Gadling teaches you to read the Cyrillic alphabet in 5 minutes
http://www.gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrillic-alphabet-in-5-minutes/

via @kristinbutler

It used to be that when I saw Russian words like this-- компью́тер, студе́нт, па́спорт-- my eyes skipped over them like yours probably just did. But the Cyrillic alphabet, which is used in Slavic languages like Russian as well as non-Slavic languages like Kazakh and Mongolian, is easy to learn. Given the number of English cognates in Russian (the language we'll focus on here), learning the Cyrillic alphabet allows you to read and understand dozens of words in Russian, including the three above (computer, student, and passport, respectively).