G'day Fedor. This is wildly offtopic but I wanted to say it. My daughter has decided that learning Russian might be a cool experience. So I suggested that she look at your videos. My comment to her. "With my 35 + years of teaching experience, I see this bloke (you) as almost without peer." You are still humble even with your successes and you have an inate ability to make the complex simple. I appreciate your work.
NGL, the concept of these being sounds that are “clearly” different enough to separate words still makes my English mind turn to gravy, but I think I’m starting to kinda get the difference.
I know this was two years ago but i just wanna say something similar happens in english, just to a way lesser extent. The words "who" and "hue" are both pronounced with a "h", right? Wrong. The "h" is really a [ɕ]. But in English we see them as the same sound just a little bit different. It's like of instead of "who" and "hue" we wrote "hoo" and "hьoo", where the soft sign makes the h a little "softer", i.e palatalised/iotated. There are only a few examples in English and it's not exactly the same phenomena since in Russian it's less allophonic variation and more an intentional feature of the othorgraphy and phonetics, but my point is the same.
We have two TH sounds in english and you probably dont realize it. "Bath" and "Them". It is the same difference between Z and S as well as G and K, one is vocialzed and one isn't. (If you want to understand the difference, put your hand on your voice box and say them, one uses the voice box and the other doesn't, yet the movement in the mouth is exactly the same for both) Also we have many vowel sounds compared to some languages so be happy that you know the difference bewteen: But, Bet, Bit, Bat, Bot, Boot, Bait, Beat as some of these sounds are very difficult for non native speakers to distinguish and/or pronounce.
The absolutely best explanation I have ever heard of the difference between Hard and Soft Consonants. Thank you. I would never have made sense of the Hard Consonant/Soft Consonant distinction had I not read Old Church Slavonic Grammar by Prof. Horace G. Lunt, 2001. From that book I learned that in Old Russian (and perhaps also in Proto-Slavic) all words were "full" words," i.e. all words followed the pattern of Vowel+Consonant+Vowel, or Consonant+Vowel+Consonant. Softness and the "soft sign," are simply indications of the place where a Vowel once stood in a "full" word, but has been dropped, or at least truncated. Professor Lunt has a wonderful paper on this subject, which was published by the Macedonian Linguistics Institute. The article is titled, Progressive Palatalization in Early Common Slavic. (I can send it to you if you like.) BTW, Professor Lunt taught at Harvard for 40 years, and was the greatest Slavicist in America. When he retired he went to live with his children in Baltimore, which is just a few miles away from me. Had I known he was there, I would have knocked on his door and said, "Let's talk Slavic linguistics ! "
Baltimore has a big Russian community! I am from there coming from a family of immigrants!! I'm only here because I need help explaining to a friend how to pronounce the soft consonant L in the Russian word for love
I say "WOW!" so many times during all your videos, because I struggle to understand the rules. But when you explain them, it makes SO MUCH sense that I have to say "WOW!" every time!
This was very helpful - especially to have all the consonants in one place, with the soft and hard sounds side by side, with no "example words" confusing the issue. Thank you so much!
This is incredible. I only wish you were very definitive about which sound is which. Definitely the best resource I have found regarding this topic so far. Thank you !
Fedor, can you make a video about differentiating the differences between soft and hard consonants specifically when they are at the ends of words. For me, when soft consonants are at the ends of words they sound too close to their hard counterparts making it super difficult for me to learn. Thank You. I guess this will be useful for other subscribers too.
I know i'm late but for those still sturggling with this, the only real way is to listen to tens of or hundreds hours of Russian content. Unfortunately it is impossible for anyone to tell you how to differentiate these sounds and the only way to learn is to practice it the hard way.
As a Russian native speaker I would like to say that it's fine if you cant pronounce words with the soft sign. In 99% everybody will understand you. Not so many words that differs only by a soft sign. For example Об (about) and Обь (name of Siberian river, sounds like ua-cam.com/video/dWvy7-3gbrI/v-deo.html). Even more, when Russian speakers try to imitate a foreigner who speak in Russian they just say the same words but without a soft sign. Here is a guy who just not use the soft sign and everybody still understands him ua-cam.com/video/owZsT4hk5zs/v-deo.html What is also important to know is that babies are often says words that sounds like with a soft sign. So when you are trying to imitate "babies talk" you randomly add it to words and it sounds more childish. When I hear Indians or Pakistani for me it sounds like almost all consonants are with a soft sign, so for them the soft sign shouldn't be a big problem.
