A soft sign indicates ⟨ Ь⟩ palatalization of the preceding consonant without adding a vowel.

If consonant letters are followed by vowel letters, the soft/hard quality of the consonant depends on whether the vowel is meant to follow 'hard' consonants ⟨ а, о, э, у, ы⟩ or 'soft' consonants ⟨ я, ё, е, ю, и⟩ see below. ^† An alternative form of the letter El ( Л л) closely resembles the Greek letter lambda ( Λ λ).Ĭonsonant letters represent both 'soft' ( palatalized, represented in the IPA with a ⟨ ʲ⟩) and 'hard' consonant phonemes. (called 'soft sign') silent, palatalizes the preceding consonant (if phonologically possible) (called 'hard sign') silent, prevents palatalization of the preceding consonant Similar to a double 'sh' as in pu sh ships The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters.

Initially an old variant of the Bulgarian alphabet, it became used in the Kievan Rus' since the 10th century to write what would become the Russian language. russkaya azbuka, IPA: ) was derived from Cyrillic script for Old Church Slavonic language. russkiy alfavit, IPA: or, more traditionally, Russian: ру́сская а́збука, tr. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Problems playing this file? See media help.

Russian Alphabet Font