The Kabardian alphabet has 59 letters: the Russian Cyrillic alphabet plus the palochka (Ӏ) and 25 letters written with two, three or four characters, such as Гъ, Кхъ and Кхъу, which count as letters of their own. Its current form dates from 1938.
Kabardian, or East Circassian, is spoken in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia and by many Circassian families in Turkey. Here is its whole alphabet, each letter with a native speaker’s recording from the Circassian App’s alphabet course, its sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and, where there is a checked one, a word that uses it.
All 59 letters
Every sound is a native speaker’s recording from the Circassian App; Ъ and Ь have no sound of their own, and Ё, Ъ and Ь appear only in loanwords. IPA: Wikipedia’s Kabardian alphabet table. Example words are words the app teaches, each confirmed by the Kabardian–Russian dictionary (Apazhev and Kokov, 2008) or the app’s audio course, whose scripts a native speaker reviewed; letters with no such word have none.
Listening quiz: which letter is it?
This is one of the app’s own alphabet questions: listen, then pick the letter. Ten rounds, and letters that look alike come up together.
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In the app’s alphabet course this question comes with three others (see a letter and pick its sound, match a letter to its Latin spelling, hear a sound and pick from six letters), and spaced repetition brings letters back for review.
Print the Kabardian alphabet
A one-page chart of the whole alphabet, made for printing.
- All 59 letters in order, capital and small
- A checked example word with a picture for 53 of them
- A QR code that opens this page, so anyone can hear the letters
- A4, free to print for a classroom, a fridge or a first lesson
The letters Russian doesn’t have
Like many Cyrillic alphabets made in the Soviet Union, it keeps to the letters of Russian typewriters and writes the sounds Russian lacks with letter combinations; the palochka is the one addition. A few marks do most of the work:
| Ӏ on its own | Ӏ [ʔ] A glottal stop [ʔ]: a catch in the throat, like the tt in American “button”. |
|---|---|
| A letter + Ӏ | КӀ [t͡ʃʼ] / [kʲʼ]КӀу [kʷʼ]ЛӀ [ɬʼ]ПӀ [pʼ]ТӀ [tʼ]ФӀ [fʼ]ЦӀ [t͡sʼ]ЩӀ [ɕʼ] Ejectives: said with the throat closed and released with a small pop. |
| A letter + у | Гу [ɡʷ]Гъу [ʁʷ]Ку [kʷ]КӀу [kʷʼ]Къу [qʷ]Кхъу [q͡χʷ]Ху [xʷ]Хъу [χʷ]Ӏу [ʔʷ] Said with rounded lips, as if a w followed (the ʷ in the IPA). |
| A letter + ъ | Гъ [ʁ]Къ [q]Кхъ [q͡χ]Лъ [ɬ]Хъ [χ] Гъ, Къ, Хъ and Кхъ are made further back than Г, К and Х, at the uvula; Лъ [ɬ] is a voiceless l, like the Welsh ll. |
| A letter + ь | Жь [ʑ]Хь [ħ] Жь [ʑ] is a soft ж; Хь [ħ] is a strong, breathy h from deep in the throat. |
| Two letters, one sound | Дж [d͡ʒ] / [ɡʲ]Дз [d͡z] Дж [d͡ʒ] is the j in “jam”; Дз [d͡z] is dz. |
| Э and А | А [aː]Э [a] Э is a short [a] and А a long [aː]. Kabardian has at most three basic vowels, [ə] (Ы), [a] (Э) and [aː] (А); Е, И, О, У and Я stand for a vowel together with a й [j] or у [w] sound. |
The palochka: Ӏ, the “little stick”
The palochka (Russian палочка, “little stick”) came into Cyrillic in the late 1930s, at first as the digit 1. In Kabardian it is a letter of its own, the glottal stop [ʔ], and it is part of 9 more letters: КӀ, КӀу, ЛӀ, ПӀ, ТӀ, ФӀ, ЦӀ, ЩӀ, Ӏу.
Most keyboards have no palochka, so people often type the digit 1 or a capital I instead; the Circassian App’s lessons type I too. In Unicode it is U+04C0 (a rarer small form is U+04CF). Copy the real one here:
Kabardian and Adyghe letters compared
The Kabardian and Adyghe alphabets share 54 letters. Kabardian has 5 that Adyghe does not:
Кхъ [q͡χ]Кхъу [q͡χʷ]ФӀ [fʼ]Ху [xʷ]ЩӀ [ɕʼ]Adyghe has 12 that Kabardian does not:
Дзу [d͡ʐʷ]Жъ [ʐ]Жъу [ʐʷ]ПӀу [pʷʼ]ТӀу [tʷʼ]Цу [t͡ʂʷ]Чъ [t͡ʂ]ЧӀ [t͡ʂʼ]Шъ [ʂ]Шъу [ʂʷ]ШӀ [ʂʼ]ШӀу [ʂʷʼ]In Kabardian Э comes second, right after А; in Adyghe it comes near the end, after Ь, as in Russian.
See the Adyghe alphabet and how the two languages differ.
A short history of Kabardian writing
- 1825Shora Nogma (Nogmov) makes a Kabardian alphabet in Arabic script, with 42 letters.
