Reglas de pronunciacin rusa:

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
a

Pronunciation
'Ah!' but short 'b' as in 'bet' 'v' as in ''Vette' 'g' as in 'Gucci' 'd' as in 'dad' 'Yay!' but short 'Yo!' as in 'Yo, dude!' 'zh' as in 'azure' 'z' as in 'zit' 'ee' but short 'y' as in 'Yuck!' 'k' as in 'kit' 'l' as in 'let' 'm' as in 'met' 'n' as in 'net' 'Oh!' but short 'p' as in 'pet'

Russian Pronunciation Letter

'r' as in Scots 'run' 's' as in 'set' 't' as in 'Tet' 'Oo!' but short 'f' as in 'fifty' 'kh' in Scots 'loch' 'ts' as in 'lets' 'ch' as in 'church' 'sh' as in 'shush' 'shch' 'fresh cheese' hard sign between 'i' and 'u' soft sign 'Eh?' (short) 'yu' as in 'you' 'ya' as in 'yacht'

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.

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', '', and '' are pronounced the same as ''. 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 ''.

TABLE 2: Akanie and Ikanie

Akanie a : Sounds like [garada] Ikania : : Sounds like [rika] [biriga]

: [barada] 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 : : : : : :

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 [od zhalasti] [zhid' by] [mozd zhy] Written Voiced Pronounced Voiceless [is Tomska] [apsalyutna] [mushskoy]

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 softhard 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 and the . The approximate pronunciation is given to the right. Table I: Russian Vowels Sound Hard Soft (roughly) 'Ah!' 'Eh?' 'Eee!' 'Oh!' '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.] *Nota ver la tabla Table II: Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants after hard after soft consonants Examples consonants Examples C+ - C + > C+e - C + > C+ - C + > C+ - C + > C+ - C + >

De internet.

"C" = any soft consonant in the table above. To compare the use of the 'soft' vowels after soft consonants (C) and the 'hard' vowels after hard consonants (C), examine the table below. is the nickname for "Eugene" or "Eugenia" and means "wife". Table III shows some of them in their various case forms. Table III: Hard & Soft Consonants Nominative Genitive Accusative Instrumental

2. The Combination of +V (y+vowel) Russian orthography does not allow spellings with (jod) plus a vowel, that is, +, +, +, +, +. Instead, the "soft" vowels are also used to indicate these combinations, as the following table illustrates. Table IV: Jod + Vowel Combinations

- - - -

'of a table' 'tables' (Pl) 'with a table' 'to a table'

'of a genius' 'geniuses' (Pl) 'by the genius' 'to the genius'

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: "table". However, if the consonant is soft, a soft sign () must be added to distinguish the soft consonant from its corresponding hard variant, e.g. "mother", "door", "day"; "only", "fate", "request". 3. The 7 Consonant Rule. Also remember that after (velars) and (hushes) never write but always , e.g. "students" but "coeds", "elevator operators" but "women elevator operators". 4. The 5 Consonant Rule. After write o if that syllable is accented and e if it is not, e.g. "in a big nice house". (The light letters indicate accent placement.) 5. The Hush Rule. Finally, after hushes ( ) never write or but always and .