Russian is from the same family of languages as English (Indo-European) and has been very much influenced by languages such as Latin and French, but also Greek, Hebrew and Old Church Slavonic. In the 9th century a monk called St Cyril is reputed to have devised the Russian script - hence its name: Cyrillic. There are only 33 letters in the Russian alphabet and learning Russian really is much simpler once you know the script. If you are going to visit Russia, you need a basic recognition of the script, at least to be able to read the street signs and find your way around.