English → Russian
Russian uses 46 sounds. You already own 17 of them from English. The other 29 are the work — and 27 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: postalveolar → alveolar
Russian: price · written "ц"
Always hard, even before и.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in church (church).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Russian: hour · written "ч"
Always soft, even before а.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in church (church).
the move: near-open → open
Russian: mother · written "а́", "я́"
Your /æ/ is the one in cat (cat).
the move: near-close → close
Russian: name · written "и́"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in sit (sit).
the move: near-close → close
Russian: hand · written "у́", "ю́"
Your /ʊ/ is the one in book (book).
the move: palatalised
Russian: five · written "пь", "пе", "пи", "пя"
Your /p/ is the one in pen (pen).
the move: palatalised
Russian: white · written "бь", "би", "бе"
Your /b/ is the one in bed (bed).
the move: palatalised
Russian: books · written "ки", "ке"
Your /k/ is the one in cat (cat).
the move: palatalised
Russian: guitar · written "ги", "ге"
Your /ɡ/ is the one in go (go).
the move: palatalised
Russian: film · written "фи", "фе"
Your /f/ is the one in fish (fish).
the move: palatalised
Russian: evening · written "вь", "ве", "ви"
Your /v/ is the one in very (very).
the move: palatalised
Russian: all · written "сь", "си", "се"
Your /s/ is the one in sun (sun).
the move: palatalised
Russian: winter · written "зь", "зи", "зе"
Your /z/ is the one in zoo (zoo).
the move: palatalised
Russian: day · written "нь", "ни", "не"
Your /n/ is the one in knife (knife).
the move: palatalised
Russian: salt · written "ль", "ли", "ле"
Your /l/ is the one in light (light).
the move: near-close → close-mid
Russian: place · written "э́", "е́"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in sit (sit).
the move: near-close → close-mid
Russian: house · written "о́", "ё"
Your /ʊ/ is the one in book (book).
the move: postalveolar → retroflex
Russian: school · written "ш"
ALWAYS hard, whatever vowel follows. ши is said /ʂɨ/, never /ʃi/.
Your /ʃ/ is the one in ship (ship).
the move: postalveolar → retroflex
Russian: wife · written "ж"
Always hard too.
Your /ʒ/ is the one in measure (measure).
the move: front → central
Russian: water · written "о", "а (unstressed)"
AKANYE: unstressed о is said as an a-sound. молоко́ is /məlɐˈko/ — the three о are three different vowels.
Your /æ/ is the one in cat (cat).
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 tea (tea).
the move: alveolar → dental, palatalised
Russian: day · written "дь", "де", "ди"
Your /d/ is the one in dog (dog).
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 ship (ship).
the move: plosive → fricative
Russian: good, well · written "х"
Not /k/ and not English h — the sound at the end of Scottish loch.
Your /k/ is the one in cat (cat).
the move: approximant → trill
Russian: hand, arm · written "р"
Trilled, as in Spanish perro.
Your /ɹ/ is the one in red (red).
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 sit (sit).
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.
- e = i = ɨ = ɪ → your ɪ vs vs vs
- k = kʲ = x → your k vs vs
- o = u = ʊ → your ʊ vs vs
- p = pʲ → your p vs
- b = bʲ → your b vs
- t = tʲ → your t vs
- d = dʲ → your d vs
- ɡ = ɡʲ → your ɡ vs
- f = fʲ → your f vs
- v = vʲ → your v vs
- s = sʲ → your s vs
- z = zʲ → your z vs
- ʂ = ɕː → your ʃ vs
- t͡s = t͡ɕ → your t͡ʃ vs
- m = mʲ → your m vs
- n = nʲ → your n vs
- l = lʲ → your l vs
- a = ɐ → your æ vs
Genuinely new
Nothing in English 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.
| English | Russian | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Stress-timed | Stress-timed, heavily reduced |
| Stress | Contrastive, and unmarked in writing — the single most common cause of not being understood. Dozens of noun/verb pairs differ only in where the stress goes, and every unstressed vowel collapses to /ə/. | 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
26 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 English 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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