Thank you for this video, it was excellent! I know it was probably tedious for you, but it was a great teaching video! I am sure it will help a lot with pronunciation. Hope you do more videos with pronunciation. Also, would love any pointers in a video on pronouncing of ты , мы for native English speaker...seems impossible!
Thank you so much. As someone who has worked (and is still working) hard to modify my accent, I really found this useful. This is what non native speakers struggle to teach, and what native speakers rarely touch on. Do you have a video that explains the difference between the pronunciations of ш и щ?
спасибо болшой! Thanks so much for this! I'm trying to learn Russian and couldn't really figure out the difference between soft and hard...had no idea why it's called soft and hard. haha. my husband who is Russian has no patience to teach me. he'll just scold me when I mispronounce words and tell me it's supposed to be soft or hard....but I couldn't even tell the difference between hard and soft before. But now I can! yay! thanks!
So much simpler to say instead of the default "uh"sound after a consonant, you say "eh". But thank you, I can hear a difference MUCH better with your examples than with other teachers.
Well it's simpler then I thought, you just ad the ih or eh with husing soft sound, to the actual vowels,!! Very helpful I actually done this with a teacher, and for some reason she couldn't explain soft and hard vowels, and my misconception was just to say less loud the vowels,
I realised that almost all of the soft variants of these consonants (except Р and Х) sound almost (if not completely) identical to the standard pronounciation of these letters in Swedish. Like, the soft Б is identical (or almost indetical at least) to the standard B one uses when reading the alphabet aloud in Swedish. So considering my native tongue is Swedish, I can say the sounds quite well, but now it just comes down to remembering to use the soft variants when I should 😂
It's funny, my sister's boyfriend is Swedish, and he's having an easy time learning Russian and his pronunciations are great. She's having a hard time with Swedish, because it's similar to German, which she learned, but so different, especially the pronunciations.
I did this at night when I was a child and learning the English language. Couldn't sleep because I was always thinking.. well, still do... just different languages now.
It might have been more helpful to give example words, one using the hard consonant and the other using the soft consonant. Like, when you were giving examples of hard and soft "В", you could have used the words двор and дверь. In any case, this was still very helpful. Your videos are always very instructional. Keep up the good work. Speaking of vowels ... I've always found it interesting how Russians have difficulty with certain English vowel sounds. Russian has more vowels than English but they simply don't have the same vowels. For instance, a Russian speaker would have difficulty properly saying the vowels in the following English words: bit, bat, boat, boot. "bit" would come out more like "beet". "bat" would come out more like "bot", is in "robot". "boat" would have the deep, guttural o-sound that is unique to Russian. They would say "boat" like we say the name "Noah". It would sound more like "boaht". It's almost like they add an extra syllable that's not there. "boot" would have the Russian speaker emphasizing the "oo" sound also in a deeper, more guttural way; much more than an English speaker would.
This is awesome. I love the information. What I notice as an English speaking American is that the soft and hard sounds have a bit of a vowel sound to them after the consonat. That would be very helpful to call out. For example, to us, the difference would be "vuh" vs "veh", or "Tuh" vs "Teah". It might help you to have an English speaker help translate what they are hearing when you make the sounds. Either way, Well Done!
To me, it just sounds like you change the vowel that follows the sound. Hard sounds: followed by /ə/, where your tongue sits in the middle of your mouth Soft sounds: Followed by /e/, where you tongue touched your teeth Is this an accurate way to describe it?
When I listened to russian, I always heard something like little Y sounds bewteen certian sounds. In English it's the difference between Hue and Who. I finally realize that this must account for some of that. Sometimes it sounds like you put a Y between the consonant and the vowel.
It feels like adding an English "y" sound to the very end of the consonant for a brief moment. This must be why the "y" sound of the vowel is removed when pronouncing the word like in "дерево".
Thank you ! This is so helpfull. I just spend hours to get кем, тем, те and ем correct. Still isn't perfect but now I feel like I will mangage somewhen. 😂 The hard consonants are easy, german here, but the soft ones are horrible. 😅
In short, one (the hard consonatn) sounds like you're pronouncing the schwa after the consonant and the other (the soft consoant) a short [i] or [E] sound.
