Hard & Soft Consonants in Russian

What are hard and soft consonants in Russian, and why are they so important? Learn the main idea in 60 seconds, with examples pronounced by a native speaker. The distinction is essential for good pronunciation in Russian, and also for spelling - almost any time you change the ending of a noun or adjective in Russian, you'll be taking this into consideration.
Getting comfortable with hard and soft consonants from the start will give you a solid basis for good progress, and good grades!
Visit ‪@russiangrammar‬ for more details on how these sounds are spelled, as well as a few exceptions that might surprise you.
I also invite you to join the Russian Grammar Library at www.tips4russi..., with over 200 clear, friendly videos on essential points of grammar and pronunciation, complete with exercises, quizzes, and sample sentences. Be sure to check out the free sample lessons on verbs of motion and participles!

[@violoncello4439]

After studying Irish, which has 'broad' and 'slender' consonants, denoting velarised and palatalised consonants respectively, I realised that Russian has the exact same system with its hard and soft consonants. Some linguists actually agree with this, which I read on Wikipedia. The 'ы' in 'мы' is clearly a velarised /i/; /mˠiː/. I think it's also especially clear in your example 'лодка' that the 'ло' is velarised rather than just non-palatalised. However, the hard consonant 'a' in 'сад' doesn't sound as velarised as something like the /ˠiː/ in 'сын', because /a/ is too far from the velum for its sound to be affected. But that's just my amateur idea. What do you think of this notion that hard consonants are actually velarised?

[@russiangrammar]

Yes, I do think there's something to this notion. I haven't seen it discussed in materials for beginning learners, perhaps because the idea of palatalization is already plenty to think about at this stage! When you get into the details there seem to be additional nuances depending on the particular consonant; I found this paper on velarization of labial consonants in Russian: www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_3537.pdf . You may already be familiar with Jaye Padgett at UC Santa Cruz, who works on Irish and Russian - there are links to several interesting papers at his site: jayepadgett.sites.ucsc.edu. I once read a piece by a learner of Russian from a Gaeltacht who felt she had a significant advantage (over students who had only English) starting out with Russian pronunciation. Thanks for the comment!

[@violoncello4439]

@@russiangrammar Thanks for those resources! I'm not surprised by the experience of that Irish speaker, since once I understood velarisation, I felt my Russian pronunciation improved. However I've found that even in beginner-level Irish materials, broad consonants are often described as just being neutral or non-palatalised, and I always felt that there was something wrong or off about this, which was the same as my experience with hard/soft consonants in beginner-level Russian. So I think it would be better if velarisation in Russian was more discussed. And besides, if there's anyone to explain a complex Russian concept it's certainly yourself, given your fantastic grammar videos!

[@HSO-ro3bd]

You've made me enjoy Russian so much. Thank You! ☺

[@skrame01]

You go way, way, way too fast.

[@russiangrammar]

Shorts are best for quick reviews - if you haven't already seen it, try this introduction at kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJ-7lXpnYslsY80 for a slower pace and more examples. And feel free to come back with specific questions. :)