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This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Russian on Wikipedia.

It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Russian in popflock.com resource articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first.

For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Russian pronunciations in popflock.com resource articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to popflock.com resource articles, see {{IPA-ru}} and popflock.com Resource: Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

Russian distinguishes hard (unpalatalized or plain) and soft (palatalized) consonants. Soft consonants, most of which are denoted by a superscript j, ⟨?⟩, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. /j, ?:, t?/ are always soft, whereas /?, ts, ?/ are always hard.^[1]

See Russian phonology and Russian alphabet for a more thorough look at the sounds of Russian.

Consonants
Hard			Soft
IPA	Examples	English approximation	IPA	Examples	English approximation
b	?; ??^[2]	boot	b?	?	beautiful
d	?; ??^[2]	do	d?	??; ; ^[2]	dew (UK)
dz^[3]	?^[2]	lads	d?^[3]	??; ^[2]	jig
dz^[3]	?^[2]	lads	dz?^[3]	?^[1]	lad's young
f	?; ?;^[2]?^[4]	fool	f?	?; ; ^[4]	few
?	?;^[5]^[6]??^[2]	goo		?	argue
?	??; ??;^[5]? ?; ? ?^[2]	between home and goo		?; ? ^[2]	between argue and yes
N/A			j	? [je-]; ?? [j?-]; ?? [ju-]; ? [ja]; ?^[7]	yes
k	??; ??;^[2]?^[4]	scar	k?	??;	skew
l	??^[8]	pill	l?	?;	lean
m	??	moot	m?	??;	mute
n	?	noon	n?	?; ; ?^[9]	newt (for some dialects)
p	?; ?;^[2]?^[4]	span	p?	??; ; ^[4]	spew
r	?	flapped or trilled r, like in Spanish	r?	?;	flapped or trilled r, like in Spanish
s	?; ??;^[2]?^[4]	soup	s?	?; ; ??; ?;^[2]^[4]	assume (for some dialects)
?	??; ??;^[2]?;^[4]?^[10]	rush	?:	??; ; ?^[2]^[11]	wish sheep
t	??; ?;^[2]?^[4]	stand	t?	?; ?; ; ^[4]	stew (UK)
ts^[3]	??; ?	cats	t?^[3]	?;	chip
ts^[3]	??; ?	cats	ts?^[3]	?^[1]	cat's young
v	??; ??;^[6]???^[2]	voodoo	v?	?; ?	view
x	?; ?^[5]	loch (Scottish); ugh	x?	?; ; ?^[5]	huge (for some dialects)
z	?; ?^[2]	zoo	z?	??; ; ?; ?^[2]	presume (for some dialects)
?	?; ?^[2]	rouge	?:	?;^[12]??^[2]	prestige genre
Stressed vowels
[-soft]			[+soft]
IPA	Examples	English approximation	IPA	Examples	English approximation
a	?	father	æ	??; ?^[13]	pat (US)
?	??;	met	e	??; ?^[13]	mace
?	??; ?; ?	roses (for some dialects)	i	?;	meet
o	; ??	chore	?	??; ?^[13]	foot
u	?	cool	?	??; ?^[13]	choose
Unstressed vowels
[-soft]			[+soft]
IPA	Examples	English approximation	IPA	Examples	English approximation
?	??; ????; ?; ???^[14]	about	?	??; ??; ??^[15]	lasagna
?	??; ???; ??; ?^[14]	bud	?	??; ????; ??; ??; ??^[16]	bit
?	????; ?^[17]	met
?	??; ??; ??; ??; ??	roses (for some dialects)
o	?; ???^[17]	chore	?	??; ??^[13]^[18]	foot
?	??	pull	?	???; ??^[13]	youth
Suprasegmental
IPA	Example		Explanation
'	?? [t't?r]		stress mark, placed before the stressed syllable
:	? ['z:ad]^[2]		consonant length mark, placed after the geminated consonant

