Help:IPA/Russian

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Russian pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

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 Wikipedia 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.

Shortcut H:IPA-RUH:IPA-RU

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Russian distinguishes (both phonetically and orthographically) hard (velarized or uvularized) and soft (palatalized) consonants. Soft consonants, most of which are denoted here by an IPA superscript ⟨ʲ⟩, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. In native words, /j, ɕː, tɕ/ are always soft, whereas /ʐ, ʂ, ts/ are always hard.^[1]

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