German → Russian
Russian uses 46 sounds. You already own 21 of them from German. The other 25 are the work — and 23 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: palatal → retroflex
Russian: school · written "ш"
ALWAYS hard, whatever vowel follows. ши is said /ʂɨ/, never /ʃi/.
Your /ç/ is the one in ich (I).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Russian: hour · written "ч"
Always soft, even before а.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in Deutsch (German).
the move: near-close → close
Russian: name · written "и́"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in Kind (child).
the move: near-close → close
Russian: hand · written "у́", "ю́"
Your /ʊ/ is the one in Mutter (mother).
the move: palatalised
Russian: five · written "пь", "пе", "пи", "пя"
Your /p/ is the one in Papier (paper).
the move: palatalised
Russian: white · written "бь", "би", "бе"
Your /b/ is the one in Buch (book).
the move: palatalised
Russian: books · written "ки", "ке"
Your /k/ is the one in Kind (child).
the move: palatalised
Russian: guitar · written "ги", "ге"
Your /ɡ/ is the one in gut (good).
the move: palatalised
Russian: film · written "фи", "фе"
Your /f/ is the one in Vater (father).
the move: palatalised
Russian: evening · written "вь", "ве", "ви"
Your /v/ is the one in Wasser (water).
the move: palatalised
Russian: all · written "сь", "си", "се"
Your /s/ is the one in Straße (street).
the move: palatalised
Russian: winter · written "зь", "зи", "зе"
Your /z/ is the one in Sonne (sun).
the move: palatalised
Russian: chemistry · written "хи", "хе"
Your /x/ is the one in Bach (stream).
the move: palatalised
Russian: day · written "нь", "ни", "не"
Your /n/ is the one in Nacht (night).
the move: palatalised
Russian: salt · written "ль", "ли", "ле"
Your /l/ is the one in Liebe (love).
the move: close, but not identical
Russian: place · written "э́", "е́"
Your /eː/ is the one in See (lake).
the move: close, but not identical
Russian: house · written "о́", "ё"
Your /oː/ is the one in Brot (bread).
the move: alveolar → dental, palatalised
Russian: to take · written "ть", "ти", "те", "тя"
брат 'brother' vs брать 'to take'. The soft sign is the only difference, and it is not a sound of its own.
Your /t/ is the one in Tag (day).
the move: alveolar → dental, palatalised
Russian: day · written "дь", "де", "ди"
Your /d/ is the one in danke (thanks).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Russian: borscht · written "щ"
Always SOFT and always long — the mirror image of ш.
Your /ʃ/ is the one in Schule (school).
the move: alveolar → retroflex
Russian: wife · written "ж"
Always hard too.
Your /z/ is the one in Sonne (sun).
the move: near-close → close, front → central
Russian: son · written "ы", "и (after hard)"
The vowel English has no name for. Say /i/ and pull your tongue straight back without rounding.
Your /ɪ/ is the one in Kind (child).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Russian sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
- z = zʲ = ʐ → your z vs vs
- i = ɨ = ɪ → your ɪ vs vs
- p = pʲ → your p vs
- b = bʲ → your b vs
- t = tʲ → your t vs
- d = dʲ → your d vs
- k = kʲ → your k vs
- ɡ = ɡʲ → your ɡ vs
- f = fʲ → your f vs
- v = vʲ → your v vs
- s = sʲ → your s vs
- x = xʲ → your x vs
- m = mʲ → your m vs
- n = nʲ → your n vs
- l = lʲ → your l vs
- u = ʊ → your ʊ vs
Genuinely new
Nothing in German sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| German | Russian | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Stress-timed | Stress-timed, heavily reduced |
| Stress | Contrastive in a very German way: with separable-vs-inseparable prefix verbs, the stress tells you which grammar you are in — and therefore what the sentence means. Otherwise stress sits on the stem syllable, and the unstressed prefixes (be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-) never take it. | Contrastive, and NOT written. За́мок is a castle and замо́к is a lock. Worse, it moves within a word’s own declension — рука́ but ру́ку, окно́ but о́кна — so knowing the word is not the same as knowing where to hit it. Dictionaries mark it; native writing does not. |
What you have that Russian doesn't
22 sounds with no job in Russian. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your German has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Russian from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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