Three things you must know about Russian pronunciation before learning anything else.

Learning Russian from scratch. Step 1.

Здравствуйте, дорогие друзья!

Hello, dear friends!

Welcome to the series of blog posts about how to learn Russian from scratch.

I bet there are many of you who have been thinking about starting to learn Russian but somehow were afraid of doing it. Partly due to the many stereotypes about the complexity of Russian and partly due to the challenge of learning a new language.

I believe there are some key steps which should be taken right in the beginning to help you gradually but confidently improve and actually enjoy simple conversation even if your level is very basic.

Today's post will be devoted to pronunciation because when actually starting to learn a language you will apparently be learning some words and phrases and of course you will need to pronounce them and identify them when listening. And the phonetic system of Russian language can be a bit different or probably very different from that of your mother tongue.

Unfortunately many people start learning lots of vocabulary first and then they realize that the native speakers can't understand them because they mispronounce quite a few words. Also the learners can find it difficult to distinguish the words which makes communication quite stressful and not at all pleasant. And then it turns out they virtually need to relearn all those words they have learnt incorrectly.

Pronunciation is a skill and it takes time to develop it.

You can learn some words or phrases just in a day and be able to use them. But it is very difficult to master perfect or at least tolerable pronunciation just in a few days. And this is another good idea to start learning a language with pronunciation basics.

And the key word here is 'basics' as there are lots of tricks when it comes to Russian phonetics (actually when it comes to the phonetics of many other languages). Probably, especially if you have already started learning Russian, you are aware of and terrified by such phenomena as vowel reduction, consonant assimilation or some challenging intonation patterns. However these elements are not crucial for understanding. They are for polishing not for doing the groundwork.

And now I am going to highlight the three fundamental aspects without which your Russian speech will sound barely comprehensible.

They are: the stress, the soft and hard consonants and the sound “ы” which is not to be confused with the sound “и”.

1. The Russian stressful stress.

So why is stress important? Look at these two words: зáмок and замóк.

The sounds in these two words are absolutely identical. The only difference here is the stress. In the word зáмок the first syllable is stressed and in the word замóк the stress falls on the second one. And the meaning of these two words as you have probably guessed is quite different. The first one means 'a castle' and the second one means 'a lock'.

If I am telling you “Кури́те!”, I mean “Smoke!”. This is an imperative. Like I don't mind if you smoke. And if I am asking you: “Ку́рите?”, I am actually asking you: 'Do you smoke?' or 'Are you smoking?'. In Russian this phrase can mean both. Sometimes when asking “Ку́рите?” one can be offering you a cigarette.

And there is a zillion of words paired this way in Russian. So always mind the stress when learning a new word. No difficulty with that. Just a bit of attention.

2. Hard and soft consonants.

This aspect is a bit more time and effort consuming. Russian is a language of consonants. There are around 44 consonants in Russian and only 6 vowels. So... лук and люк, пыль and пыл, стоя́т and стоя́ть, кров and кровь. If you can't notice any difference in the pronunciation of these pairs, right now, please, search for some tutorials on youtube where the differences between soft and hard consonants are illustrated and explained. There are more than enough of useful materials concerning the topic available in the Internet. Like for example this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roevsN1zBl4.

Take your time to practice all the soft and hard pairs and always bear it in mind when speaking. Actually all the infinitives in Russian (except for those ending in the reflexive suffix -ся) end in soft 't' or 'ть' so you wouldn't possibly survive without mastering this.

3. And the final issue is the sound Ы.

Мышка is a small or a cute mouse and мишка is a small or cute bear. So as not to make a bear out of a mouse, please, devote some time to this painstaking sound. Given the fact that three of the Russian personal pronouns мы, ты and вы contain this dramatic sound I guess this aspect is worth of some attention. 'Пыл' is 'rage', 'пил' means 'he drank', 'о́сы' means 'wasps', 'о́си' means 'axes' (the plural of axis), 'быть' stands for 'to be' and 'бить' is for 'to beat'. In the latter case mispronouncing can result into saying you have punched somebody instead of saying you have been somewhere.

Again lots of useful video tutorials on youtube, one of which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD-u_lsJ-84

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The three main aspects in pronunciation for beginners are stress, hard and soft consonants and the sound "ы". If you master these three aspects your pronunciation most likely will not be perfect yet but you will be able to understand and be understood by the native speakers without much difficulty and you will be able to enjoy making small talk with your Russian friends even sooner than you have anticipated!

Thank you for reading this post and I am really looking forward to your comments and questions!

A complimentary video and podcast coming soon!

I appreciate your support very much!

* I would also like to say that the above-mentioned is true if you speak one of the European languages quite fluently. If your mother-tongue is, for example, Chinese and you don't speak any other languages, you might have difficulty with some other sounds too, as many Russian sounds don't have counterparts in Chinese.