Soft Sign and Hard Sign | Russian Language

thank you so much ive been trying to figure out what these characters did for so long

I’m surprised that you write the symbol Я from right to left, when the words are written left to right!

Спасибо Професор как дела сегодня моии́ друг другу?

Ъ и ь?

I'm learning how to use the Cyrillic alphabet for the purpose of World Building for my D&D setting. I have a lot of countries based on various Slavic languages (Polish and Czech, primarily), and something I wanted to do is to translate the names of my countries into the writing scripts they take inspiration from. While Polish and Czech use the Latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic, I still wanted to try to translate them phonetically from Latin into Cyrillic. I've done the same with my Eastern-Asian inspired countries as well as my Greek-Inspired ones. I even plan on learning a bit of Ogham so I can have my world's Dwarves use it as their writing system because of how well it thematically fits them.

Here are the names for the Gods in these country's pantheon (their own names for the primary 12 gods of my world) that I've translated thusfar into Cyrillic:

Эжка from Eżcha
Чарнобо́г from Czarnobóg
Конашка from Konaszka

Anything I'm missing? I believe these are all phonetically correct.

it should really stop being called soft, at least when teaching to russian language learners.
What does soft even mean? there are many ways to make things soft, such as saying reducing volume, using other approximants such as bilabial, retroflex, velar, etc.
What "softening" actually is in Russian is palatalizing.

So, basically, the soft sign is a short i at the end of the consonant.

Thanks so much for this video, I've been trying to figure out what the soft and hard sign do for weeks. I will say to my stupid English-speaking ears, the signs don't seem to affect the consonant sound but the vowel before the consonant! But at least now I know what I'm listening for :) Thanks again.

Love the moment when he explained what "softening prior sound" means by saying "it makes the prior sound softer"

thank you this was really helpful !!

Ь

Ъ

And how to distinguish мия from мья in the words семья and армия?

Ъ

Love these videos. Short videos packed with useful information. Thank you for taking the time to make these!

It's kind of wild how much his English has improved

You look Norwegian, not Russian, but the video helped!

Thvordy znak
Merkisznak

My god I'm confused, but thank you. This is the best guide I've seen so far.

This language. No wonder so few Black people speak it.

(I'm kidding. Just frustrated by how long it's taking me to learn.)

In the old pre-1918 spelling, words with final consonants that were not followed by a soft sign were followed by a hard sign, e.g., садъ, онъ, even въ. In the 19th century the (excellent) point was made that the hard sign was superfluous: an always-hard consonant would always be hard anyway and an always-soft consonant would be soft anyway. For consonants that can be either hard or soft, it was sufficient to have only a soft sign, and a hard final consonant would have a zero-ending. This change was resisted by conservatives, but was instituted by the Bolshevik government after the Revolution. Overnight, the ъ went from being one of the most used letters in Russian to being one of the least used. Today it is used only as a separation sign, e. g., объехать. It doesn't affect pronunciation; it's retained to keep Russian spelling rules consistent.

Нун

шо бл*ть

I’m a native English speaker and дверь is so hard to pronounce 😩 how do I get that sound?

I'm pretty sure that the hard sign doesn't change the consonant in Podest (based on your example). The difference is actually the stress. You changed the stress of the word from the second syllable to the first. It changed from pad-YEST, to PAD yest. Also the change in the L that the soft sign make to the "L" in Sol, also changes the O. i think the changes triggered by the signs aren't really just to the consonants, but rather to the mouth position and accent position

The thing is when you have russian friends that you can learn russian vocabs from you might not even need this signs you just naturally memorize how exactly it was pronounced

Спасиб, братух

Интересно зачем иностраннцам знать наш язык? Сможете ответить? 😉👉

Amazing video brother! I have a lot to practice! Thanks!

the best part abt russian is 'ill still understand you'

Язык Русский.

🥰🥰I love Moscow, Russia.🥰🥰

Hey my friend, I like your language, I know very little Russian words 1 Объём = Volume
1 [Ob"yom]

Ok

Семья or Семя - both sound about the same to me. Does the word have to be pronounced that exact? Most Americans don't say English words exactly alike, yet everybody can understand each other.

The frustrating thing is that I can understand the pronunciation difference between the R's, but I can't manage to pronounce either of them correctly. I think I'll come back to this video every now and then until I get it.

Ну не всё так примитивно: мягкий внак делает согласную мягче, а твёрдый твёрже. Ъ имеет разделительную функцию, вот и всё.

Lived 2 years in Moscow, did not know the difference until now!

Очъенъ пъолъезъная бъукъва🤓

Can you do a video on pronounciation of 'o' as a

Strange but i get it XD

It's not that hard. But it's hard.

It is very difficult to hear the difference in salt. It is almost like just a difference in accent. My American ear is the trouble.

What's weird to me is that, as in соль, it seems to me that the л is harder than in сол, where the o is harder

Thank you for the music-free video.

Ого! А вот это интересно)

What the Русская

Thank you very much, that is very helpfull to me!

I cannot play this video :(

I honestly think the biggest problem I had was that EVERYBODY sold me the consonant sound changes, I finally figured out that it doesn't. Ъ just implies to fully pronounce the consonant and ь essentially adds a vowel sound, usually like 'yeah'