Russian IPA

Cyrillic is the easy part of Russian. The hard part is that the spelling hides what the vowels do. An unstressed о is not an o, a soft consonant is not written as one, and the stress that decides all of it is not written at all. The IPA shows the lot. This page maps every Cyrillic letter to its symbol, then goes through the four things the spelling hides: vowel reduction, hard and soft consonants, voicing, and stress.

The transcriptions follow standard Moscow pronunciation and match the IPA on the course's word pages. Stress is marked with an acute on the Cyrillic (вода́) and with ˈ in the IPA.

The letters themselves are covered on the Russian alphabet page; if you have never read IPA, the eight-lesson IPA course comes first, and the consonant and vowel charts show where each symbol lives in the mouth.

The alphabet in IPA

Thirty-three letters, 31 of them with a sound. Where a letter has two values, the second is what it does after a consonant (the soft value, explained below).

Consonants

Vowels

The two signs ь and ъ have no sound of their own. They are instructions to the letters around them, and they get their own section below.

Latin spellings of Russian are everywhere, and the course accepts them as typed answers, but they are a typing key and not a pronunciation guide. This page is the pronunciation guide.

Five vowels, then the reduction

Russian has five vowel phonemes: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/. Under stress they sound as the table above says. The letter ы is, in the Moscow school's analysis, not a sixth vowel but the form /i/ takes after a hard consonant; the Leningrad school counts it as a sixth phoneme. Either way, you still have to learn to make it.

Stressed vowels shift next to soft consonants

Even under stress, a vowel is coloured by its neighbours:

• е and э are a closer [e] before a soft consonant (петь [pʲetʲ], to sing) and a more open [ɛ] before a hard one (э́то [ˈɛtə]). Strictly нет is [nʲɛt]; this site, like most dictionaries, writes the broad [nʲet].
• я between two soft consonants is fronted, closer to [æ]: пять [pʲætʲ], five. Elsewhere it is plain [ʲa]: мя́со [ˈmʲasə], meat. The word pages write the broad [a] for both, as dictionaries do; [æ] is the detail your ear will catch.
• у and о after a soft consonant are pulled forward as well, most of all between two soft ones (narrowly [ʉ] and [ɵ]): люк [lʲuk], мёд [mʲot]. The word pages write plain [u] and [o]. You do not need to chase this. Say the consonant soft and the vowel follows.

ы: the vowel English lacks

Say "ee". Now pull the tongue back, keeping the lips spread, until it sounds like a grunt. That is [ɨ].

The pair that matters is ы against и: был [bɨɫ], was, but бил [bʲiɫ], hit. The first is hard, the second soft. Russian speakers hear this difference instantly, and it is the same hard-soft difference as everywhere else in the language.

After ж, ш and ц the letter и is said [ɨ] anyway: жить [ʐɨtʲ], ши́на [ˈʂɨnə], цирк [tsɨrk]. The spelling rule is regular, so do not be thrown by it.

Unstressed vowels shrink

This is the single biggest gap between Russian spelling and Russian sound. English sends unstressed vowels to a schwa. Russian does the same, in two steps, and the spelling never tells you.

Two details the table leaves out. At the very start of a word, unstressed о and а are [ɐ] wherever the stress is: окно́ [ɐkˈno], window. And after ж, ш and ц, unstressed е goes to [ɨ]: жена́ [ʐɨˈna], wife.

Two names for this are worth knowing. Akanye is о and а collapsing into [ɐ] and [ə]. Ikanye is е and я collapsing into [ɪ]. Both are in the standard language, not a dialect.

Before and after

The clearest demonstration is one word with the stress moving:

And three words where every о is a different vowel:

• хорошо́ [xərɐˈʂo]: [ə], [ɐ], [o]. Three letters, three sounds, only the last is an o.
• молоко́ [məɫɐˈko], milk: the same pattern.
• коро́ва [kɐˈrovə], cow: [ɐ] before the stress, [ə] after.

For е and я:

• село́ [sʲɪˈɫo], village: the е is [ɪ].
• река́ [rʲɪˈka], river.
• язы́к [jɪˈzɨk], tongue, language: the я is [jɪ].
• вре́мя [ˈvrʲemʲə], time: stressed е is a clear [e], the final я goes to [ə].
• мо́ре [ˈmorʲə], sea: at the very end of a word, the neuter noun ending -е goes to [ə], like final я.

Final е

Word-final е depends on what comes before it and what kind of word it ends:

A learner who says every о as a clear [o] is perfectly understood but sounds like a textbook. A learner who reduces them sounds like a Muscovite. Reading with the reductions is worth more than any other single habit in Russian pronunciation, and it is the reason this site marks the stress on every word.

Hard and soft consonants

Russian has almost every consonant twice. The soft version is made by raising the middle of the tongue towards the hard palate while you say it. In IPA the sign is a small raised ʲ.

Think of the y in the English "tune" or "Hugh": the consonant carries a hint of "y". Russian builds that hint into the consonant itself, not as a separate y after it, and uses it to change the meaning of the word.

Fifteen consonants have a soft partner: б в г д з к л м н п р с т ф х. English already half-makes some of them, as in "tune", "new" and "view". The ones that need practice are the soft л [lʲ] (the l of "million") and the soft р, covered below.

How the spelling shows it

Softness is almost never written on the consonant. It is written on whatever comes after it.

