Russian Major System (or adapting it to Cyrillic)

I found an article somewhere online about a Russian adaptation of the Major system, and I wanted to share the essentials here in case we have any native Russian speakers inquiring (or speakers of other Slavic languages). Note that this system is incompatible with the traditional English Major system as some consonants are assigned to different numbers.

The words for 0-9:
0: ноль
1: один
2: два
3: три
4: четыре
5: пять
6: шесть
7: семь
8: восемь
9: девять

In most cases, these words all start with a different consonant, so this can be taken advantage of.
0 = н, 2 = д, 3 = т, 4 = ч, 5 = п, 6 = ш, 7 = с, 8 = в

This just leaves 1 and 9 unassigned. For 1, use раз (once, one time), and so 1 = р. For 9, use много (many), and so 9 = м.

However, we’ve only assigned half of the consonants in the Russian language. For the rest, most are assigned logically. The letter л is assigned to 0 because of ноЛь. The letter х looks like something is being crossed out, so it is also assigned to 0. The letter к is assigned to 1 as it is easy to write from the number 1 (буква К, которую легко дорисовать из цифры 1). The letter г is assigned to 2 for the same reason - its cursive form looks similar. г = 2

Both з and ж are assigned to 3, both for similarities. з looks like 3 and ж has 3 things on it, and also sounds similar to з. The letter ц is assigned to 4 for similarities to ч. The letter б is assigned to 5 because of phonetic similarities to п - п/б.

The letter щ is assigned to 6 due to visual and phonetic similarities with ш. Lastly, ф is assigned to 8 due to phonetic similarities to в. Vowels and the semi-consonant й are ignored.

Examples (in Russian): волк - 801, рыба - 95, звезда - 3832, жук - 31, носорог - 0791, чай - 4, щи - 6

I’ve heard this called “цифро-буквенный алфавит” if you want to look it up for further reading. I find it interesting how Russian took its alphabet and came up with its own solution to the Major system.

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This is great. Many people ask me about this.

Any chance you have the original article?

I remember seeing something on this forum too about it a long time ago… but we all know how flawed memory can be. Wherever it was on the internet, I’ve never been able to track it down.

Super-grateful you posted this because it is great to have a link for sharing as the internet gets harder and harder to search effectively. I’m saving the link this time instead of letting Google’s digital amnesia remember it for me…

(In all fairness, it’s possible whatever I’d seen was deleted or otherwise de-indexed…)

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Unfortunately, I don’t. I remember reading about it on the Russian Wikipedia though, so that may give some hints. I’ve also seen Russians use different systems, so this isn’t necessarily THE system used in Russia.