I thought Ж was like "Zh" (in zhuyin: ㄓ) lol But wait... Sooo, R chinese is not really like an english (from USA, not UK) R sound? I tried to learn the pronunciation of chinese (in pinyin) and i thought R was like an english R
Seeing the older versions of Cyrillic we could say someone was drunk while inventing some of those letters,makes me glad for modernization of Cyrillic scripts
If you've never learned the original Glagolitic, you will see that Cyril was even more drunk than you're accounting for! I think the monastery in Bulgaria created Cyrillic just so that people wouldn't think Cyril was a big jerk for creating Glagolitic.
@@frieber247 In the oldest manuscripts we find all combinations of ъі, ъи, ъι for the ы-sound. But he couldn't have thought about it as a hard и, because in the old church slavonic system ꙑ was actually a hard ѧ (ę). и and ы were different endings, first one being the nominative plural, second one the accusative plural. Also ъ wasn't just a hard sign back then but had the sound of a short u, like in "foot". The inspiration for this digraph was greek οι, which was most likely an [ü] in that particular time, from what I understand about middle Greek.
The hard and soft sound do not sound weird in italian as we have other ways to "soften" consonants. However the ы is a whole other story and I don't think I will ever be able to pronounce it right ahahha
It got easier for me when I realised that the flat tops on д and л were just typographic styles, and in Russian block handwriting there are much more like greek delta and lamba.
@@vanessas2454 Yes I did a year of Ancient Greek in school, and 2 years of Latin. They have both been a huge help with Russian, and it has been a joy to experience and learn a living language with a working case system.
You uploaded this video at the perfect time bc I was literally thinking about how confused I was by these letters yesterday. Thank you for the quality content that you always give us, Fedor!!
thank you so much for the explanation of "hard sign" and "soft sign"! that was very helpful. if i had 8 weeks free i´d consider a language camp, but as it is i can just suck in some russian here and there in my free time. but it´s a very interesting language and gets more interesting the more i know about it (well, isn´t that true for many things). thanks for your videos!
Korean language has a sound ы. I was surprised when started learning it. There is letter 으 - ы 지금 - [чигым] - сейчас - now 음악 - [ымак] - музыка - music
@@user-de2to2df7z нуууу, я привыкла, что обычно 음악 идёт в контексте и озвончается до «г». Забыла про патчим вне контекста 😅 듣는 음악이에요 그 음악이 괜찮아요 Когда слушаешь, всегда звонкая.
@@daemor02 аа, ну так-то да конечно))) просто если даёте типа транскрипцию, то если забудете, кто-нибудь может неправильно запомнить 😅 да и не в 100% случаев после неё идёт гласная 🤔 банально 음악과 춤 и всё, опять К.. 😄
Now I know a bit more about the letters ы, ь, and ъ! The soft and hard signs, in particular, were ones that I had a hard time fully understanding until this video. From what I have heard, there is an important difference between "брать" (meaning "take") and "брат" (meaning "brother"), even if they are both spelled "brat" in English! Thanks for the video!
Really well made video! I think the hardest part about letter Ы for me is once and my brain reads it as two letters, and I can't think of any English letters that have a space in the middle. (If that makes sense.) Sometimes I'll think it's letter Ь and an I, but I think over time I've gotten better at sight-reading Russian words and not making that mistake. Thanks for making these videos guys :)
I joined the camp……. Very excited about it! As for this vid, you are the first one e v e r to show and practically explain what ъ actually does. Now it’s finally clear to me. Thanks so much for your practical tutorials Grtz from Antwerp, Belgium Patricia
Thank you Fiodor AT LAST i understand the function of Ъ :)) could't get it with my (good) Russian grammar book . Great videos, i like Alfia's videos too, every learner should watch both. .
In Romanian there is also the sound "Ы" which is "â" or "î" început (Ынчэпут) - Beginning Mâncare (Мынкарэ) -Food The difference between "â" and "î" is that "î" is only used at the beginning and at the end of the word.
I think Ф and Ё are the strangest. Ф is weird because it only seems to appear in foreign words. Ё is weird because it's optional when writing, some Russians just use Е.
Because the "f" consonant doesn't really appear initially in many native Russian words. Words that begin with this sound are usually loanwords like "факт" or "фантазия".
Privet Fedor. I'm learning casually the Russian language as I discovered a couple of years back just how similar our language is. I was born in Macedonia (same as Kiril where you get the name of our alphabet ) We have virtually all the same letters except the hard and soft sounds. You are correct I find those the hardest to learn. Letter no. 4 and 6 -no problem, we have them, Letter no. 5 is mirror image of ' E '. I endjoy your lessons. Greetings from down-under.