Thank god I'm not alone with this! I just can't hear the difference! My Russian friend have tried patiently to show me the difference, but I just don't get it. I had high hopes for this video to finally understand this topic, but gradually the video didn't help me at all. I didn't even notice when Видор changed between hard and soft ones... 😩
Maybe the problem is that you’re being too impatient. I had this problem before with relearning my native language (Tagalog) and the trick was patience. I would say I now sound mostly if not completely like a native speaker (at least, people have said I sound very Tagalog when I speak). At first, it is really difficult to pronounce words the exact same way but after practicing about 15 to 30 minutes everyday patiently and not forcing my pronunciation, after a few days, I started to notice differences. But whenever I got frustrated and forced my pronunciation, I found that I didn’t seem to improve. You do need to pay attention to details that you may not be used to paying attention to as an English speaker, however. My tip is to just be patient and understand that other languages make distinctions between sounds which we don’t distinguish. Try listening carefully for even differences which you may not usually take notice of in English. At first, your pronunciation may be very bad but keep calm and just try your best to reproduce the sounds exactly as you hear them. Don’t force your pronunciation. After a few days of practicing for at least 20 minutes everyday, you may notice some improvements. Well, I’m not sure if this will work for you but you could try. But in my experience, getting frustrated and forcing your pronunciation is really bad and can result in really awkward speech.
nice video but slightly misleading: the thing the tip of your tongue touches when you say the good old 'L', AKA your gum, is actually called the alveolar ridge. only the part behind that is called the palate - the flat soft part of the roof of your mouth.
In the end you say ц,ш and щ always sound the same and don’t have hard or soft sounds. But it seems to me that щ is just a soft ш. Even when I watched a video to understand the difference between these two consonants ш and щ , the tongue placement differed the same way as all the other hard and soft consonants .
Yeah many of these still sound the same to me. After watching several I think this is the best video on UA-cam explaining the concept though. I’m actually learning Ukrainian/Belarusian but I think it’s the same concept. Is he consistent in this video with presenting the hard consonant before the soft? Thanks
good video but your explanation was like just doing without a script, maybe accommodate the explanaiton better so we can disting if you are pronouncing the strong or soft, its like you made this video up right when you thought about it and then post it
ha ha After 67 years of not using anything like this, I think it will take me another 67 years to catch on. But what a buzzzz Thanks for trying so hard. I searched this topic out because I am trying to work out which ending to use in masculine adjectives... ый, ий, ой
Great examples, but I still was confused as to which version you spoke was hard and which was soft. Was the second one in each example the soft version?
I can not tell the difference in the consonant. It just sounds like you're adding an "i" for the soft ones but the consonant sound remains the same. Is this really very important? I've been watching two hours of videos from different Russian teachers and I can't tell any difference otherwise and I feel like I should just move on to the next topic and give up on this one.
you perceive it as an "i" (и) because that's the palatalizing/softening vowel that you're used to. But ю, я, е , ё also do that. And so does ь, which has no sound.
MrFram It is pretty important in my view. Imagine a speaker of English as a foreign language unable to distinguish v and w, p and b, t and d, s and th (sink and think), z and th (“zat” and that), etc. of course when we get used to a person’s speech, we know what they mean. But when we communicate for the first time, it makes for difficult conversations.
That is because in English, the consonants are neither soft nor hard, so they will sound like a bit of both. Maybe try hardening your consonants, like by putting an -uh at the end of them, and then you'll be able to hear the softer version.
I think when a soft sign follows a consonant that cannot be softened (like in the word девичья), this means you add a y-glide to the soft vowel after it. This really applies to any consonant followed by any soft vowel, or soft sign + soft vowel. If you see живёшь, the ё here doesn't actually have that y sound at the beginning, it just softens the в. In a word like жильё, however, there is a soft sign after the л, and therefore, the ё now has that y sound before it, plus the softening of the л. So, it would not be "zhivyosh'", but more like "zhiv'osh'," and likewise, you would expect to hear "zhilyo" for жильё. This is my understanding, so if I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me. I hope this helps!
Wait, if letters "ч" and "ш" don't have a soft mode, does that mean the soft sign does nothing after them? Like in words "помочь" and verbs conjugated with "-ешь"
Yes. Ж is always hard. This soft sign in божьем is not softing the consonant but it's so called dividing soft sign. If it's easier to understand you can replace the soft sign with Й in your mind (it's gonna be like бож-йем) and try to pronounce it. It'll be very close to how russians pronounce it.
Can you also tell us, in which words do we have to use the soft version, and in which words we have to use the hard sounds ? Is there a rule to determine it or we should just know which words carry hard and soft sounds. ?
Before Е, Ё, И, Ю, Я and Ь - the consonants get palatalized - верить - v'er'it', любить - l'ub'it' etc Before А, Э, О, Ы, У and Ъ consonants don't get palatalized - лампа - lampa, лыжи - lyzhy, дом - dom, дума - duma etc Also, consonant is palatalized before another palatalized consonant if the latter is not followed by a vowel. Есть - yes't', радость - rados't' etc Also, there some exception. Ж, Ш and Ц are always unpalatalized. You shouldn't write жыть, шыть but жить, шить instead, because ж and ш are always hard (=unlalatalized). Щ and Ч are always soft (=unlalatalized).
