^ 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 /a/ is pronounced as after ⟨ ч⟩ and ⟨ щ⟩ except when word-final.^ Only in certain word-final morphemes ( Timberlake 2004:48-51).before the stress) they are reduced to only immediately before the stress, being realized otherwise. after the stress) in non-initial pretonic position (i.e. ^ 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.^ a b c d e f Vowels are fronted and/or raised in the context of palatalized consonants: /a/ and /u/ become and, respectively between palatalized consonants, /e/ is realized as before and between palatalized consonants and /o/ becomes after and between palatalized consonants.^ Geminated is pronounced as soft, the voiced counterpart to, in a few lexical items (such as дро́ жжи or зае зжа́ть) by conservative Moscow speakers such realization is now somewhat obsolete ( Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015:224)).This generally includes the other spellings of the sound, but the word счи́тывать sometimes has because of the morpheme boundary between the prefix ⟨ с-⟩ and the root ⟨ -чит-⟩. ^ ⟨ щ⟩ is sometimes pronounced as or and sometimes as, but no speakers contrast the two pronunciations.All other occurrences of чт cluster stay as affricate and stop. ^ Most speakers pronounce ⟨ ч⟩ in the pronoun что and its derivatives as.they tend to become palatalized in front of other phones with the same place of articulation. ^ Alveolo-palatal consonants are subjected to regressive assimilative palatalization i.e.^ /l/ is often strongly pharyngealized, but that feature is not distinctive ( Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:187-188).The letter ⟨ и⟩ produces iotated sound /ji/ only after ь. When these vowels are unstressed (save for ⟨ ё⟩, which is always stressed) and follow another vowel letter, the /j/ may not be present. ^ The soft vowel letters ⟨ е, ё, ю, я⟩ represent iotated vowels /je, jo, ju, ja/, except when following a consonant.Speakers of the Southern Russian dialects may pronounce ⟨ г⟩ as (soft, devoiced and ) throughout. ɡ/ devoices and lenites to before voiceless obstruents ( dissimilation) in the word roots -мягк- or -мягч-, -легк- or -легч-, -тягч-, and also in the old-fashioned pronunciation of -ногт-, -когт-, кто. ^ a b c d ⟨ г⟩ is usually pronounced or (word-finally) in some religious words and colloquial derivatives from them, such as Го́споди and Бо г, and in the interjections а га́, о го́, го́споди, ей-бо́ гу, and also in бу хга́лтер ( Timberlake 2004:23).^ a b c d e f g h i j The voiced obstruents /b, bʲ, d, dʲ, ɡ, v, vʲ, z, zʲ, ʐ/ are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent ( Halle 1959:22).Ties are not used in transcriptions on Wikipedia (except in phonology articles) because they may not display correctly in all browsers. ^ a b c d e f The affricates and (and their voiced counterparts and ) are sometimes written with ligature ties: and ( and ).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 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 ).^ a b c Even though /ts/ and its voicing are considered to be exclusively hard consonants, they may be palatalized in certain words of foreign origin.Stress mark, placed before the stressed syllableĬonsonant length mark, placed after the geminated consonant See Russian phonology and Russian alphabet for a more thorough look at the sounds of Russian. j, ɕː, tɕ/ are always soft, whereas /ʂ, ts, ʐ/ are always hard. Soft consonants, most of which are denoted by a superscript j, ⟨ ʲ⟩, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. Russian distinguishes hard (unpalatalized or plain) and soft ( palatalized) consonants. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters. The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Russian pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. If you have trouble playing the files, see Wikipedia Media help. This article includes inline links to audio files. Wikipedia key to pronunciation of Russian