Replace 2 vowels with a dipthong??

I'm sure the title of this post sent many of you to the back recesses of your mind, 6th grade spelling, and then the horrors began. As for myself, I was a great speller until I became a teacher and then after years of seeing things spelled wrongly by my students, I find myself questioning even simple words I've spelled correctly, but they somehow look wrong to me now. Oh the irony!

The Russian alphabet is called the cyrillic alphabet. It was developed in the 890AD and adapted from the Greek language as it seemed to be more suitable for church books. It contains 33 letters: 10 vowels (so much for a,e,i,o,u); 21 consonants; and 2 letters have no sound designation. OK, so NOW I know why I'm having so much trouble speaking this language. The spoken language has regional variations. I suppose that would be like "winda" or "fixin' ta" where I live verses "window" or "fixing to" in the North. If there is a shining light in this foreign language, there are only 3 spelling rule exceptions. Yes, 3. That compares to, oh I don't know, about 20000 in the English language???

Here's a copy of the cyrillic alphabet. Can't you just see Doug and me with our little Russian dictionary at some corner trying to decipher a street sign on a quest to find "that lovely little pizza joint just around the corner. You can't miss it..."