Learning to speak Russian

The Russian Language uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet and consists of 33 letters divided into 10 vowels, 21 consonants and 2 letters which do not designate any specific sounds but are instead used to as an indicator with regards to pronounciation for the letters around them. Each letter can be either capital or small and for the native English speakers the similarity of some of the letters can be quite confusing in and off itself.

Speaking/writing as someone with minimal exposure to other languages - I can safely say that memorization is your best friend and obviously (as in anything else) ... practice, practice, practice!!! One huge advantage of the Cyrillic language though is that you get strictly one sound to one letter (with some small exceptions) ... this does simplify it a bit for the English speakers.

Russian pronunciation rules are significantly easier, when comparing them to English.  For example, there are no words in Russian that sound the same but have different spelling like the English 'might' and 'mite'. By and large, Russian words will sound correctly if you simply read them letter-by-letter. Since the Russian language has only 5 distinct vowel sounds (the 'Hard' vowels mentioned below) the Russians decided to use the following vowel sound to indicate whether the preceding vowel is hard or soft.

Hard Vowels - а, э, ы, у, о

Soft Vowels - я, е, ё, ю, и ... are formed from their hard counterparts by adding an English sound of "y" at the beginning.

In unstressed positions, Russian letter O is pronounced like unstressed Russian A. In other words, it sounds like English u in nut.

This vowel is pronounced in two different ways depending on the stress. When stressed, it is close to the sound of the English word Ah, but shorter. When unstressed, it is pronounced like u in the word nut.

One point to keep in mind - the letter o is pronounced like unstressed a in the words вода and масло. This is an important rule of the Russian pronunciation (please see Rule 1).

You already know that unstressed letter o is pronounced like unstressed a. But when it is stressed, is sounds like English aw in law. Practice these words:

This vowel does not have an equivalent in English. To get the Russian sound ы, you should place your tongue in the position right between the positions of English sounds i in kit and u in sugar. Then make a new sound of ы. Note that this sound is different form the English i in bit.

Please note - this one letter/vowel is extremely important and is used in quite a few different Russian words especially with regards to pluralization. It is extremely difficult to say (smile when pronouncing it as that will help) but well worth the effort

The letter у sounds like oo in wood. In unstressed positions, it is pronounced a little bit quicker than in stressed positions.

This sound is close to e in pet.

Provided to the right is the standard keyboard layout and also the Phonetic keyboard layout for those of you willing to print out and paste tiny stickers on your keyboard.

Another option is to use a 'virtual keyboard' ... this allows you to click on the appropriate letters and then copy/paste into your application. Some links to good virtual keyboards are provided above.