Dear Russianons, help me out!

Dear Russianons, help me out!

How do Й, Ь and Ъ differ from eachother? To me it seems they are all pronounced like the finnish j.

Also, what is the difference of Ы and И? To me they sound identical, like finnish i.

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>How do Й, Ь and Ъ differ from eachother?
Ь and Ъ do not denote any kind of standalone sound. Й is j. I guess at this point you could view the differencce as orthographical, but it's not what Russians subconsciously do.

>Also, what is the difference of Ы and И?
Some say that the difference is in the preceding consonant - whether it is palatalised or not, but the sound itself is realised differently when the speaker is conscious. Ask a Russian to pronounce standalone И's and Ы's - he'll make a very different sound between each.

I'd hazard a guess that you don't know much about the language yet. These are strange questions to ask.

>Й
j
>Ь, Ъ
Unpronounceable

Yeah, I'm going on a russian karelia tour with my friends and I decided that I'd learn the alphabet first so I could read the street signs and whatnot

So Ь and Ъ are heard only when put in the middle of a word? What kind of difference do they make?

Й is used only after vowels and it is like finnish j.

Ь is used only after consonants and it softens the sound of the consonant behind it.

Maт (mat) - floormat
Maть (mat') - mother
'a' in transcript sounds like 'u' in English 'gun'.

Ъ prevents the vowel from softening the sound of consonant behind it. Sounds like the word gets separated.

Пoдъeзд - porch

Sound like 'pod yezd'

If it was without Ъ, then it wouldn't make sense and sound like 'podesd'.

>I decided that I'd learn the alphabet first
It took me longer than I'd care to admit that 'E' is pronounced as "ye".

Now I understand! So this is also the reason behind the russian accent with adding lots of j into words?
For example when a russian says "tämä talo" (this house), he says it like "tjämä tjalo" :D

Oh, good nature but the people are not Finnish at all, heh. I've been there.

Not quite. Ъ at the end of the word makes literally zero difference, hence why it's never written there either unless ironically.
Ь at the end of a word indicates that the consonant is palatalised, or as Russians say, "soft". As for what exactly that means... Think of the consonant and J, fused together into exactly one sound. Something like that. I think the Karelian dialects have palatalisation, but not the Finland ones. If there are any surviving Karelian dialects, that is.

In the middle of the word, Ь is either between consonants, or preceded by a j-vowel, so it means nothing except for palatalisation. Think of it as an apostrophe. Ъ means no palatalisation.

I made this for myself with the finnish pronounciation, what should I fix apart from the j's?

Here's Ы: vocaroo.com/i/s0fWyRHL0nTo

The words I say are лЫжи (skis), pЫк (roar) and TЫндa (a city in Amur oblast).

Here's И: vocaroo.com/i/s1rD5PZOSjWO

The words I say are жИзнь (life), Иглa (a needle) and кИнжaл (a knife).

Hope that helped.

Thanks, it helped a lot! So the И is kind of the normal i and Ы is said more in the back of the mouth?

oh, and if there's no Ь and only a j-vowel (iotated), then the break between consonant and j is removed. Cъeл s'jel - "He ate", Ceл sjel - "He sat down". Clearly different words. It's possible to say "sel" without palatalisation, but that word means nothing. I hope that explains it, I do a lot of double takes...

I'd suggest changing ь and ъ to apostrophes.
Ж is ž, definitely not sh. Shch is okay, but in speech it's just a different kind of š.

For full clarification, here's 'мaт' and 'мaть' to understand how the Ь sounds like when applied to a consonant.

vocaroo.com/i/s1MqtOdXNwm0

Here's 'пoдъeзд' (porch) and 'пoдeзд' (no such word exists).

vocaroo.com/i/s0mzAJHXciIF

Ж is voiced, it sounds like zh or ž

Just curious to all, but whats the best way to learn Russian?

ы is kind of similar to English "i" like in "it"
и sounds more like "ee"

Like any other language, you need to forget about learning.

E.g. I never really studied English, I 'learned' it by consuming various content, which utilized it.
Blogs, reviews, shows, films, books and etc.
I don't know the formal grammar, I have always used tenses intuitively.

Would've guessed it is inefficient, but I got my CPE C2 certificate that way.

I believe the same applies to any language, although I see no point in learning any other then Japanese, so I can read doujins and shit.

That's the difficult part, I'm dyslexic so learning new language is always tough for me, used to date this Estonian chick who spoke Russian she helpt me only we had to break up and I never got further then Tabletki davai and stuff

>Tabletki davai
lol what the fuck

Well for us the the same to learn english, so we have to pronounce "OU" when seeing an "O" alone.

Ы you prounice like Ы. and И you pronounce like jЫ or ee.

"Give me the pills". Not in a very polite form.

Why tf is arabic written there? Are you a refugee and using tax monies for your vacation?