- 1865Kazi Atazhukin publishes a Kabardian primer in Tiflis, in Peter Uslar’s Cyrillic alphabet.
- 1908Nuri Tsagov’s Arabic-script alphabet; books, including a primer, are printed in it in the 1910s.
- 1923–1924A Latin alphabet by B. Khuranov, revised on N. F. Yakovlev’s advice, becomes official and is used for books, newspapers and schools.
- 1930A reformed Latin alphabet, in use until 1936.
- 1936Kabardian switches to Cyrillic, with Tuta Borukaev’s alphabet and its many apostrophes.
- 1938A commission led by N. F. Yakovlev reforms it into the alphabet on this page.
- TodayIn Turkey, Circassians most often write in Cyrillic; a Latin alphabet by the ADDER association has been used in school textbooks since the mid-2010s.
Learn the alphabet in the app
The Circassian App’s Kabardian alphabet course has 15 short lessons and plays each letter’s recording as you learn it. It teaches the 59 letters above plus ЧӀ, a letter of the Adyghe alphabet that the official Kabardian alphabet does not list, which is why the app counts 60. After the alphabet come the language lessons, where this page’s example words are from.
Questions
How many letters are in the Kabardian alphabet?
59. Letters written with two to four characters, like Гъ or Кхъу, count as one letter each. The Circassian App teaches 60: these 59 and ЧӀ.
What is the Kabardian alphabet in order?
А, Э, Б, В, Г, Гу, Гъ, Гъу, Д, Дж, Дз, Е, Ё, Ж, Жь, З, И, Й, К, Ку, КӀ, КӀу, Къ, Къу, Кхъ, Кхъу, Л, Лъ, ЛӀ, М, Н, О, П, ПӀ, Р, С, Т, ТӀ, У, Ф, ФӀ, Х, Ху, Хь, Хъ, Хъу, Ц, ЦӀ, Ч, Ш, Щ, ЩӀ, Ы, Ъ, Ь, Ю, Я, Ӏ, Ӏу.
What is the Ӏ letter?
The palochka, a Cyrillic letter that looks like a capital I or the digit 1. On its own it is a glottal stop [ʔ]; in КӀ, ЛӀ, ПӀ, ТӀ, ФӀ, ЦӀ and ЩӀ it marks an ejective. People often type 1 or I for it.
Is Kabardian written in Cyrillic or Latin?
In Cyrillic since 1936, in its current form since 1938. From 1923 to 1936 it used a Latin alphabet, and Arabic-script alphabets were tried before that. In Turkey a Latin alphabet (ADDER’s) is also used in school textbooks.
How is it different from the Adyghe alphabet?
Adyghe has 66 letters and Kabardian 59; they share 54. Only Kabardian has ФӀ, ЩӀ, Кхъ, Кхъу and Ху; only Adyghe has 12 letters, such as Шъ, Чъ and Жъ.
Can I print the Kabardian alphabet?
Yes. The free chart on this page (PDF, A4) has all 59 letters, example words and a QR code that opens this page with the recordings.
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Sources
- Circassian App: the Kabardian alphabet course (60 letters in 15 lessons; every letter recorded by a native speaker), lessons and audio course, October 2026.
- Apazhev, M. L., Kokov, J. N. Kabardino-Cherkess–Russian Dictionary. Nalchik: Elbrus, 2008 (example words: пэ (p. 347), вагъуэ (p. 52), жыг (p. 115), гу (p. 57), гъатхэ (p. 64), гъуэжь (p. 81), дыгъэ (p. 91), джэду (p. 93), бдзэжьей (p. 41), жэм (p. 112), жьы (p. 125), шей (p. 569), махуэку (p. 317), тхьэкӀумэ (p. 435), къуэ (p. 280), кхъуей (p. 289), лы (p. 294), мэл (p. 320), нэ (p. 334), псы (p. 366), пӀэ (p. 388), сабий (p. 396), унэ (p. 453), фо (p. 464), фӀыцӀэ (p. 474), хы (p. 496), хужь (p. 523), хьэ (p. 533), пхъу (p. 376), цы (p. 555), щӀы (p. 102), бгы (p. 37), Ӏэ (p. 637), Ӏуданэ (p. 650)).
- The app’s audio course (Beginner), scripts reviewed by a native speaker (example words: анэ, бзу, жыг, гъатхэ, дыгъэ, джэду, еджапӀэ, жэм, жьы, зы, ин, шей, махуэку, кӀыхь, къалэ, кхъуей, лы, лъакъуэ, плӀы, нэ, нобэ, псы, мыр, сабий, тхылъ, тӀу, унэ, хужь, хьэ, хъыджэбз, пхъу, цӀыкӀу, шы, щы, Ӏэ).
- Wikipedia (Russian): Кабардино-черкесская письменность, revision 154921035: the modern alphabet and its order (from the 1984 primer «Адыгэбзэ»), the history.
- Wikipedia (English): Kabardian language, revision 1369231926: the 59-letter table with IPA, loanword letters, 1936 and 1938.
- Wikipedia (English): Palochka, revision 1376305552.
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