Russian phonology

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Main article: Russian language

The modern phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400.

The language possesses five non-allophonic vowels, which are written with different letters depending on whether or not they palatalize a preceding consonant. The consonants typically come in pairs, called hard (non-palatalised) and soft (palatalised).

The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate modulation in pitch (which is not a lexical differentiator). Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Consonant clusters tend to be simplified.

The spoken dialects show a large number of variations.

Vowels

The modern standard Russian has five non-allophonic vowels:

The second letter in each row (with the exception of / ʲi/ — /i/) denotes the sound produced by iotation (when initial, see Semi-vowel) or softening, or palatalization, (when preceded by a consonant, see Consonants) of the first letter.

The pronunciation of Russian vowels greatly depends on the dialect. But in standard Russian, the following modifications in the pronunciation of vowels are made.

Stressed vowels

1. The default pronunciation of а is /a/; я differs from this merely by indicating the palatalization of the preceding consonant (or iotation at the beginning of the word). In both cases, /a/ is fronted to /æ/ between palatized consonants (see consonants below). So мать is realised as /matʲ/, whereas пять is realised as /pʲætʲ/.
2. The default pronunciation of э is /ɛ/; е differs from this merely by indicating the palatization of the preceding consonant (or iotation at the beginning of the word). It should be noted that э is a rare vowel that is only used as the initial letter of a word. In both cases, /ɛ/ is raised and fronted to /e/ before a palatalized consonant (the quality of any preceding consonant is not relevant). So столе and это are/stʌ.'lɛ/ and /'ɛ.tə/ respectively, whereas эти is /'e.tʲɪ/.
3. The vowels ы and и (/ɨ/ and /i/) are considered allophonic. Their isolated pronunciation is distinct. The vowel /ɨ/ is more tense than the /i/, and the position of the tongue differs: neutrally flat for /ɨ/, slightly raised (without tension) for /i/. However, the two sounds tend to merge (tending to /ɪ/) when unstressed or when following the sibilant consonants ж /ʒ/, ш /ʃ/, щ /ʆʆ/,ц /ʦ/, ч /tʆ/. See Consonants for details. и indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant (or iotation at the beginning of the word), unless that consonant is ж, ц, or ш, which are invariably hard (but see below for discussion of the palatalization of жж).
4. The default pronunciation of о is /o/; ё, frequently written simply as е, differs from this by indicating the palatalization of the preceding consonant (or iotation at the beginning of the word). Where it occurs, ё is always stressed, and so need not be discussed below in the section on unstressed vowels. In the case of either о or ё, the vowel is fronted to /ø/ between two palatalized consonants. For example, тётя is realised as /'tʲø.tʲə/.
5. The default pronunciation of у is /u/; ю differs from this by indicating the palatalization of the preceding consonant (or iotation at the beginning of the word). In either case, the vowel is fronted to /ʉ/ between two palatalized consonants. For example, люди is realised as /'lʲʉ.dʲɪ/.

Unstressed vowels

Standard speech pronounces vowels clearly only under stress. In the unstressed (weak) position, vowels are reduced in a number of ways, partly dependent on the position of the vowel in relation to the stressed syllable. Russian orthography does not reflect vowel reduction.

1. Reduction of о and a. These are reduced in similar ways. In the syllable immediately before the stress (the pretonic syllable), both are realised as /ʌ/. For example, потом becomes /pʌ.'tom/, and паром becomes /pʌ.'rom/. The vowel reductions apply across word boundaries, eg под морем becomes /pʌ.'d‿morʲɪm/. The combinations аа, ао, оа and оо are all pronounced /ʌʌ/, as in сообразить, /sʌ.ʌ.brʌ.'zʲitʲ/.
2. In pre-pretonic positions (before the stressed syllable, but not immediately before it), both о and a become /ə/. For example, молодой becomes /mə.lʌ.'doj/.
3. In post-tonic positions (after the stressed syllable), both о and a become /ə/. For example, рано is pronounced /'ra.nə/.