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Even though /ts/ and its voicing [dz] are considered to be exclusively hard consonants, they may be palatalized in certain words of foreign origin.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v Consonants in consonant clusters are assimilated in voicing if the final consonant in the sequence is an obstruent (except [v, v?]). All consonants become voiceless if the final consonant is voiceless or voiced if the final consonant is voiced (Halle 1959:31).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f The affricates [ts] and [t?] (and their voiced counterparts [dz] and [d?]) are sometimes written with ligature ties: [t?s] and [t] ([d?z] and [d]). Ties are not used in transcriptions on popflock.com resource (except in phonology articles) because they may not display correctly in all browsers.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j The voiced obstruents /b, b?, d, d?, ?, v, v?, z, z?, ?/ are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent (Halle 1959:22).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ⟨?⟩ is usually pronounced or (word-finally) in some religious words and colloquial derivatives from them, such as ?? and ?, and in the interjections ??, ??, ??, -??, and also in [b?'?altr] (Timberlake 2004:23). /?/ devoices and lenites to [x] before voiceless obstruents (dissimilation) in the word roots -?- or -?-, -?- or -?-, -?-, and also in the old-fashioned pronunciation of -?-, -?-, . Speakers of the Southern Russian dialects may pronounce ⟨?⟩ as (soft , devoiced and ) throughout.
^ ^a ^b Intervocalic ⟨?⟩ represents /v/ in certain words (?, ?, ? ), and in the genitive suffix -/- (Timberlake 2004:23).
^ The soft vowel letters ⟨?, ?, ?, ?⟩ represent iotated vowels /je, jo, ju, ja/, except when following a consonant. When these vowels are unstressed (save for ⟨?⟩, which is always stressed) and follow another vowel letter, the /j/ may not be present. The letter ⟨?⟩ produces iotated sound /ji/ only after ?.
^ /l/ is often strongly pharyngealized , but that feature is not distinctive (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:187-188).
^ Alveolo-palatal consonants are subjected to regressive assimilative palatalization; i.e. they tend to become palatalized in front of other phones with the same place of articulation.
^ Most speakers pronounce ⟨?⟩ in the pronoun and its derivatives as [?]. All other occurrences of cluster stay as affricate and stop.
^ ⟨?⟩ is sometimes pronounced as [?:] or [] and sometimes as [?t?], but no speakers contrast the two pronunciations. This generally includes the other spellings of the sound, but the word sometimes has [?t?] because of the morpheme boundary between the prefix ⟨?-⟩ and the root ⟨--⟩.
^ Geminated is pronounced as soft , the voiced counterpart to , in a few lexical items (such as ?? or ?) by conservative Moscow speakers; such realization is now somewhat obsolete (Yanushevskaya & Bun?i? (2015:224)).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Vowels are fronted and/or raised in the context of palatalized consonants: /a/ and /u/ become [æ] and [?], respectively between palatalized consonants, /e/ is realized as [e] before and between palatalized consonants and /o/ becomes [?] after and between palatalized consonants.
^ ^a ^b Unstressed /a/ and /o/ regularly lose their contrast, being pronounced [?] in word-initial position, as well as when in a sequence, and [?] in posttonic position (i.e. after the stress); in non-initial pretonic position (i.e. before the stress) they are reduced to [?] only immediately before the stress, being realized [?] otherwise.
^ Only in certain word-final morphemes (Timberlake 2004:48-51).
^ Unstressed /a/ is pronounced as [?] after ⟨?⟩ and ⟨?⟩ except when word-final.^[]
^ ^a ^b In the careful style of pronunciation unstressed /e/ and /o/ in words of foreign origin may be pronounced with little or no reduction.
^ Unstressed [?] only occurs in words of foreign origin.

References

Cubberley, Paul (2002), "The phonology of Modern Russian", Russian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press
Halle, Morris (1959), Sound Pattern of Russian, MIT Press CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-19815-4.
Timberlake, Alan (2004), "Sounds", A Reference Grammar of Russian, Cambridge University Press
Yanushevskaya, Irena; Bun?i?, Daniel (2015), "Russian" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45 (2): 221-228, doi:10.1017/S0025100314000395

Notes

References

See also