I can't hear a difference in the sounds you make other than the vowel that's after. I kinda hear the л and maybe the г, ,but the others sound the same to me. I don't really know how you are changing the position of your tongue; I can't see it. Please and thanks anyone for help.
It is really hard. In Hungarian there are soft n, d, l, t and it is very easy to pronounce them in soft way. But s, b, k ect. are impossible, I even can't feel the difference. :-) So if you have theese sounds in your language, then you can use it else it is very hard work to elaborate them. We had to learn Russian in school and I have never understand theese soft s, k, g ect. sounds. Now I understand them a little (thanks) but I coudn't use them. We spoke in Russian in Russia pretty well ... after some stakan vodka :-) Maybe our pronunciation wasn't very good. :-)
I kind of could hear the difference, but I mostly got confused which one was the hard and which one was the soft variant when you skipped back and forth pronouncing the consonants. Maybe subtitles "hard" "soft" could help¿
0:00 - Introduction
1:43 - Б
2:24 - В
2:55 - Г
3:48 - Д
4:41 - Ж
4:51 - З
5:37 - К
5:49 - Л
6:31 - М
6:51 - Н
7:04 - П
7:12 - Р
7:29 - С
7:41 - Т
7:57 - Ф
8:19 - Х
8:40 - Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ
8:48 - Outro
Спасибо!
@@diane5140 Пожалуйста))
The world needs more people like you
@@MotishayThank you, it needs both: Hardworking people and kind people like you :)
Спасибо 🙏
G'day Fedor. This is wildly offtopic but I wanted to say it. My daughter has decided that learning Russian might be a cool experience. So I suggested that she look at your videos. My comment to her. "With my 35 + years of teaching experience, I see this bloke (you) as almost without peer."
You are still humble even with your successes and you have an inate ability to make the complex simple. I appreciate your work.
Thank you!
I am truly happy to hear that:)
NGL, the concept of these being sounds that are “clearly” different enough to separate words still makes my English mind turn to gravy, but I think I’m starting to kinda get the difference.
there are some examples of clear separation by softness\hardness tho
like in words "мел" and "мель" or "мат" and "мать"
@@tochka832 oh boy you don't want to confuse your мать for мат
@@wow1983 😂
I know this was two years ago but i just wanna say something similar happens in english, just to a way lesser extent. The words "who" and "hue" are both pronounced with a "h", right? Wrong. The "h" is really a [ɕ]. But in English we see them as the same sound just a little bit different. It's like of instead of "who" and "hue" we wrote "hoo" and "hьoo", where the soft sign makes the h a little "softer", i.e palatalised/iotated. There are only a few examples in English and it's not exactly the same phenomena since in Russian it's less allophonic variation and more an intentional feature of the othorgraphy and phonetics, but my point is the same.
We have two TH sounds in english and you probably dont realize it. "Bath" and "Them". It is the same difference between Z and S as well as G and K, one is vocialzed and one isn't. (If you want to understand the difference, put your hand on your voice box and say them, one uses the voice box and the other doesn't, yet the movement in the mouth is exactly the same for both) Also we have many vowel sounds compared to some languages so be happy that you know the difference bewteen: But, Bet, Bit, Bat, Bot, Boot, Bait, Beat as some of these sounds are very difficult for non native speakers to distinguish and/or pronounce.
The absolutely best explanation I have ever heard of the difference between Hard and Soft Consonants. Thank you.
I would never have made sense of the Hard Consonant/Soft Consonant distinction had I not read Old Church Slavonic Grammar by Prof. Horace G. Lunt, 2001. From that book I learned that in Old Russian (and perhaps also in Proto-Slavic) all words were "full" words," i.e. all words followed the pattern of Vowel+Consonant+Vowel, or Consonant+Vowel+Consonant. Softness and the "soft sign," are simply indications of the place where a Vowel once stood in a "full" word, but has been dropped, or at least truncated.
Professor Lunt has a wonderful paper on this subject, which was published by the Macedonian Linguistics Institute. The article is titled, Progressive Palatalization in Early Common Slavic. (I can send it to you if you like.)
