Since Russian is such an easy language, it has very few pronunciation rules; by and large words are pronounced the way they are spelled and vice versa. Every time you want to say 'oo' you write y and you always pronounce y 'oo'. Whenever this is not the case, the pronunciation varies by strict, easy-to-follow rules which are provided on this page. Let's begin with the basic sounds associated with the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet in Russian.

TABLE 1: Basic Russian Pronunciation
Russian Letter	Pronunciation	Russian Letter	Pronunciation
a	'Ah!' but short	р	'r' as in Scots 'run'
б	'b' as in 'bet'	с	's' as in 'set'
в	'v' as in ''Vette'	т	't' as in 'Tet'
г	'g' as in 'Gucci'	у	'Oo!' but short
д	'd' as in 'dad'	ф	'f' as in 'fifty'
е	'Yay!' but short	х	'kh' in Scots 'loch'
ё	'Yo!' as in 'Yo, dude!'	ц	'ts' as in 'lets'
ж	'zh' as in 'azure'	ч	'ch' as in 'church'
з	'z' as in 'zit'	ш	'sh' as in 'shush'
и	'ee' but short	щ	'shch' 'fresh cheese'
й	'y' as in 'Yuck!'	ъ	hard sign
к	'k' as in 'kit'	ы	between 'i' and 'u'
л	'l' as in 'let'	ь	soft sign
м	'm' as in 'met'	э	'Eh?' (short)
н	'n' as in 'net'	ю	'yu' as in 'you'
о	'Oh!' but short	я	'ya' as in 'yacht'
п	'p' as in 'pet'

There are three basic exceptions to these one-one correspondences between letter and sound in the pronunciation of vowels and two exceptions in the pronunciation of consonants. There are a couple of additional minor exceptions which will not be discussed here.

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1. The Akanie and Ikania Rules.

The akanie and ikanie rules are pronuniation rules which apply to the central dialects of Russian to which Muscovite Russian belongs. According to akanie, an unaccented 'o' is pronounced 'a' in the syllable immediately preceding the accent and 'uh' as in 'but' elsewhere. The ikanie rule states that unaccented 'e', 'ё', and 'я' are pronounced the same as 'и'. You may listen to the words exemplifying akanie and ikania in the table below by clicking them with your mouse. Accented syllables are in boldface type. Notice that an unaccented 'o' and 'a' sound identical in the syllable immediately preceding the accent and an unaccented 'e' sounds identical to 'и'.

TABLE 2: Akanie and Ikanie
Akanie	Sounds like	Ikania	Sounds like
городa : города	[garada]	реку : река	[rika]
бороды : борода	[barada]	берег : берега	[biriga]

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2. Devoicing at the End of Words

In addition to the hard and soft consonants in Russian, the distinction 'voiced' and 'voiceless' consonants is also important. Table 3 shows the voiced-voiceless pairs of consonants in Russian. These consonants are identical except that the vocal chords vibrate when we produce the voiced consonants and they don't when we produced voiceless ones. (You can distinguish these pairs by holding your throat when you pronounce them slowly; English maintains the same distinction.)

TABLE 3: Word End Voicing
Voiced	Voiceless	Examples
б	п	дуба : дуб
д	т	рада : рад
г	к	берега : берег
в	ф	лова : лов
з	с	мороза : мороз
ж	ш	мужа : муж

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3. Adjusting the Voicing of Consonant Clusters

Whenever two or more of the consonants in Table 3 occur within a phonological word (a word or cluster of words sharing a single accent), the final consonant determines the voicing for all. In other words, if the final consonant is voiced, all will be voiced, if the final consonant is voiceless, all will be voiceless.

TABLE 4: Consonant Cluster Voicing
Written Voiceless	Pronounced Voiced	Written Voiced	Pronounced Voiceless
от жалости	[od zhalasti]	из Томска	[is Tomska]
жить бы	[zhid' by]	абсолютно	[apsalyutna]
мост же	[mozd zhy]	мужской	[mushskoy]

Now try Agama's Speaking Mouse to hear any phrase you wish spoken in synthesized Russian. (Change your font encoding to 'Windows 1251'.)

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ou have probably heard the traditional definitions of the part of speech, e.g. that nouns are words that denote 'persons, places, or things' and verbs are words that denote actions. It probably occurred to you that, well, persons and places are things, so why not just 'nouns are words that denote things'? And sit and sleep are verbs but they hardly denote actions. In fact, nouns do represent concepts as things, verbs as actions or states, and adjectives as qualities. Take the concept 'quick', for example. It is basically an adjective, so it indicates a quality, i.e. a characteristic of something else. However, the same concept may be represented in the language as a noun (quickness), a verb (quicken), or as an adverb (quickly).

Adjective	Quick fingers, for example, are fingers with the suspicious quality or characteristic of quickness. 'Quick' is an adjective.
Noun	The noun, quickness, represents the same concept, quickness, as a thing, in this case an abstract thing but thing nonetheless.
Verb	In the phrase she quickened the pace the same concept turns up representing an action, so it must be a verb.
Adverb	Finally, in she quickly removed her cigar, the same concept represents a characteristic of an action. In this case it is an adverb.

These are semantic definitions of the major parts of speech. In Russian the parts of speech are also formally distinguished by different sets of endings. Nouns and adjectives have declensional endings which are distinct from each other and different from the verbal conjugation endings. The type of adverb described in the table is simply an adjective modifying a verb and usually sports a neutral, non-agreeing -o ending. The other type is the "Delimiter" (for which see below). So it is easy to distinguish the major parts of speech in Russian; they are both formally and semantically definable. Just follow the links to the formal definitions of the Russian parts of speech.

