Today over 220 million people around the world speak Russian. Despite popular misconceptions, it is not a difficult language to learn. Russian is written in Cyrillic, an alphabet developed in the ninth century from ancient Greek. Visitors to Russia should become familiar with it in order to read signs and get around on their own more easily, as even the larger cities do not have signs and information posted in English. This volume comprises a section on pronunciation providing charts for the English transliteration, which allows users to speak Russian without actually knowing the Cyrillic alphabet. Essential Expressions lists useful, everyday phrases. Each successive chapter covers basic words, phrases, and concepts most often encountered by travellers to Russia in typical daily situations. The penultimate chapter helps make sense of the Russian number system and provides frequently used time expressions. The final chapter offers reference on subjects such as holidays, weather, metric conversions, and other practical information.