the Cyrillic alphabet and some common Russian words. Why did I want to do this you might ask? I am intrigued by languages these days and have dabbled in learning French and Spanish. These languages use the Latin alphabet used in English but Russian uses a different alphabet. I found that language learning apps didn't meet my needs and I wanted something more basic.

So what makes Russian so tough? Some Russian letters are true friends (А, К, М look and sound exactly like you'd expect from English). Some are new shapes with no English baggage to unlearn. And some are false friends — letters that look like an English letter but sound nothing like it (В isn't "b," it's "v"; Р isn't "p," it's a rolled "r", "H" is "n", "Y" is "u", "X" is a "k" sound). 

The game has multiple modes.

Learn mode — You can browse all 33 letters, color-coded by how tricky they are. Hover over a letter to get the letter and its English equivalent sound  (works on a laptop, not on a mobile device). When you select a letter, an English pronunciation hint and a sample Russian word are shown along with a text to speech playback to hear how the Russian word is pronounced. Text to speech is provided in all of the following modes as well.

Quiz mode — This mode provides adaptive practice that keeps bringing back the letters you actually get wrong instead of wasting your time on ones you've already nailed. Quiz mode unlocks letters as you get them correct multiple times. The unlocked letters are used in the next 2 modes.

Finding your way - An English word is shown and you are asked which of four choices is the Russian translation. Only the unlocked letters/words from quiz mode are used. The more letters you unlock in quiz mode the more complex the words that are presented.

Missing letter - An English word is shown followed by a partial Russian word with a missing letter. You are given four choices to fill in the missing letter. Like the previous mode, only your unlocked letters are used.