Russian

Vowels

There are six vowels in Russian, /i 1 e a o u/ . In unaccented position /e/ and /o/ undergo reduction and are symbolized as /i a/ respectively.

Accented vowels are shown by an immediately preceding symbol ".

	SAMPA symbol	Keyword		English gloss
	i		m'"ir		peace
	1		m"1S		mouse
	e		Z1l'"e		jelly
	a		p"ara		pair		
	o		g"orat		city
	u		tul"up		crude

Consonants

There are 36 consonants in Russian, as follows. The symbol ' (apostrophe, ASCII 39), written after the consonant symbol, denotes palatalization. Most consonants come in pairs, "hard" (non-palatalized) and "soft" (palatalized).

Plosives
	p		p"Il'		dust
	p'		p'"it'		to drink
	b		b"1t'		to be
	b'		b'"1t'		to beat
	t		t"ost		toast
	t'		t'"en'		shadow
	d		d"1m		smoke
	d'		d'"en'		day
	k		k"ot		cat
	k'		k'"it		whale
	g		g"us'		goose
	g'		g"'ipk'ij	flexible

Affricates
	ts		ts"ep'		chain
	tS'		tS'"aj		tea

Where the corresponding sounds are separated by a morpheme boundary, this is shown by the symbol -:

	t-s		d'"et-skij		childish
	t-S'		p'ir'iv"ot-S'ik 	interpreter

Fricatives
	f		f"ars		farce
	f'		f'"iz'ika	physics
	v		v"aza		vase
	v'		v'"iza		visa
	s		s"1n		son
	s'		s'"ena		hay
	z		z"apax		smell
	z'		karz'"ina	basket
	S		S"ar		ball
	S':		S':"uka		pike
	Z		Z"1r		fat
	x		xl'"ep		bread
	x'		x'"itr1j	cunning

Sonants
	m		m"aj		May
	m'		m'"ata		mint
	n		najt'"i		find
	n'		n'"it'		thread
	l		l"utS'		ray
	l'		l'ub"of'	love
	r		kr"ap		crab
	r'		r'"ezat'	cut
	j		ij"ul'		July

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UCL Phonetics and Linguistics home page

Maintained by J.C. Wells. Created 1997 April 30 on the initiative of Yury Y . Shtyrov. Revised 1997 11 25, 97 12 12