How is Х pronounced?

Х х sounds like “ch” in “loch”, Ы ы sounds like “i” in “ill” but with a “rounder” pronunciation (said with your tongue slightly back in your mouth).

How is ж pronounced?

The letter Ж is only pronounced /ʒ/ in Russian loanwords. It is usually pronounced /d͡ʒ/.

How is ю pronounced?

It is a so-called iotated vowel, pronounced in isolation as /ju/, like the pronunciation of ⟨u⟩ in "human". After a consonant, no distinct [j] sound is pronounced, but the consonant is softened. The exact pronunciation of the vowel sound of ⟨ю⟩ in Russian depends also on the succeeding sound because of allophony.

How is ь pronounced?

The letter "ь" does not have any sound itself. It softens the letter before it. For example the words "есть" (to eat) and "ест" (he/she eats) sound different thanks to "ь". By the way, in Russian "ь" is called мягкий знак (myah-kij znak), which means "soft sign".

How to read ы?

The sound of the letter "ы" is one of the few difficult sounds in the Russian language. In this course we represent its sound like this: [y]. The sound of "ы" has no English equivalent but it resembles the sound [i:] as in "be", "mean" or "three".

Russian Pronunciation

How do you say щ?

It is pronounced like 'sh' in English 'ship', but it is a retroflex consonant, meaning that the tongue is in the same shape as the American English 'r'.

What is ю called?

ю (upper case Ю) A letter of the Cyrillic script, called yu or ju.

What is ы sound?

Share. Russian's ы lies somewhere between the [i] sound in the English word "hockey" and the [u] sound from "boom". If you watch your lip position and practice going back and forth between these two sounds you should be able to find the ы sound.

What is Ж called?

ж (upper case Ж) A letter of the Cyrillic script, called zhe.

What sound does л make?

For instance, the letter л (L) is pronounced like a hard л when it falls at the end of a word or it's followed by у, а, о, э or ы — as is the case with other consonants.

How is Ф pronounced?

Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: Ф ф) is a Cyrillic letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative /f/, like the pronunciation of ⟨f⟩ in "fill, flee, or fall".

What is ь and ъ in Russian?

Today, both the Hard sign (Ъ) and the Soft sign (Ь) are used to separate a consonant and a vowel (mostly Я, Ё, Е, Ю), only the Hard sign (Ъ) separates a Hard consonant and a vowel, and the Soft sign (Ь) separates a Soft consonant and a vowel. In some other languages, a similar function is given to an apostrophe.

What is ъ called in Russian?

In Modern Russian, the letter "ъ" is called the hard sign (твёрдый знак / tvjordyj znak). It has no phonetic value of its own and is purely an orthographic device. Its function is to separate a number of prefixes ending in consonants from subsequent morphemes that begin with iotated vowels.

What is ы called?

ы (upper case Ы) A letter of the Cyrillic script, called y or yeru.

What sound is й?

The Russian й" sounds like the semivowel/consonant [j] in the IPA and like the letter 'y' in the English words "young", "year" and "you", and the letter 'u' in the English words "use" and "unit". The difference between both is that the middle part of the tongue is raised to the hard palate only in [j].

What is Ъ in English?

Ъ is the hard sign (твёрдый знак). It is used to show that the consonant preceding it should not be palatalised and that the consequent vowel is preceded by the “y” sound as in yes.

What is ы used for?

Russian ⟨ы⟩ is used to transliterate Polish ⟨y⟩ into Cyrillic: Maryla (Марыля). However, Latin ⟨y⟩ may be used for other purposes as well (such as for ⟨й⟩, or as part of digraphs, e.g. ⟨я⟩). In most Turkic languages that use Cyrillic, ⟨ы⟩ represents the close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/, like in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, etc.