LESSON 1

Introduction to the Russian alphabet. Sounds and letters of the Russian

language. The system of vowels and consonants. Syllable. Features of Russian
stress.

1) Familiarity with the Russian alphabet. In the Russian alphabet (vowels and
consonants).
Vowel letters (А, О, У, Ы, Э, И, Я, Ё, Ю, Е)

Consonant letters (Б, В, Г, Д, Ж, З, К, Л, М, Н, П, Р, С, Т, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ)

 Vowels A, О, У, Ы, Э show the hand ness of the previous consonant: мама, папа,
мыло.
Я, Ё, Ю, И, Е show the softness of the previous consonant: дядя, тётя, мёд, мел.
ъ – solid sign, ь – soft sign don’t mean sounds.

Syllable.
In Russian language how many vowels and syllables.
Дом - 1 vowel, 1 syllable.
Лам-па - 2 vowels, 2 syllables.
Ба-буш-ка - 3 vowels, 3 syllables.

Features of Russian stress.

“Stress” means that one of the syllables in a word is pronounced with additional strength.
In some languages the stress is fixed on a certain syllable, for example, on the last one. In Russian,
stress placement is mobile. It means that any syllable in a word can be stressed. It is impossible to
guess which syllable exactly the stress will be on. Stressed syllables are only underlined in books
for beginner and low-level learners. So, when you come across a new word, you should consult a
dictionary.
Stressed and unstressed vowels are pronounced differently. Unstressed vowels undergo
become shorter and change their sound slightly.
“O” in an unstressed syllable which comes before the stressed vowel or at the end of the
word is pronounced as a sound which is similar to a short [а].
Compare (the stressed syllable is underlined):
он - he – она - she
моль -mole – плохо -badly
In other syllables the unstressed vowel “o” is pronounced very shortly. It resembles
something similar to an [а] and an [э] at the same time:
Хорошо - good.
Russian language has free and moving stress which is the most difficult to study. You must learn
the stress of each word otherwise you might be not understood or misunderstood. So here I will
mark the stress of each word by making the stressed vowel bold, for example:
город (town),
корова (cow),
молоко (milk),
преподаватель (teacher),
палеонтология (palaeontology).
You see that in these words stress falls on different syllables, from 1st to 5th.
As already mentioned above, Russian has moving stress, but however some words have stable
and some words have moving stress, for example, words:
собака (dog),
лимон (lemon),
пожар (fire)
have stable stress since all their forms and words derived from them have their stress on the
second vowel of the root (а, о, а respectively) and words:
рука (hand, arm),
гора (mountain)
have moving stress, since their plural forms руки (hands, arms) and горы (mountains)
have their stress on the root and not on the ending.