Pronouns might be divided up into 'pronouns', 'pro-verbs' (as opposed to 'proverbs', which none of them are), 'proadjectives', and 'proadverbs' because they belong formally and semantically to the major parts of speech classes. They are minor major parts of speech. He, she and it in English, for example replace nouns like John, the house, and the girl. Which, as in which book, replaces an adjective, e.g. the red book. Do in English is a kind of 'pro-verb', for it replaces any verb: What did you do? : I oversurfed.

The other minor parts of speech found in Russian include:

Pronouns	words that replace nouns but also adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, e.g. I, you, he, she, it; this, that; there, where—and do is the English verbal pronoun
Prepositions	things that explain the relations between the major parts of speech like in, on, to, for, betwixt and between
Conjunctions	things that connect the major parts of speech or clauses within the sentence, such as if, and or but
Particles or Delimiters	small items that add peripherally to the meaning like, well, like, so, too, and sorta

(Russian gets along fine without articles like English a and the, thank you. This is one of the reasons that is is so simple!)

THE BASIC	IN ORDER TO
grammatical terms for language learning in general may be found on Jerry Mead's 'Glossary Wizard'. Keep in mind that the rules on this page assume that you have already mastered the Basic Spelling Rules of Russian.	learn how to form Russian verbs next, you must know the basic spelling rules of Russian and apply them after the rules discussed here are applied. If you are not sure of them, review them now before proceeding.

The Russian

spelling system is far simpler than that of English. The system is basically this: one sound, one letter; one letter, one sound. There are a few disparities, but only a few. To give you an idea of just how few: they are all just below on this one page. Russian kids learn them by the end of first grade; if you are past this stage, you should pick them up with no difficulty. Right?

1. Hard and Soft Vowels. Russian has a system of 'soft' or 'palatalized' consonants which parallels that of the regular consonants. (Soft consonants are pronounced as though you were pronouncing that consonant and a 'y' simultaneously.) Fourteen Russian consonants come in soft-hard pairs and, if the Russian alphabet assigned a distinct consonant for each, we would have to memorize fourteen additional consonant letters.

However, because they want their language to remain the simplest language in the world, the Russians decided to use the following vowel to indicate whether the preceding consonant is hard or soft. Since the Russian language has only 5 distinct vowel sounds, this system requires only 5 additional letters. This saves the Russian-language learner 9 letters to memorize! Here are the 10 vowel letters which indicate whether the preceding consonant is 'hard' or 'soft'. Remember, each vowel of the pair is pronounced identically, except for the ы and the и. The approximate pronunciation is given to the right.

Table I: Russian Vowels
Hard	Soft	Sound (roughly)
а	я	'Ah!'
э	е	'Eh?'
ы	и	'Eee!'
о	ё	'Oh!'
у	ю	'Ooo!'

The vowel letters in the left column occur only after 'hard' consonants; those in the right column appear only after 'soft' consonants.

You must remember that, after applying all the other rules of Russian, especially when adding noun, verb, and adjectives endings, you must be sure to convert any 'hard consonant' vowel to its 'soft' alternate, if the suffix begins with a vowel and is added to a stem ending on a consonant.

Also, if any word ends on a vowel from the right-hand column, then its stem ends on a soft consonant, so when changing the endings on such words, you must consistently use the vowels from the 'soft' column. The following table shows what I mean. [For best results in studying this table, focus on one word at a time and follow the change in each word. Begin with the forms in the left columns; they provide you with the basic vowel used after hard consonants. The right-hand column shows you the rule for converting the basic vowel to the vowel used after a soft consonant.]

Table II: Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants
after hard consonants	Examples	after soft consonants	Examples
C + а	стол-а	Cь + а > я
C + e	стол-е	Cь + е > е
C + ы	стол-ы	Cь + ы > и
C + о	окн-о	Cь + о > ё
C + у	стол-у	Cь + у > ю

"Cь" = any soft consonant in the table above. To compare the use of the 'soft' vowels after soft consonants (Cь) and the 'hard' vowels after hard consonants (C), examine the table below. Женя is the nickname for Евгений "Eugene" or Евгения "Eugenia" and жена means "wife". Table III shows some of them in their various case forms.

Table III: Hard & Soft Consonants
Nominative	жена	Женя
Genitive	жены	Жени
Accusative	жену	Женю
Instrumental	женой	Женей

2. The Combination of й+V (y+vowel) Russian orthography does not allow spellings with й (jod) plus a vowel, that is, й+а, й+э, й+ы, й+о, й+у. Instead, the "soft" vowels are also used to indicate these combinations, as the following table illustrates.

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Table IV: Jod + Vowel Combinations
стол-а	'of a table'		'of a genius'
стол-ы	'tables' (Pl)		'geniuses' (Pl)
стол-ом	'with a table'		'by the genius'
стол-у	'to a table'		'to the genius'

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In their attempt to simplify their alphabet for us, the Russians developed a spelling system that leaves us another problem: how to indicate the softness of consonants at the end of words or before other consonants, i. e. when no vowel follows. If the consonant is hard--no problem: стол "table". However, if the consonant is soft, a soft sign (ь) must be added to distinguish the soft consonant from its corresponding hard variant, e.g. мать "mother", дверь "door", день "day"; только "only", судьба "fate", просьба "request".

3. The 7 Consonant Rule. Also remember that after к г х (velars) and ш ж щ ч (hushes) never write ы but always и, e.g. студенты "students" but студентки "coeds", лифтёры "elevator operators" but лифтёрши "women elevator operators".

4. The 5 Consonant Rule. After ш ж щ ч ц write o if that syllable is accented and e if it is not, e.g. в большом хорошем доме "in a big nice house". (The light letters indicate accent placement.)

5. The Hush Rule. Finally, after hushes (ш ж щ ч) never write я or ю but always а and у.

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