Teach yourself to read Russian in 33 minutes

Preface | Before you go on | Origin of Russian Alphabet | Introduction | Table | Comments | Conclusion | Exercises

  How to read Russian words (and the soft and hard signs, in particular).

First,

• Russian does not have the combination of letters (like ee, oo, ea, sh, th)
• A vowel (а,о,э,и,ы,у,е,ё,ю,я) can belong only to a one syllable (it means that two adjacent vowels belong to two different syllables).

In general, Russian consonants correspond to English or German consonants or their combinations.

The soft and hard signs are modifiers.

Russian consonants + hard sign (ъ) or without any sign are pronounced more like English consonants.

Russian consonants + soft sign (ь) are pronounced softer, more like German consonants (although German also has two types of pronunciation: doch = дох and ich = ихь).

I the majority of cases softness/hardness do not change the meaning (only it adds some accent). Even if it the case, it is usually clear from a context which word is used.

The hard sign would be unnecessary, but both soft and hard signs have an additional function: they mark the end of a syllable: пойдём (will go) = пой-дём, подъём (ascent, rise ) = под-ём This eliminates an ambiguity: подём could be split into syllable in two ways: под-ём or по-дём.

It makes the difference only in the case of syllables with е,ё,ю,я (the only Russian letters with a double pronunciation).

Here are the additional rules:

• In the beginning of a syllable the pronunciation is the following: е = йэ, ё = йо, ю = йу, я = йа. Here й (short и) = German j
• otherwise е = э, ё = ö, German ö, ю= ü, German ü, я = ьа (soften the previous consonant + a, e.g. ля ~ льа or French la). In this case, there is NO й or j (German) or y (English, e.g. 'нет' is NOT 'nyet', but rather like net)!

 
According to this, пойдём is pronounced as пой-дöм and подъём is pronounced as под-йом.

Summarizing,

1.Split a word into syllables

2a.if a syllable does not have е,ё,ю,я then split it further into letters and pronounce them one after another

2b. if a syllable has е,ё,ю,я then they are pronounced in two different ways

 
I addition,

• Do not worry about the soft and hard signs. Bulgarians do not have soft consonants, but their Russian can be understood (however, the hard sign helps to split words into syllables correctly).
• Triple consonants is not a problem: even English has a lot of words wit double consonants
• Like in German (guten tag -> guten tak), the voiced consonants become unvoiced in the end of words (завод -> завот), but if you keep them voiced it is also OK (only a little bit unnatural).
• Russian р is equivalent any r, from English to Spanish
• The same with Russian х: it corresponds to any h (i.e. it does not change the meaning)
• The use of short o long vowels in Russian does not change the meaning of words.

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Preface

Origin of Russian Alphabet

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©Nikolai V. Shokhirev, 2001-2006