   There are a number of exceptions to the above comments on unstressed о and а. Firstly, о is not always reduced in foreign borrowings, eg радио, /'ra.dʲɪo/. Secondly, а is pretonically pronounced /ɪ/ after ч and щ, eg часы, /tʆɪ.'sɨ / and щадить, /ʆʆɪ.'dʲitʲ/. Thirdly, some speakers pronounce а as /ɪ/ after ж and ш. In standard Russian, this pronunciation generally only applies to жалеть, /ʒɪ.'lʲetʲ/, к сожалению, /k‿sə.ʒɪ.'lʲe.nʲɪ.u/, and oblique cases of лошадь, such as лошадей, /lə.ʃɪ.'dʲej/. а is pronounced as /ɪ/ after ц in the oblique cases of some numerals, eg двадцати, /dvə.tsɪ.'tʲi/.

4. Reduction of е and я. These are reduced in similar ways in unstressed syllables. Pretonically, both are realised as /ɪ/, preceded by palatalization/iotation where appropriate. So язык is pronounced /jɪ.'zɨk/. Also worth noting is that words that are differentiated in spelling by unstressed е and я in the pretonic position are pronounced the same, eg разредить and разрядить, both of which are pronounced /rʌ.zrʲɪ.'dʲitʲ/.
5. Post-tonically е is pronounced /ɪ/, whereas я is pronounced /ə/. поле is /'po.lʲɪ/. дыня is /'dɨ.nʲə/. Exceptions to this are that я is pronounced /ɪ/ before a palatalized consonant and in a non-final post-tonic position, eg память, /'pa.mʲɪtʲ/ and выглянул, /'vɨ.glʲɪnul/.
6. The unstressed vowels у and ю show a slight loss of quality compared with the stressed vowels, but the difference is not great enough to require a separate phonetic symbol. If a separate transcription were required, there is a slight tendency towards /ʊ/. An exception would be капюшон where the ю is pronounced /ɪ/.
7. As mentioned above, the unstressed vowels и and ы tend to lose quality and merge towards /ɪ/.
8. Unstressed э is pronounced /ɪ/, as in этап, /ɪ.'tap/.

Semi-vowel

Russian possesses one semi-vowel: й /j/, equivalent to the English <y> in yes. The /j/ always immediately precedes or follows a vowel. If it follows, as in русский /'ru.skʲɪj/, it is denoted in writing with й. If it precedes (iotation), it is incorporated in writing with the following vowel sound in the iotated/softening series of vowels given above: ем /jɛm/ "I eat". In some foreign words, however, the й is also written before the vowel: йога /'jo.gə/ "yoga" (the non-existent word *ёга would be pronounced identically). If the /j/ immediately follows a consonant and precedes a vowel sound, it is separated from the consonant in writing by the hard sign ъ (after a prefix, the sole remaining usage for the letter ъ in Russian), or by the soft sign ь (in all other cases): съездить /'sje.zʲdʲɪtʲ/, "to go, travel"; панъевропейский /'pan.jɪ.vrʌ.'pʲej.skʲɪj/ "pan-European"; пью /pʲju/ "I drink"; пьеса /'pʲjɛ.sə/ "a theatrical play". Note: in the case of the hard sign, the modern tendency is for pronunciation to follow the spelling and thus to pronounce the prefix ending immediately before the hard sign hard.

Consonants

Hard and soft consonants

Russian consonants are of two types: hard (твёрдый /'tfʲo.rdɪj/) and soft (мягкий /'mʲa.xkʲɪj/). The hard pronunciation is the basic one, and is achieved in general by keeping the tongue as low as possible. For the soft pronunciation or palatalization, the mouth is slightly more open in a horizontal slit, and the tongue is drawn slightly back, almost as though to pronounce an /i:/ that is not there.

Consonants with both hard and soft varieties

The consonants б, г, з, д, в and ж are devoiced at the end of a word.

