Help:IPA for Russian

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Russian language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles.

See Russian phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Russian. See Russian alphabet for help converting spelling to pronunciation.

Russian distinguishes soft (palatalized) and hard (unpalatalized or plain) consonants. Soft consonants, denoted by a superscript j, $⟨⟩$, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. are always soft, whereas are always hard.