BTW, Professor Lunt taught at Harvard for 40 years, and was the greatest Slavicist in America. When he retired he went to live with his children in Baltimore, which is just a few miles away from me. Had I known he was there, I would have knocked on his door and said, "Let's talk Slavic linguistics ! "
Glad to see I'm not the only one who kicks on Slavic linguistic funfacts
Baltimore has a big Russian community! I am from there coming from a family of immigrants!! I'm only here because I need help explaining to a friend how to pronounce the soft consonant L in the Russian word for love
Профессор прав.
I say "WOW!" so many times during all your videos, because I struggle to understand the rules. But when you explain them, it makes SO MUCH sense that I have to say "WOW!" every time!
This was very helpful - especially to have all the consonants in one place, with the soft and hard sounds side by side, with no "example words" confusing the issue. Thank you so much!
This is incredible. I only wish you were very definitive about which sound is which. Definitely the best resource I have found regarding this topic so far. Thank you !
I have the same problem. He assumes that we know that ghweejk is "clearly" the hard one and trskch the soft one 🤭
Pay attention to it:
Ж, Ц, Ш - are always hard consonants,
Й, Ч, Щ - are always soft ones.
Fedor, can you make a video about differentiating the differences between soft and hard consonants specifically when they are at the ends of words. For me, when soft consonants are at the ends of words they sound too close to their hard counterparts making it super difficult for me to learn. Thank You. I guess this will be useful for other subscribers too.
I know i'm late but for those still sturggling with this, the only real way is to listen to tens of or hundreds hours of Russian content. Unfortunately it is impossible for anyone to tell you how to differentiate these sounds and the only way to learn is to practice it the hard way.
Lady learner here and I appreciate you! Thank you for the comprehensive video
I sounds like the "uh" vs "eh" sounds
You have such rosy cheeks! Thanks for this video!
you can too-train with cold showers and vodka
Lol
The best explanation I've found so far on hardness and softness! thanks!!
Big Bro you are truly one of the best Russian teachers out there. Amazing charm and teaching. Спасибо.
A supporting graphic of the cross section of the mouth from the side would have been immensely useful. Thanks for this explanatory video:)
As a Russian native speaker I would like to say that it's fine if you cant pronounce words with the soft sign. In 99% everybody will understand you.
Not so many words that differs only by a soft sign. For example Об (about) and Обь (name of Siberian river, sounds like ua-cam.com/video/dWvy7-3gbrI/v-deo.html).
Even more, when Russian speakers try to imitate a foreigner who speak in Russian they just say the same words but without a soft sign.
Here is a guy who just not use the soft sign and everybody still understands him ua-cam.com/video/owZsT4hk5zs/v-deo.html
What is also important to know is that babies are often says words that sounds like with a soft sign. So when you are trying to imitate "babies talk" you randomly add it to words and it sounds more childish.
When I hear Indians or Pakistani for me it sounds like almost all consonants are with a soft sign, so for them the soft sign shouldn't be a big problem.
I started to learn russian recently and this is so helpful, thank you so much!
Thank you for this video, it was excellent! I know it was probably tedious for you, but it was a great teaching video! I am sure it will help a lot with pronunciation. Hope you do more videos with pronunciation. Also, would love any pointers in a video on pronouncing of ты , мы for native English speaker...seems impossible!
sounds like Tu and Mu lel ,, damn i suck at russian lool
Thank you so much Fedor! I was really struggling with this concept in my russian class but the way you explained it made perfect sense to me
Thank you so much. As someone who has worked (and is still working) hard to modify my accent, I really found this useful. This is what non native speakers struggle to teach, and what native speakers rarely touch on. Do you have a video that explains the difference between the pronunciations of ш и щ?
ua-cam.com/video/-uQfhYZ9YiI/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/Rle6lgr5_7Y/v-deo.html
here you go
You are really helping me a lot with Russian pronunciation. Thanks man. You are awesome
OMG, I finally got this, you made it so clear! Thank you very much!
спасибо болшой! Thanks so much for this! I'm trying to learn Russian and couldn't really figure out the difference between soft and hard...had no idea why it's called soft and hard. haha. my husband who is Russian has no patience to teach me. he'll just scold me when I mispronounce words and tell me it's supposed to be soft or hard....but I couldn't even tell the difference between hard and soft before. But now I can! yay! thanks!
I have seen sooooooo many videos on how to make the hard and soft consonant sounds, and this one is my absolute favorite. Thank you so much 😊
Спасибо большое! Очень хороший урок. Это трудная тема для иностранных но вы очень хорошо объяснили. Ещё раз спасибо большое 🙏
Иностранцев*
Спасибо за исправление
So much simpler to say instead of the default "uh"sound after a consonant, you say "eh". But thank you, I can hear a difference MUCH better with your examples than with other teachers.