So мал [maɫ] and мял [mʲaɫ] differ in one vowel letter, and мат [mat] against мать [matʲ] differ by a sign. The vowel letters я, е, ё, ю do two jobs:

• After a consonant, they say "this consonant is soft" and then supply the vowel: мя is [mʲa].
• At the start of a word, after a vowel, or after a sign, they bring their own [j]: я [ja], ёлка [ˈjoɫkə], юг [juk], моя́ [mɐˈja], ещё [jɪˈɕːo].

The signs ь and ъ

• ь (the soft sign) makes the consonant before it soft. It is silent itself: мать [matʲ], mother; конь [konʲ], horse. Inside a word, before я, е, ё, ю or и, it also keeps the [j] audible: семья́ [sʲɪˈmʲja], family.
• ъ (the hard sign) is rare. It marks a break between a prefix and a root that starts with я, е, ё or ю, so the [j] is kept and the consonant before stays hard: объе́кт [ɐbˈjekt], object; съесть [sjestʲ], to eat up.

That is all either sign does. They are never pronounced.

Always hard, always soft

Three consonants are fixed hard and three are fixed soft, whatever letter follows:

This is why spelling rules look odd. After ж and ш you write и and say [ɨ] (жить, ши́на); after ч and щ you write а and у where you might expect я and ю (чай, щу́ка).

щ: a long soft sh

The letter щ is one long sound, [ɕː]. Put the tongue flat, front raised to the palate, and make a drawn-out "sh" with a smile on your lips. In Moscow standard it is not "shch", although that is how it is usually romanised.

• щи [ɕːi], cabbage soup
• борщ [borɕː], borscht
• ещё [jɪˈɕːo], still, more
• хорошо́ has a ш, not a щ: [xərɐˈʂo]. The difference is the tongue. Ш is drawn back and hollow, щ is flat and bright.

The trilled р

Russian р is a trill, [r]: the tongue tip beats against the ridge behind the teeth two or three times in a row. It is the same sound as Spanish rr, not the English approximant.

• рад [rat], glad
• три [trʲi], three
• говори́ть [ɡəvɐˈrʲitʲ], to speak

Like the others it has a soft partner, [rʲ]: a trill with the tongue body raised. Note the pair рад [rat], glad, and ряд [rʲat], row, and the soft р in три and говори́ть.

Voicing: final devoicing and assimilation

Russian voiced consonants are unvoiced at the end of a word and before unvoiced ones. The spelling keeps the voiced letter; the mouth does not.

At the end of a word

A voiced consonant in final position is said as its voiceless pair:

So хлеб, bread, ends in the sound of п, год, year, ends in the sound of т, and друг, friend, in the sound of к. The word го́род is [ˈɡorət]. Russian does it every time.

Next to another consonant

A consonant takes on the voicing of the consonant that follows it, both ways: voiced turns voiceless, and voiceless turns voiced.

• вокза́л [vɐɡˈzaɫ], station: the к becomes [ɡ] before з.
• про́сьба [ˈprozʲbə], request: the с becomes [zʲ] before б.
• за́втра [ˈzaftrə], tomorrow: the в becomes [f] before т.
• сде́лать [ˈzdʲeɫətʲ], to do: the с becomes [z] before д.

Only noisy consonants trigger it: л, м, н, р, й and в do not, so свой stays [svoj].

Softness can spread backwards in the same way: есть is often [jesʲtʲ] and жи́знь [ʐɨzʲnʲ], with the first consonant softened by the soft one after it. Younger speakers do this less and it is never wrong to leave it out, so the word pages write only the softness the spelling shows: [jestʲ], [ʐɨznʲ].

The pronunciation follows the sound, not the spelling, and you will meet it in nearly every sentence. A useful side effect: if you hear a word ending in [t], [p] or [k], check whether it is really д, б or г.

Stress: free and mobile

Russian stress is free, meaning it can fall on any syllable, and mobile, meaning it can shift when a word takes an ending. There is no rule you can apply to the spelling to find it. That matters for two reasons: the vowel reduction above depends on it, and it changes meaning.

The first six are minimal pairs by stress alone. Notice how the stress also rewrites the vowels: in за́мок the second syllable is [ək] and in замо́к the first is [zɐ]. That is the reduction at work, and why a wrongly stressed word sounds like a different word and not a stressed one.

What to do about it

• Learn the stress with the word. Not afterwards. Hear [ɡərɐˈda] and say it like that.
• One-syllable words need no mark. There is nothing to choose.
• ё is stressed. If you see it, you have the answer (bar a few compounds).
• Use the course's marks. Russian word pages show the stress as an acute and in the IPA. The acute is a display aid; real Russian text does not have it.

Free stress is the part of Russian that takes the longest to settle. You will get a few wrong for a while and be understood anyway, because context rescues you. The vowels, though, are worth reading correctly from the start, and the IPA is the fastest way to see them.

The IPA is the spec, Cyrillic is the input

Cyrillic is regular enough that you can read it aloud after an afternoon. But it writes the hard and soft series with the vowel letter and not the consonant, it writes all five vowels in unstressed syllables, where the mouth keeps only three or four, and it does not write stress. The IPA writes all of it down. Use the Russian alphabet page to get the letters, use this one to hear what the letters hide, and the Russian speaking drill to say it out loud.