Russian Vowels: The Hard and Soft Pairs

Russian writes ten vowels, but they represent only about six core sounds. The letters come in pairs: a "hard" vowel and its "soft" partner.

The five pairs

Hard	Soft	Sound of the soft one
а	я	ya
э	е	ye
ы	и	ee
о	ё	yo
у	ю	yu

What "soft" means

After a consonant, a soft vowel does two jobs. It softens the consonant before it, and it supplies the vowel sound. At the start of a word, or after another vowel, the soft vowel adds a y sound in front.

• мат (mat) means checkmate, while мять (myat') means to crumple. The vowel changes the consonant too.
• нос (nos) is a nose, while нёс (nyos) means carried.
• был (byl) means was, while бил (beel) means hit.

The letter ы

ы is a sound that English lacks. Say ee with your tongue pulled back. It never begins a native Russian word, and it appears after hard consonants, as in мы (we) and вы (you).

The letter э

э appears mainly in loanwords and a few particles, such as это (this is) and эхо (echo).

The letter ё

ё is often printed as plain е, so a word like ёлка (fir tree) may appear as елка. When written with the two dots, it is always stressed, which helps readers.

Tips

1. Learn the pairs together.
2. Notice what the consonant does before a soft vowel.
3. Listen to native speakers, especially for ы.
4. Use the dictionary to check spellings that use ё.

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