This lesson is helpful and also funny to learn. Thanks a lot. Cheers :)
I think I'm so lucky that I found this channel.
Спосиба!
This is soooo goooood. I keep coming back to it. Thank you.
Good lesson. Very helpful. Thank you from a native English woman
Very helpful series, thank you!
Какая у тебя классная футболка, со смыслом))))
Dankon al vi! Excellent video. You give life to the coursebooks that I'm reading.
I have seen many videos about this. This one is what I was looking for! Thank you!
Well it's simpler then I thought, you just ad the ih or eh with husing soft sound, to the actual vowels,!! Very helpful I actually done this with a teacher, and for some reason she couldn't explain soft and hard vowels, and my misconception was just to say less loud the vowels,
The only ones I still have trouble with are П, Р, and Б. I just can’t move my tongue that way.
say pee, ree and bee, then say that without the ee
@@MrFram This is really helpful!
You have no idea how helpful this has been! I have heard countless responses, 'just say it soft'. Thank you!!!!!
For something so soft, the promounciatiom is pretty hard. (Get it).
I realised that almost all of the soft variants of these consonants (except Р and Х) sound almost (if not completely) identical to the standard pronounciation of these letters in Swedish. Like, the soft Б is identical (or almost indetical at least) to the standard B one uses when reading the alphabet aloud in Swedish. So considering my native tongue is Swedish, I can say the sounds quite well, but now it just comes down to remembering to use the soft variants when I should 😂
You have a leg-up haha
I'm Swedish too and I realized the same thing although "Ть" is the most difficult for me.
It's funny, my sister's boyfriend is Swedish, and he's having an easy time learning Russian and his pronunciations are great. She's having a hard time with Swedish, because it's similar to German, which she learned, but so different, especially the pronunciations.
I did this at night when I was a child and learning the English language.
Couldn't sleep because I was always thinking.. well, still do... just different languages now.
I don't know if I am right, but it seems to me that the soft sound is like putting an 'e' after the hard sound
sort of... Practice it with E and when you get it right take the E away
It might have been more helpful to give example words, one using the hard consonant and the other using the soft consonant. Like, when you were giving examples of hard and soft "В", you could have used the words двор and дверь. In any case, this was still very helpful. Your videos are always very instructional. Keep up the good work.
Speaking of vowels ...
I've always found it interesting how Russians have difficulty with certain English vowel sounds. Russian has more vowels than English but they simply don't have the same vowels.
For instance, a Russian speaker would have difficulty properly saying the vowels in the following English words: bit, bat, boat, boot.
"bit" would come out more like "beet".
"bat" would come out more like "bot", is in "robot".
"boat" would have the deep, guttural o-sound that is unique to Russian. They would say "boat" like we say the name "Noah". It would sound more like "boaht". It's almost like they add an extra syllable that's not there.
"boot" would have the Russian speaker emphasizing the "oo" sound also in a deeper, more guttural way; much more than an English speaker would.
This is awesome. I love the information. What I notice as an English speaking American is that the soft and hard sounds have a bit of a vowel sound to them after the consonat. That would be very helpful to call out. For example, to us, the difference would be "vuh" vs "veh", or "Tuh" vs "Teah". It might help you to have an English speaker help translate what they are hearing when you make the sounds. Either way, Well Done!
Very good, Fedor!
actually good video, makes a lot more sense now thank you dude
Very very helpful, спасибо!!!!!
Edit: noticed the hard sound uses the eh sound more, and for the soft sound it uses the uh sound more.
Thank you Fedor!
To me, it just sounds like you change the vowel that follows the sound.
Hard sounds: followed by /ə/, where your tongue sits in the middle of your mouth
Soft sounds: Followed by /e/, where you tongue touched your teeth
Is this an accurate way to describe it?
get to know it for the first time! very helpful!!
this was very useful man. thanks a lot
Yoohoo! It seems like most Russian sounds are present in (Brazilian) Portuguese too, at least in my local accent :) Spasibo!
De onde você é amigo?
Thank you so much! I couldn’t pronounce a good half of the soft consonants before watching this
Your videos have helped me out so much.
Thanks Фёдор for your videos!!
I can't tell the difference when you spoke де, те, or па and ба, га and ка etc. could you make a video on that please? thank you!
thank u so much!! this helped me a lot, your explanation is amazing :)
Brilliant explanation, helped me alot, thanks 👍
This was very helpful to me. Thanks!