The consonants б /b/, в /v/, г /g/, д /d/, ж /ʒ/, з /z/, к /k/, л /l/, м /m/, н /n/, п /p/, р /r/, с /s/, т /t/, ф /f/, х /x/ have both a hard and a soft pronunciation. Except for ж /ʒ/, their softness is indicated in writing:

• if followed by a soft sign ь;
• always before the vowels я / ʲa/ or /ja/, ё / ʲo/ or /jo/, и / ʲi/, ю / ʲu/ or /ju/, which are then pronounced as standard uniotated а /a/, о /o/, и /i/, у /u/ (the initial и /i/ has not been iotated since the nineteenth century);
• almost always before the vowel е / ʲe/ or /je/, which is then pronounced as э /e/ or /ɛ/. In words borrowed from other languages, it is often the case that е does not soften the preceding consonant at first, but often does so after the foreign word has been fully adopted into Russian. For example, Fr/E chauffeur > R шофер; early twentieth century pronunciation /ʃo.'fɛr/, modern pronunciation шофёр, /ʃʌ.'fʲor/. On the other hand, the pronunciation of words such as отель /ʌ.'tɛlʲ/ "hotel" retains the hard consonants despite a long presence in the language.

The soft pronunciation of ж (always "doubled" = lengthened) is indicated in writing by doubling: жж /ʓ/ (as in жжёшь /ʓʓoʃ/ "you (sg) burn"). Otherwise, the consonant ж /ʒ/ is always hard, except in isolated cases of consonant assimilation (see below): жаба /'ʒa.bə/ "toad". There is exactly one unassimilated exception: жюри /ʓʉ.'rʲi/ "jury". In feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms, a soft sign ь is written by historical tradition after the undoubled ж /ʒ/ at the end of the word, but there is no softening: рожь /roʃ/ "rye". Similarly, a е /e/, ё /o/, or и /i/ or /ɨ/ written after the undoubled ж does not imply a soft pronunciation: также /'ta.gʒɪ/ "also", жёлтый /'ʒo.ltɪj/ "yellow", жить /ʒɪtʲ/ "to live". The soft pronunciation of жж has in the twentieth century lost ground to the hard. Nonetheless, it continues to be standard in broadcasting, etc.

Consonants that are always either hard or soft

The consonants ш /ʃ/ and ц /ʦ/ are always hard. In writing, the soft sign ь historically follows ш, but never ц, for feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms at the end of the word.

The consonants щ /ʆʆ/ and ч /tʲʆ/ are always soft. In writing, the soft sign ь historically follows them for feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms at the end of the word.

Supplementary notes

The hard х /x/ is similar to the German <ch> in ach. Its place of articulation could be best described as velar. The soft х /xʲ/ is just its palatalized equivalent. Its place of articulation is palato-velar. It is not pronounced like the German soft <ch> in ich [ɪç], which is a palatal.

The hard л /l/, т /t/, and д /d/ are dental, with the tongue kept much lower than for the English /l/, /t/, /d/. The soft ль /lʲ/, ть /tʲ/, and дь /dʲ/ are much closer to the English /l/, /t/, /d/ than the hard Russian /l/, /t/, /d/. With /t/ and /d/, simple palatalization is not enough to describe the sound change: the raising of tongue with /t/ and /d/ often produces frication, thus the palatalized /t/ and /d/ can actually be affricates, with a brief palatalized /sʲ/. (The Russian does not contrast the briefly fricated and non-fricated versions, but this is possible.)

Both the hard р /r/ and the soft рь /rʲ/ are trilled.

The hard ж /ʒ/ is similar to the English <g> in genre, but is harder (the tongue is lower). The soft жж /ʓ/ is much closer to the English <g> in genre.

The hard ш /ʃ/ is similar to the English <sh> in ship, but is considerably harder. The soft щ /ʆʆ/ is a long soft sound similar to the English <sh>, but is somewhat softer. The consonant щ is sometimes pronounced /ʆtʲʆ/, but this pronunciation is falling into disuse.

