Editing East Slavic languages (section)

==== Alphabet ====
The alphabets of the East Slavic languages are all written in the Cyrillic script, however each of them has their own letters and pronunciations. Russian and Ukrainian have 33 letters, while Belarusian has 32. Additionally, Belarusian and Ukrainian use the [[apostrophe]] (') for the [[hard sign]], which has the same function as the letter Ъ in Russian.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left; empty-cells: hide; font-size: 0.9em"
|+Cyrillic alphabets comparison table
! colspan="39" style="text-align: center" |East Slavic languages
|-
!Russian
|А
|Б
|В
|Г
|
|Д
|Е
|
|Ё
|Ж
|З
|И
|
|
|Й
|К
|Л
|М
|Н
|О
|П
|Р
|С
|Т
|У
|
|Ф
|Х
|Ц
|Ч
|Ш
|Щ
|Ъ
|Ы
|Ь
|Э
|Ю
|Я
|-
!Belarusian
|А
|Б
|В
|Г
|
|Д
|Е
|
|Ё
|Ж
|З
|
|І
|
|Й
|К
|Л
|М
|Н
|О
|П
|Р
|С
|Т
|У
|Ў
|Ф
|Х
|Ц
|Ч
|Ш
|
|'
|Ы
|Ь
|Э
|Ю
|Я
|-
!Ukrainian
|А
|Б
|В
|Г
|Ґ
|Д
|Е
|Є
|
|Ж
|З
|И
|І
|Ї
|Й
|К
|Л
|М
|Н
|О
|П
|Р
|С
|Т
|У
|
|Ф
|Х
|Ц
|Ч
|Ш
|Щ
|'
|
|Ь
|
|Ю
|Я
|}
Some letters, that are not included in the alphabet of a language, can be written as [[Digraph (orthography)|digraphs]]. For example, the sound values of the letter Ё, which doesn't exist in the Ukrainian alphabet, can be written as ЙО (ЬО after consonants), while the letter Щ in Russian and Ukrainian corresponds to ШЧ in Belarusian (compare Belarusian плошча and Ukrainian площа ("area")).

There are also different rules of usage for certain letters, e.g. the [[soft sign]] (Ь) cannot be written after the letter Ц in Russian, because the consonant /tsʲ/ does not exist in the Russian language, while in Ukrainian and especially Belarusian, on the contrary, it is relatively common (Ukrainian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Belarusian ц; Belarusian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Ukrainian ть). Moreover, the letter Щ in standard Russian is always pronounced softly ([[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalization]]).

Standard Ukrainian, unlike all the other Slavic languages (excl. [[Serbo-Croatian]]), does not exhibit [[Final-obstruent devoicing|final devoicing]]. Nevertheless, this rule is not that clear when listening to colloquial Ukrainian. It's one of the typical deviations that occur in the Ukrainian spoken language.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Фонетика й вимова - Олександр Пономарів |url=http://ponomariv-kultura-slova.wikidot.com/fonetyka |access-date=2022-11-11 |website=ponomariv-kultura-slova.wikidot.com}}</ref>