Sehr toll beschrieben 👍🏻
The Soft ones are more relaxed, need less energy. This video is really good!! Thank you :))
When I listened to russian, I always heard something like little Y sounds bewteen certian sounds. In English it's the difference between Hue and Who. I finally realize that this must account for some of that. Sometimes it sounds like you put a Y between the consonant and the vowel.
It feels like adding an English "y" sound to the very end of the consonant for a brief moment. This must be why the "y" sound of the vowel is removed when pronouncing the word like in "дерево".
Thank you ! This is so helpfull. I just spend hours to get кем, тем, те and ем correct. Still isn't perfect but now I feel like I will mangage somewhen. 😂 The hard consonants are easy, german here, but the soft ones are horrible. 😅
This video is underrated. So helpful. So so helpful. I still don't have the п and Р
Р mainly because I can't roll it and therefore can't pronounce it either way. Is there a soft version without rolling?
In short, one (the hard consonatn) sounds like you're pronouncing the schwa after the consonant and the other (the soft consoant) a short [i] or [E] sound.
THIS IS SO HELPFUL
Thank you for showing how to pronounce hard, and soft signs. Ц pronounce exercises would be helpful as well, unless that's coming up the future/exists
This is almost like putting a tilde on every single letter it can apply to
8:40 then conjugations of verbs in second person where there's an ь at the end (ex. знаешь) have no difference in pronunciation?
Correct. It's really just written for historical reasons or something like that apparently.
I'm still confused after watching this 3 times I dont know whether it's because can't move my tongue in that way or I dont get it
Thank god I'm not alone with this! I just can't hear the difference! My Russian friend have tried patiently to show me the difference, but I just don't get it. I had high hopes for this video to finally understand this topic, but gradually the video didn't help me at all. I didn't even notice when Видор changed between hard and soft ones... 😩
Maybe the problem is that you’re being too impatient. I had this problem before with relearning my native language (Tagalog) and the trick was patience. I would say I now sound mostly if not completely like a native speaker (at least, people have said I sound very Tagalog when I speak).
At first, it is really difficult to pronounce words the exact same way but after practicing about 15 to 30 minutes everyday patiently and not forcing my pronunciation, after a few days, I started to notice differences. But whenever I got frustrated and forced my pronunciation, I found that I didn’t seem to improve.
You do need to pay attention to details that you may not be used to paying attention to as an English speaker, however. My tip is to just be patient and understand that other languages make distinctions between sounds which we don’t distinguish. Try listening carefully for even differences which you may not usually take notice of in English. At first, your pronunciation may be very bad but keep calm and just try your best to reproduce the sounds exactly as you hear them. Don’t force your pronunciation. After a few days of practicing for at least 20 minutes everyday, you may notice some improvements.
Well, I’m not sure if this will work for you but you could try. But in my experience, getting frustrated and forcing your pronunciation is really bad and can result in really awkward speech.
wtf this is so much easier than i thought it was. большое спасибо
shaun03a I know right. Once you start its getting easier
nice video but slightly misleading: the thing the tip of your tongue touches when you say the good old 'L', AKA your gum, is actually called the alveolar ridge. only the part behind that is called the palate - the flat soft part of the roof of your mouth.
In the end you say ц,ш and щ always sound the same and don’t have hard or soft sounds. But it seems to me that щ is just a soft ш. Even when I watched a video to understand the difference between these two consonants ш and щ , the tongue placement differed the same way as all the other hard and soft consonants .
funny that russian has a soft version of all letters exept ч. in serbian the soft version is ћ, its the same as чь if you imagine it
Yeah many of these still sound the same to me. After watching several I think this is the best video on UA-cam explaining the concept though.
I’m actually learning Ukrainian/Belarusian but I think it’s the same concept.
Is he consistent in this video with presenting the hard consonant before the soft?
Thanks
good video but your explanation was like just doing without a script, maybe accommodate the explanaiton better so we can disting if you are pronouncing the strong or soft, its like you made this video up right when you thought about it and then post it
I only clicked because you look so handsome! 😍😆 But turns out that your explanation is excellent! Now I understand what soft consonants are.
ha ha After 67 years of not using anything like this, I think it will take me another 67 years to catch on. But what a buzzzz Thanks for trying so hard. I searched this topic out because I am trying to work out which ending to use in masculine adjectives... ый, ий, ой
Good Job Sir
Great examples, but I still was confused as to which version you spoke was hard and which was soft. Was the second one in each example the soft version?
first - hard, second - soft)) sorry could'nt help laughing
lol thanks))
Yes, beever is on it!
Thank you so much. You are teaching me a lot
very very useful, big thanks!
