The Kyrgyz alphabet: 36 letters, three special sounds

How to learn · Updated 2026-08-17

Kyrgyz is written in Cyrillic, and if you can read Russian you can already read about ninety percent of it; if you cannot, Cyrillic itself is a one-evening project — most letters have close Latin relatives. The genuinely new letters are exactly three: ң, ө and ү. Here is the whole alphabet, and a plan to start reading real Kyrgyz words in one evening.

36 letters, and only three are new

The Kyrgyz alphabet is Cyrillic-based: the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet plus three of its own — ң, ө and ү. Thirty-six in total.

That makes the reading barrier one of the lowest among world languages: you are not learning a new script, as with Arabic or Korean — you are learning three letters and a few reading rules.

Here is the whole alphabet in its official order: А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я. The three Kyrgyz-only letters follow their closest relatives — ң after н, ө after о, ү after у — and dictionaries are ordered that way.

Read as written

Kyrgyz spelling is close to phonemic: a letter almost always stands for the same sound, and a word is read the way it is written. There is no vowel reduction of the Russian kind, and nothing like English spelling chaos.

The practical consequence: in native vocabulary, once you can read, you read correctly. The main exception is Russian loanwords — they keep their Russian spelling and are read the Russian way.

The three special letters: ң, ө, ү

Ң is the nasal sound of English “ng” in “song”: the back of the tongue closes against the soft palate. It never starts a word, but it is common in the middle and at the end: сиңди, миң, таң.

Ө and ү are front rounded vowels — the same sounds as German ö and ü or Turkish ö and ü. Say “e” and “ee”, keep the tongue where it is, and round your lips — you get ө and ү. Listen to the audio at half speed and repeat aloud: these sounds are learned with ears and mouth, not with eyes.

Where Kyrgyz letters differ from Russian ones

A few familiar letters sound different in Kyrgyz. К and г next to back vowels go deeper into the throat: кол (hand) is harder than its Russian look-alike. The letter ж reads close to “j”: жол (road) is almost “jol”.

The letters в, ф, ц, щ, ь and ъ live mostly in Russian loanwords — you will hardly meet them in native Kyrgyz words. The real working set is even smaller than 36.

Vowels come in two rows — and this pays off immediately

The eight Kyrgyz vowels split into two rows: back а, ы, о, у and front е, и, ө, ү. Inside a word the vowels agree with each other — that is vowel harmony, the central rule of the language.

You do not need to memorise it at the alphabet stage — just notice that the rows exist: when you start adding endings to words, the rule “the vowel decides the affix” will already feel half-familiar.

The one-evening plan

First half hour: go through the alphabet with audio, pausing only on ң, ө, ү — the rest you already know. Second half hour: read simple words with these letters aloud — үй (house), көл (lake), тоң (freeze), сүт (milk) — checking yourself against the audio at normal and half speed.

By the end of the evening you will read any Kyrgyz word. Slowly — but correctly, and that is an honest starting point for the rest of the course.

Where to go next: work through Kyrgyz greetings for your first real phrases, hear the same sounds in the phrasebook with native audio, and if the script debate interests you, read Latin or Cyrillic.