What is the soft sign used for in the Russian alphabet :]?
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at
7:11 am
I'm trying to brush up on my Russian (which I studied years ago), and I can read my Cyrillic fine, but I never fully understood what this letter 'Ь' is for.
It shows up in a lot of Russian vocabulary and I don't know how to pronounce it! I usually end up ignoring it, but it becomes a difficulty in spelling Russian words out because I often forget the soft sign.
What purpose does this letter serve? 
Home | Contact | About | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
Tagged with: russian vocabulary • russian words
Filed under: Russian - Written and Spoken
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
well, it is hard as heck to spell what i want to say, but here goes. you may know J is Y in europe. jugoslavia is on coins of old yugoslavia.
my wife used to write from russia before we met and told me in letters the j sound for "myaki znak", the soft sign. it alters the preceeding consonant in a subtle way. соль would be SOL’. not sole like a shoe, not soil like dirt, but soi-lj. not sol-ly. almost soy-il but so closely combined as to be one syllable. that is often the ending sound, like a little j giving an almost imperceptible y sound. like you start to say the Y and immediately stop.
teacher, учительница, without ь would be oo chee tyel neet sa, with ь it becomes oo cheet tiyel neet sa. that is my best "deaf telephone" offer!
good luck. (i want to see other answers to this!!)
the soft sign makes the pronunciation of the preceding consonant soft
The soft sign affects the sound of the preceding consonant. It does make a difference, although it’s difficult to notice at first.
How? It’s as if right after the letter you are going to say a syllable beginning with "y".
Physically:
if you soften an "n", you make the /n/ sound with the middle of your tongue (rather than the tip) touching the roof of your mouth.
If you soften an "L", again, you try to make the sound with the middle of your tongue (i.e. not the tip) and the roof of your mouth.
The same is true for other tongued sounds like "t" and "d" (but not "s").
On the other hand sounds /m/ /s/ etc. are made with a /y/ sound afterwards. That is, Y+ nothing. (like the sound at the beginning of yacht).
If you can, find a Russian and record them saying similar words differentiated by soft and hard sounds, e.g. мёд (honey) and медь (copper) or брат (brother) and брать (to take).
It makes the consonant before it sound softer.You have to hear it to know, really. But for example, "Ль" makes the "L" sound similar to the Spanish L. Also, "нь" is the same as the "ñ" in Spanish.