Turkish → Russian
Russian uses 46 sounds. You already own 19 of them from Turkish. The other 27 are the work — and 25 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 çay (tea).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Russian: hour · written "ч"
Always soft, even before а.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in çay (tea).
the move: close → near-close
Russian: winter · written "е", "я (unstressed)"
Your /i/ is the one in iki (two).
the move: close → near-close
Russian: hand · written "у (unstressed)"
Your /u/ is the one in kuş (bird).
the move: palatalised
Russian: five · written "пь", "пе", "пи", "пя"
Your /p/ is the one in pul (stamp).
the move: palatalised
Russian: white · written "бь", "би", "бе"
Your /b/ is the one in balık (fish).
the move: palatalised
Russian: books · written "ки", "ке"
Your /k/ is the one in kara (land / black).
the move: palatalised
Russian: guitar · written "ги", "ге"
Your /ɡ/ is the one in gol (goal).
the move: palatalised
Russian: film · written "фи", "фе"
Your /f/ is the one in fırın (oven / bakery).
the move: palatalised
Russian: evening · written "вь", "ве", "ви"
Your /v/ is the one in ev (house).
the move: palatalised
Russian: all · written "сь", "си", "се"
Your /s/ is the one in su (water).
the move: palatalised
Russian: winter · written "зь", "зи", "зе"
Your /z/ is the one in yüz (face / hundred).
the move: palatalised
Russian: day · written "нь", "ни", "не"
Your /n/ is the one in ne (what).
the move: palatalised
Russian: salt · written "ль", "ли", "ле"
Your /l/ is the one in dil (tongue / language).
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 şeker (sugar).
the move: postalveolar → retroflex
Russian: wife · written "ж"
Always hard too.
Your /ʒ/ is the one in jandarma (gendarmerie).
the move: 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 /i/ is the one in iki (two).
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 tuz (salt).
the move: alveolar → dental, palatalised
Russian: day · written "дь", "де", "ди"
Your /d/ is the one in deniz (sea).
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 şeker (sugar).
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 kara (land / black).
the move: tap → trill
Russian: hand, arm · written "р"
Trilled, as in Spanish perro.
Your /ɾ/ is the one in araba (car).
the move: open → near-open, 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 /a/ is the one in anne (mother).
the move: close-mid → mid, front → central
Russian: good · written "о", "а (far from stress)"
Further from the stress, the reduction goes further still.
Your /e/ is the one in el (hand).
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.
- k = kʲ = x → your k vs vs
- i = ɨ = ɪ → your i 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 a vs
- e = ə → your e vs
- u = ʊ → your u vs
Genuinely new
Nothing in Turkish 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.
| Turkish | Russian | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, rising to the end | Stress-timed, heavily reduced |
| Stress | Regular by default: the last syllable, and it travels rightwards as suffixes are added (kiTAP, kitapLAR, kitaplarDAN). The exceptions are what make it a real system. Place names are stressed early, on a pattern borrowed from their shape (ANkara, İsTANbul, İZmir); many adverbs and old loans stay on the first syllable (ŞIMdi, YArın, LOkanta); and some suffixes refuse the stress and push it onto the syllable before them — the negative -me-/-ma- above all, so that the same letters can be a noun or a command. | 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
12 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 Turkish 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.
Other first languages: English · French · Spanish · Portuguese · German · Italian · Georgian · Hindi · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Japanese · Malay