• і — Identical in pronunciation to ⟨и⟩, it was used exclusively immediately before other vowels and the ⟨й⟩ ("
• ѣ … See more

Most consonants can represent both "soft" (palatalized, represented in the IPA with a ⟨ʲ⟩) and "hard" consonant phonemes. If consonant letters are followed by vowel letters, the soft/hard quality of the consonant … See more

The Russian alphabet contains 10 vowel letters. They are grouped into soft and hard vowels. The soft vowels, ⟨е, ё, и, ю, я⟩, either indicate a preceding palatalized consonant, or (with the exception of ⟨и⟩) are iotated (pro… See more

The hard sign (⟨ъ⟩) acts like a "silent back vowel" that separates a succeeding "soft vowel" (⟨е, ё, ю, я⟩, but not ⟨и⟩) from a preceding consonant, invoking implicit iotation of the vowel with a distinct /j/ glide. Today it is … See more

Because Russian borrows terms from other languages, there are various conventions for sounds not present in Russian. For example, while Russian has no [h], there are a number of common words (particularl… See more

The numerical values correspond to the Greek numerals, with ⟨ѕ⟩ being used for digamma, ⟨ч⟩ for koppa, and ⟨ц⟩ for sampi. The system was abandoned for secular purposes in 1708, after a transitional period of a centur… See more