In this word there are four consonants: з, р, к, and л. Showing page 1. The "hard-indicating" vowels are а, э, ы, у, о.Russian "soft-indicating" vowels are palatalized, and they are typically formed from their "hard-indicating" counterparts by adding an English "y" sound at the beginning. Russian consonants, as well as Russian vowels are categorized in two groups: . Russian alphabet was derived from the Cyrillic one and includes 33 letters: 10 vowels, 21 consonants and 2 letters that are neither one or the other. Listen to the following syllables and compare: а, э, ы, у, о, five soft vowels я, е, ё, ю, и and one semi-vowel й in total eleven vowels. This means they are pronounced less distinctly than the others, and how they sound changes. If it is at the beginning and sometimes at the end of the word, it sounds the same as ye in the word yell[й'э] Vowel reduction in Russian differs in the standard language and dialects, which differ from one another.Several ways of vowel reduction (and its absence) are distinguished.. The rule is very simple.One consonant is “soft” if this is following by a “soft” vowel (я, ё, е, ю, и) or sign. Russian Vowel Reduction. First remember that Russian writing system is simpler than English language. The softness can be achieved by a vowel that follows the consonant. This is probably the trickiest vowel in Russian. You can divide all the Russian letters into four groups: Letters that look and sound like in English (A, O, T, M etc. Memorize both sets of letters in order to read Russian correctly: ! It has different sounds if it is located at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the word. Stress, or accents, affect how you pronounce vowels in a word. Russian vowels There are 10 vowels in the Russian language. Found 673 sentences matching phrase "vowel".Found in 9 ms. Almost all Russian consonants have two sounds: a hard one and a soft one. There are five vowel phonemes in Standard Russian.Vowels tend to merge when they are unstressed.The vowels /a/ and /o/ have the same unstressed allophones for a number of dialects and reduce to an unclear schwa. ), Letters that … Russian possesses five or six vowel phonemes. It was originally nasalized in certain positions: камы [ˈkamɨ̃] ; камень [ˈkamʲɪnʲ] ("rock"). Of these four only з is pronounced as a soft consonant because it is the only consonant in the word that is followed by a soft sign vowel (in this case the letter е). In the Russian Pronunciation an important topic is about vowels and the rules that you have to follow when you talk Russian language. vowel translation in English-Russian dictionary. Our first example is the Russian word for mirror: зеркало. The reduction of vowels happens when they are not part of the stressed syllable in the word. They can be divided into two groups (normal and soft ones) or 5 pairs where one of the vowels is a soft version of its counterpart. ы is an old Proto-Slavic close central vowel, thought to have been preserved better in modern Russian than in other Slavic languages. A number of linguists consider [ɨ] (rendered by letter ы) to be a separate phoneme, while some others maintain that it is an allophone of /i/ (rendered by и). The five Russian vowel sounds are spelled with one set of letters (а, о, у, э, ы) after hard consonants and with an alternative set of letters (я, ё, ю, е, и) after soft consonants. It has five hard vowels . Out of 10 Russian vowels, 5 are soft and make the preceding consonant soft as well. “Soft” or “Hard” Pronunciation only depends on the type of vowel that comes after the consonant. The latter interpretation is assumed in this article. Soft and Hard Vowels In general, Russian vowels are divided into two basic types: "soft-indicating" and "hard-indicating" vowels. Hard and soft Russian consonants.