Assimilation of consonants

In continuous speech, the pronunciation of consonants shows systematic transformations not reflected in the Russian orthography:

• Voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts lose their voicing at the end of a word: строганов /'stro.gə.nəf/.
• Voiceless consonants with voiced counterparts become voiced before voiced consonants: футбол /fu.'dbol/ "soccer/football".
• Similarly, voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts become voiceless before voiceless consonants:водка /'vo.tkə/ "vodka".
• Consonants assimiliate at morphemic boundaries. For example, с /s/ + ч /tʲʆ/ > [*щ] /ʆʆ/: счастье /'ʆʆæ.sʲtʲjɪ/ "happiness, fortune".
• Certain clusters of consonants assimilate in individual cases even if not at morphemic boundaries. For example, sometimes з /z/ + ж /ʒ/ > [*жж] /ʓ/: езжу /'je.ʓu/ "I go, ride, travel".
• In clusters of consonants followed by a softening vowel, all the consonants, not merely the final one, tend to become soft. This tendency, however, manifests itself to different extents depending on the word being pronounced, the dialect, and, indeed, the individual speaker.

The historic transformation of /g/ into /v/ in the genitive case (and also the accusative for animate entities) of masculine singular adjectives and pronouns is not reflected in the modern Russian orthography: его /jɪ.'vo/ his, him; белого /'bʲɛ.lə.və/ "(of the) white"; синего /'sʲi.nʲɪ.və/ "(of the) blue".

Stress

Heavy stress, rather than pitch or vowel length, lexically determines Russian accentuation. The stress may fall on any syllable, and may shift within an inflexional paradigm: до́ма /'do.mə/, of the house; дома́ /dʌ.'ma/, houses. Note the different reductions of the unstressed о before and after the stress.

Phonology

The Moscow standard features:

• A moderate amount of modulation in pitch, though pitch is not a lexical differentiator.
• Slight drawling of stressed vowels and slurred levelling of the unstressed vowels to an /ʌ/ ("akanye" аканье), a schwa /ə/, or an intermediate frontal vowel /ɪ/ ("ikanye" иканье) as described in the section on unstressed vowels above. Iotation and palatalization (soft consonants) are preserved in the unstressed syllables, regardless of the level of vowel reduction. The vowels in syllables immediately before the stressed syllable are slurred less than the others.
• an affection for sibilant consonants in some positions. In particular, the pronunciation of [ч] /tʲʆ/ approaches that of [ш] /ʃ/ in a number of fundamental words. For example, что /tʲʆto/ ("what") is pronounced што /ʃto/. The pronunciation /tʲʆto/ is a hallmark of old St. Petersburg, but, though not yet dead, is in decline. This transformation is fairly common before a following /n/ sound: конечно /kʌ.'nʲ ɛ.ʃnə/ "of course", although in the related, and original, sense "finally", the /tʲʆ/ may be kept more often.
• a tendency to soften consonants before [е] in borrowed words.

In contrast, the pronunciation in St. Petersburg has traditionally been more staccato, monotonic, and more faithful to the written appearance of native words and to the original pronunciation of borrowed ones.

The regions show a very large number of variations. As in many other languages, mass communications have considerably levelled the regional differences.

Historical sound changes

Like all Slavic languages, Russian was originally a language of open syllables. All syllables ended in vowels (as in Fijian and Hawaiian), and consonant clusters, in far lesser variety than today, existed only at the start of a syllable.