I can not tell the difference in the consonant. It just sounds like you're adding an "i" for the soft ones but the consonant sound remains the same. Is this really very important? I've been watching two hours of videos from different Russian teachers and I can't tell any difference otherwise and I feel like I should just move on to the next topic and give up on this one.
you perceive it as an "i" (и) because that's the palatalizing/softening vowel that you're used to. But ю, я, е , ё also do that. And so does ь, which has no sound.
MrFram It is pretty important in my view. Imagine a speaker of English as a foreign language unable to distinguish v and w, p and b, t and d, s and th (sink and think), z and th (“zat” and that), etc. of course when we get used to a person’s speech, we know what they mean. But when we communicate for the first time, it makes for difficult conversations.
That is because in English, the consonants are neither soft nor hard, so they will sound like a bit of both. Maybe try hardening your consonants, like by putting an -uh at the end of them, and then you'll be able to hear the softer version.
What about а and э
How to write J in Russian
Дж??
8:39 Wait...but has чь. And the word Do I just ignore the soft sign? But why is it there?
I think when a soft sign follows a consonant that cannot be softened (like in the word девичья), this means you add a y-glide to the soft vowel after it. This really applies to any consonant followed by any soft vowel, or soft sign + soft vowel. If you see живёшь, the ё here doesn't actually have that y sound at the beginning, it just softens the в. In a word like жильё, however, there is a soft sign after the л, and therefore, the ё now has that y sound before it, plus the softening of the л. So, it would not be "zhivyosh'", but more like "zhiv'osh'," and likewise, you would expect to hear "zhilyo" for жильё. This is my understanding, so if I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me. I hope this helps!
Wait, if letters "ч" and "ш" don't have a soft mode, does that mean the soft sign does nothing after them? Like in words "помочь" and verbs conjugated with "-ешь"
Ж will always be hard....what about божьем ?did you mean that the sound doesnt change?
Yes. Ж is always hard. This soft sign in божьем is not softing the consonant but it's so called dividing soft sign. If it's easier to understand you can replace the soft sign with Й in your mind (it's gonna be like бож-йем) and try to pronounce it. It'll be very close to how russians pronounce it.
thanks for the help man!!
Вы действительно пошел в деталь с этого урока. Отлично.
Hi fedor..Would you please tell us the difference of почему / зачем / отчего..And thank you very much for teaching us❤..
ua-cam.com/video/Bt95NVWuKa8/v-deo.html here's a bit of your question!
thanks..waiting for the next bit ;)
thank you, this is very helpful
Can you also tell us, in which words do we have to use the soft version, and in which words we have to use the hard sounds ? Is there a rule to determine it or we should just know which words carry hard and soft sounds. ?
Before Е, Ё, И, Ю, Я and Ь - the consonants get palatalized - верить - v'er'it', любить - l'ub'it' etc
Before А, Э, О, Ы, У and Ъ consonants don't get palatalized - лампа - lampa, лыжи - lyzhy, дом - dom, дума - duma etc
Also, consonant is palatalized before another palatalized consonant if the latter is not followed by a vowel. Есть - yes't', радость - rados't' etc
Also, there some exception. Ж, Ш and Ц are always unpalatalized. You shouldn't write жыть, шыть but жить, шить instead, because ж and ш are always hard (=unlalatalized).
Щ and Ч are always soft (=unlalatalized).
why is there шь in 2nd person of russian verbs won't yous soften it ... contrary to what you say
So tongue touch back of lower front teeth?
I can't hear a difference in the sounds you make other than the vowel that's after. I kinda hear the л and maybe the г, ,but the others sound the same to me. I don't really know how you are changing the position of your tongue; I can't see it. Please and thanks anyone for help.
It wasn't clear to me, I didn't know when you were doing a hard consonant and when a soft consonant.
It is really hard. In Hungarian there are soft n, d, l, t and it is very easy to pronounce them in soft way. But s, b, k ect. are impossible, I even can't feel the difference. :-) So if you have theese sounds in your language, then you can use it else it is very hard work to elaborate them. We had to learn Russian in school and I have never understand theese soft s, k, g ect. sounds. Now I understand them a little (thanks) but I coudn't use them. We spoke in Russian in Russia pretty well ... after some stakan vodka :-) Maybe our pronunciation wasn't very good. :-)
I kind of could hear the difference, but I mostly got confused which one was the hard and which one was the soft variant when you skipped back and forth pronouncing the consonants. Maybe subtitles "hard" "soft" could help¿
Great video. Thanks!
Дерево in english is Tree
Thanks a lot, so useful!!