We used to have all these letters in Staroslovenski except for Э which is a russian mutation of Є which was pronounced je at the start of words and e in the middle or end of words. If you wanted to make a je sound in the middle or ends of words you would use Ѥ.
I was surprised by your description of how you pronounce "ы". I always thought of it as a diphthong combining a "u" and "i", meaning that it is produced by lip movement rather than tongue movement.
Brother I have been watching you for a bit now and have learned a lot , I have a question my wife is Lithuanian but grew up speaking Russian she says I cannot use the word Улица for outside ,what do you say?
@@daemor02 You mean to say that д in дверь and донести is pronounced the way an English D is pronounced? I am still learning Russian, so now I am feeling confused. :( Just the same, thanks for your input.
@@sanjayshah7350 They ARE actually different 🤔 That is because in English the tip of your tongue touches right behind your teeth wto make the 'D' sound whereas when pronouncing 'Д' the placement of the tongue os slightly 'more forward'. The tip of your tongue touches your teeth or the whole front part of the tongue kind of like presses against the front part of your hard palate 👁️👁️ (Source: I'm a native Russian and I teach English and have a degree in English). I recommend googling pictures to learn about sounds that are similar but have tiny differences, they'll help you
@@user-de2to2df7z here I thought I had the pronunciation right; as a native speaker of Indian languages, I am used to pronouncing the D, T, DH, TH two different ways. Now I have to look deeper into this again. lol
I’m not struggling so much with the hard and soft signs, but actually with the letter “Г”. I don’t know if I’m listening correctly or not, but it sounds like a “G”, and very rarely sounds like a “V” too, right? I’m a beginner.
You are right! 1. Г in "огонь" sounds like true Г. 2. Г in "хорошего" (primarily in the endings of adjectives) sounds like В. It's illogical for modern native speakers too. Anyone would be glad if it was spelled "хорошево". We have to learn the rules to write such words down correctly. 3. Г in "лёгкий"/"легко" sounds like ХЬ/Х correspondingly. It looks like these cases are rare exceptions.
Don't forget the lip situation while pronouncing. Like making your mouth more out front and smaller, making your mouth in the ooo then tongue needs to be more forward or backward. ... I don't know a good way to describe it. Im good with the pronunciations and I speak American English. Maybe a gift? Lol
i have to ask something. д sound is not always pronounced as "d". For example день it's something like "g" rather than "d" please someone clarify this. I've been studying Russian for almost a year and still couldn't figure this out
Wait what? I didn't know Ë lost it's "y" sounds after a consonant? I thought it deviated from that and was stressed no matter what. Guess I learn something new everyday
Well, they used to have ultra short sounds... Ъ was ŭ and Ь was ĭ. Cyrillic decimal І i still is used in Ukrainian, so this suggests the original digraph ЪІ , thus "ŭi"?, had a sound not unlike German ü. . English has something like the hard sign with the prevalence of silent e at the end of words. Considering the old Russian rule was no word ended in a consonant and many words thus ended with the hard sign Ъ, the comparison is interesting. . Ж makes me think of a frog. Э matches the Glagolitic form of E that in Ukrainian is Є... Д looks like chess piece...
Russian alphabet is son of Greeks. А - is "Alpha" (Α, α), Б & В are from "Betta" (Greece have no V or W), Г - like Greek "Gamma" (Γ, γ), Д - like "Delta" (Δ, δ), З - like "Zetta" (Ζ, ζ), П - like "Pi" (Π, π), Р - like "Ro" (Ρ, ρ), Ф is "Fi" (Φ, φ) e.t.c
@@ethiop_frum Yes, but only because the linguistically more appropriate Glagolitic was deemed too different from Greek so it was replaced by the Greek-looking Cyrillic. (Modern Greek B is a V sound, by the way.). Letters like Ч Ц Ъ and Ь and Щ come from Glagolitic, not Greek.
@@davidsturm7706 Greek word alphabet is prounsing of two letters "alpha" and "beta". But the russian word "алфавит" shows that the Greek letter "beta" in the Middle Ages was pronounced as "vita". Greek "Basil" turned to Russian "Василий". Glagolic alphabeth was like beta-version. That's was "fork" in Slavic proto-linguistic in VII-VIII cc. And You can find Jewish alpfabet and You must see "Shin" (שׂ). You can find Ethiopian alphabet "Aboogida" and compare it with Glagolic alphabeth (where M is መ too). So, You can find Coptic alphabeth... My idea is: The two Greek brothers created the alphabet for the Slavs, knowing Slavic grammar and phonetics well, carefully selecting ready-made symbols from various Mediterranean systems to indicate the letters. Two new systems were created. And time has shown the survivability of both systems in different situations.
