I'm giving a mild attempt to get hold of cyrilic alphabet (capital letters 1st) and what I would need is a "opening" words, like PECTOPAH (sorry caps, but doesnt make sense othewise) actually restorang (you need to thank finnish national railways company for me knowing that one). Would there be other words which would be close to english or other latin origin words which could be used as way to remember letters. Well, finnish words would be ok too, but...
-C
If Finnish word, then СМЕТАНА is smetana
(Though Finnish smetana and Russian СМЕТАНА are a bit different). Apteekki - АПТЕКА, appelsiini - АПЕЛЬСИН and arbuusi -АРБУЗ, blini - БЛИН, broileri - цыплёнок БРОЙЛЕР. And sometimes Russians call their cats КИСА which is almost exactly kissa (so no wonder why kissa was the first finnish word I learned. Tiikeri on iso kissa.)
Hm, may be a good idea to find any map that is produced in Russian.
If loan words from Latin same in Russian and English: antenna - АНТЕННА, astronomer - АСТРОНОМ (without er part), atom - АТОМ, defect - ДЕФЕКТ, diploma - ДИПЛОМ...