In Russian, handwritten text is often very different from printed text
And, for foreigners, Russian cursive is considered particularly difficult!
Russian handwriting is often difficult to understand, not only for foreigners, but also for native speakers. Letters like ‘ш’ (‘sh’), ‘и’ (‘i’), ‘л’ (‘l’) and ‘м’ (‘m’) are especially hard to recognize, as they look almost identical when written. Try writing the word ‘шиншилла’ (‘chinchilla’) by hand!
The cursive style of writing emerged as a result of a reform by Emperor Peter I in the early 18th century, which changed the shape of letters for speed and beauty. The goal was to simplify Cyrillic: For example, the Russian letter ‘т’ (‘t’) is written like a Latin ‘m’, ‘п’ (‘p’) like ‘n’ and ‘д’ (‘d’) like ‘g’.