@@davidsturm7706 Did You see Old-Slavonic letters in reality? Find some... Like that: yandex.ru/images/touch/search?text=%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5%20%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE&img_url=https%3A%2F%2Fst2.depositphotos.com%2F1033434%2F6968%2Fi%2F950%2Fdepositphotos_69680247-stock-photo-christian-ancient-psalter-with-text.jpg&pos=0&rpt=simage&source=wiz&ts=1622916464576
A friend once said that *ы* sounds like you're doing something disgusting. I think *р* is far weirder than э или д. Properly rolling the *р* just doesn't come naturally to me, or many other Americans.
In my opinion, English R and Russian Р are different enough from any other sounds in these languages so they could be used interchangeably. IDK if it's OK to replace R by Р in English, but it's definitely OK to replace Р by R in Russian. It would be perceived like stronger accent but that's all. Ь, Ы and Щ are more important. It's inadvisable to mess up with these letters/sounds. "Брат" vs "брать" or "мишка" vs "мышка" or "диод Шоттки" vs "щётки" (English speaker nightmare) is like "dock" vs "dog" or "beach" vs "bitch" or "man" vs "men" (Russian speaker nightmare). Replacing one sound by a similar one existing in the language is making a native speaker suffer. It would be perceived as speaker's having mental issues but not as having a nice accent.
@@sekrasoft hearing р in English in place of r is probably fine: it'll just sound like a fun accent. I really have trouble with ь and ш, щ. I'd really love to have a ten minute video where a native repeats брать a dozen times, then брат, and goes back and forth between them, then do the same with Ольга and олга, шашлык and щащлык, etc. Normally you only ever hear these sounds used once or twice, and the "wrong" sounds never. It's hard to pick up these differences when you're not immersed in them from childhood.
@@setharnold9764 The videos on the topic seem to be more theoretical than about hearing the difference. So I recorded mine :) It doesn't cover theory, however, contains a lot of sound combinations: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3Bp6QJAXCxw.html The video is split in several sections for some "theory" stuff and certain set of cases. My spoken English and picture are not the things to be proud of, but I hope you find the Russian part helpful.
@@sekrasoft oh my goodness!! Thanks! I've only watched a few minutes since I'm at work but this looks exactly like what I needed! I'll watch it later tonight. Thank you thank you thank you!
@@setharnold9764 You're welcome! Please don't hesitate to ask if it's something wrong. I'll try to do my best making some sounds more distinguishable. Some of them came out too similar. P.S. Wow, the time difference is between our locations is huge. It's 6 a.m. in my hometown now. I'm the opposite of an early bird, so it's time for me to sleep.
@@se777en73120 I hear it resolving to the English short OO sound ..ʊ.. In IPA, пожалуйста is pɐˈʐaɫʊstə. Or a schwa, pɐˈʐaɫəstə. Ы is middle ɨ, not back ʊ.
Allow me, a native English-speaker who is interested in Russian, clarify: these letters may be perfectly normal for a native Russian-speaker (or any other Cyrillic alphabet), but are weird for most other people. In particular, ы, ь, and ъ don't have many equivalents in other languages, while ж, э, and д don't look right to an English-speaker. In short, it is all about perspective: what is normal to one culture is weird to another. Kind of makes me wonder if there are any English letters that Russians find weird?
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions They are all just the same letters facing the wrong way. Seriously, I'm a native English/Spanish speaker who has been studying Russian for a while and I just don't find them strange. Speaking of that, you forgot to mention я and и. An important thing to do when learning an unrelated language is mentally draw a line between them and don't try to force the new language to fit into that which with you are already comfortable/familiar.
@@shreddder999 Coincidentally, I am a native English-speaker who was learning Spanish at school, and is teaching myself Russian through the internet! Also, when you said that we should "draw a line" between the languages, you've got a good point! After all, we would both know that there is a large difference between "embarrassed" and "embarazada"!
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions and the list goes on. Many more false friends. A friend of mine thought sopa was soap. I suppose he can eat what he wants and I'll eat what I want. Carpeta and many other false friends between Spanish and English.
@@shreddder999 There are plenty of more humorous false friends throughout languages! I don't think your friend was thinking of washing his hands _with_ soup! As we both said, same thing goes with the Cyrillic letters!