By the time of the earliest records, Old Russian already showed characteristic divergences from Common Slavonic. Major features of this stage include:

• The loss of the nasal vowels (the yuses of ancient Cyrillic), which had themselves developed from Indo-European [-en-]/[-an-]/[-on-] before a consonant—usually dental or labial—and at word boundaries. Non-nasalized vowels took their place, possibly iotated or with softening of the preceding consonant: IE *’soⁿti, Lat sunt, ComSl [ *sо̃tĭ ], OCS сѫть, R суть /sutʲ/ "they are". Borrowings in the Finno-Ugric languages with interpolated [-n-] after Common Slavonic nasal vowels have been taken to indicate that the nasal vowels did exist in E.Slavic until some time possibly just before the historical period.
• Simplification of ancient [-dl-/-tl-] to [-l-]: ComSl [ *mydlo ], Polish mydło, R мыло /'mɨ.lə/ "soap".
• A tendency for greater maintenance of intermediate ancient [-s-], [-k-], etc., before frontal vowels, than in other Slavic languages, the so-called incomplete second and third palatalizations: R ноги /'no.gʲɪ/ Uk нозі /nozʲi/ "legs".
• Pleophony or "full-voicing"(полногласие /pʌ.lnə.'gla.sʲjə/), that is, the addition of vowels on either side of /l/ and /r/ between two consonants. Church Slavonic influence has made it less felt in Russian than in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian: R воробей /və.rʌ.'bʲej/, OCS врабіи /'vra.bii/ "sparrow"; R Владимир /vlʌ.'dʲi.mʲɪr/, Uk Володимір /volodimʲir/ "Vladimir"/"Volodymir"; although the nickname form in Russian is still Володя /vəlodʲə/.

Major phonological processes in the last thousand years have included:

• The failure of the Slavonic open-syllable requirement, achieved in part through the loss of the ultra-short vowels, the so-called fall of the yers, which alternately lengthened and dropped: OR объ мьнѣ /o.bŭ mĭ.'nĕ/ > R обо мне /ʌ.bʌ 'mnʲe/ "about me"; OR сънъ /'sŭ.nŭ/ > R сон /son/ "sleep" (nom. sg.), cognate with Lat. somnus; OR съна /sŭ.'na/ > R сна /sna/ "of sleep" (gen. sg.). (Please note that the yers are given conventional transcription rather than precise IPA symbols in the Old Russian pronunciations.)
• The loss of the yers has led to a much greater variety of consonant clusters, with attendant voicing and/or devoicing in the assimilation: OR къдѣ /kŭ.'dĕ/ > R где /gdʲɛ/ "where". Nonetheless, multiple consonant clusters thus created were often in their turn simplified: здравствуйте /'zdra:.stvuj.tʲə/ "hello", not */'zdra.vstvuj.tʲə/; сердце /'sʲɛ.rʦə/ "heart", not */'sʲɛ.rdʦə/; солнце /'so.nʦə/ "sun", not */'so.lnʦə/. The tendency to consider all clustered consonants to be at the beginning of a syllable whereever possible has, however, remained.

• The development of OR ѣ /ĕ/ (conventional transcription) into /(j)e/, as seen above. This development has caused by far the greatest of all Russian spelling controversies. The timeline of the development of /ĕ/ into /e/ or /je/ has also been debated.
• The development of /e/ into /o/ under stress: OR о чемъ /о 'ʧe.mŭ/ "about which" (loc. sg.) > R о чём /ʌ 'ʧom/.
• A greater variety of (non-allophonic) soft consonants, and the systematic softening of consonants before /e/ and /i/.
• Conversely, the hardening of ж /ʒ/, ш /ʃ/, and ц /ʦ/, all of which were in the early historical period soft (/ʓ/, /ʆ/, /ʦ/, repectively). In particular ш was close to modern щ, which was a compound шч /ʆtʲʆ/ to a much greater extent than is heard today.
• The adoption of /f/ as a non-foreign sound, stemming from the loss of the final yer and the devoicing of now-terminal /v/. Before a vowel, where the /f/ occurs only in borrowed words, it was considered difficult for uneducated speakers to pronounce until at least the end of the nineteenth century.

See also

• Russian alphabet
• Russian orthography
• Reforms of Russian orthography
• List of phonetics topicsde:Russische Phonetik