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 and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

Russian distinguishes hard (unpalatalized or plain) and soft (palatalized) consonants (both phonetically and orthographically). 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. In native words, /j, ɕː, tɕ/ are always soft, whereas /ʐ, ʂ, ts/ are always hard.

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 ; апде́йт boot bʲ , beautiful
d ; do dʲ ; ; media
dʐ jug dʑ начди́в; jig
dz lads dzʲ дзюдо́ lad's young
f ; ; fool fʲ ; ; few
ɡ ; good ɡʲ argue
ɣ ; ; Бог даст; дух бодр loch (Scottish) but voiced ɣʲ двухдверный Loch Ewe (Scottish) but voiced
— j [je-]; [jɵ-]; [ju-]; [ja]; yes
k ; ; scar kʲ ; секью́рити skew
l pill lʲ ; failure
m moot mʲ ; mute
n noon nʲ ; ; vinyard
p ; ; span pʲ ; ; spew
r American atom rʲ ; American catty
s ; ; soup sʲ ; ; ; ; assume (RP)
ʂ ; ; ; rush ɕː ; ; wish sheep
t ; ; stand tʲ ; ; ; stew (RP)
ts ; cats tsʲ Цю́рих cat's young
tʂ chop tɕ ; chip
v ; его́; афга́н voodoo vʲ ; view
x ; loch (Scottish); ugh xʲ ; Хью́стон; huge (for some dialects)
z ; zoo zʲ ; резьба́; ; presume (RP)
ʐ ; кешбэ́к pleasure ʑː ; вещдо́к prestige genre
Stressed vowels
[-soft] [+soft]
IPA Examples English approximation IPA Examples English approximation
a father (Australian English) æ ; pat
ɛ ; met e ; mace
ɨ ; ; с и́грами roses (for some dialects) i ; meet
o ; chore ɵ ; foot
u cool ʉ ; choose
Unstressed vowels
[-soft] [+soft]
IPA Examples English approximation IPA Examples English approximation
ə ; ; ; about ə ; ; lasagna
ɐ ; ; ; bud ɪ ; ; ; ; bit
ɛ тетра́эдр; поэте́сса met
ɨ ; ; ; ; к Ива́ну roses (for some dialects)
o ; поэте́сса chore ɵ ма́чо; сёрфинги́ст foot
ʊ pull ʉ ; youth
Suprasegmental
IPA Example Explanation
ˈ [tɕɪˈtɨrʲɪ] stress mark, placed before the stressed syllable
ː [ˈzːadʲɪ] consonant length mark, placed after the geminated consonant
  1. Even though /ts/ and its voicing [dz] are considered to be exclusively hard consonants, they may be palatalized in certain words of foreign origin.
  2. Consonants in consonant clusters are assimilated in voicing if the final consonant in the sequence is an obstruent (except [v, vʲ]). All consonants become voiceless if the final consonant is voiceless or voiced if the final consonant is voiced (Halle 1959:31).
  3. The affricates [ts], [tɕ], and [tʂ] (and their voiced counterparts [dz], [dʑ], and [dʐ]) are sometimes written with ligature ties: [t͡s], [t͡ɕ], and [t͡ʂ] ([d͡z], [d͡ʑ], and [d͡ʐ]). Ties are not used in transcriptions on Wikipedia (except in phonology articles) because they may not display correctly in all browsers.
  4. 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).
  5. ⟨г⟩ is usually pronounced [ɣ] or (word-finally) [x] in some religious words and colloquial derivatives from them, such as Госпо́дь [ɣɐsˈpotʲ] and [box], and in the interjections , , , , and also in [bʊˈɣaltʲɪr] (Timberlake 2004:23). /ɡ/ devoices and lenites to [x] 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. Speakers of the Southern Russian dialects may pronounce ⟨г⟩ as [ɣ] (soft [ɣʲ], devoiced [x] and [xʲ]) throughout.
  6. Intervocalic ⟨г⟩ represents /v/ in certain words (, , итого́ ), and in the genitive suffix -ого/-его (Timberlake 2004:23).
  7. The soft vowel letters ⟨е, ё, ю, я⟩ represent iotated vowels /je, jo, ju, ja/, except when following a consonant. When these vowels are unstressed (save for ⟨ё⟩, which is always stressed) and follow another vowel letter, the /j/ may not be present. The letter ⟨и⟩ produces iotated sound /ji/ only after ь.
  8. /l/ is often strongly pharyngealized [ɫ], but that feature is not distinctive (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:187-188).
  9. 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.
  10. Most speakers pronounce ⟨ч⟩ in the pronoun что and its derivatives as [ʂ]. All other occurrences of чт cluster stay as affricate and stop.
  11. ⟨щ⟩ is sometimes pronounced as [ɕː] or [ɕɕ] and sometimes as [ɕtɕ], but no speakers contrast the two pronunciations. This generally includes the other spellings of the sound, but the word счи́тывать sometimes has [ɕtɕ] because of the morpheme boundary between the prefix ⟨с-⟩ and the root ⟨-чит-⟩.
  12. Geminated [ʐː] is pronounced as soft [ʑː], the voiced counterpart to [ɕː], in a few lexical items (such as дро́жжи or заезжа́ть) by conservative Moscow speakers; such realization is now somewhat obsolete (Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015:224)).
  13. Vowels are fronted and/or raised in the context of palatalized consonants: /a/ and /u/ become [æ] and [ʉ], respectively between palatalized consonants, /e/ is realized as [e] before and between palatalized consonants and /o/ becomes [ɵ] after and between palatalized consonants.
  14. Unstressed /a/ and /o/ regularly lose their contrast, being pronounced [ɐ] in word-initial position, as well as when in a sequence, and [ə] in posttonic position (i.e. after the stress); in non-initial pretonic position (i.e. before the stress) they are reduced to [ɐ] only immediately before the stress, being realized [ə] otherwise.
  15. Only in certain word-final morphemes (Timberlake 2004:48-51).
  16. Unstressed /a/ is pronounced as [ɪ] after ⟨ч⟩ and ⟨щ⟩ except when word-final.
  17. In the careful style of pronunciation unstressed /e/ and /o/ in words of foreign origin may be pronounced with little or no reduction.
  18. Unstressed [ɵ] 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
  • Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press
  • Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
  • Timberlake, Alan (2004), "Sounds", A Reference Grammar of Russian, Cambridge University Press
  • Yanushevskaya, Irena; Bunčić, Daniel (2015), "Russian" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45 (2): 221–228, doi:10.1017/S0025100314000395

See also

  • Category:Pages with Russian IPA (2,420)
  • Template:ru-IPA for the Wiktionary template to automatically generate pronunciation for Russian words