• RUSSIAN PRONUNCIATION GUIDE.

All present-day Russian letters are derived from ancient Cyrillic alphabet by means of excluding some out-of-date letters and simplifying their writing form.
Russian pronunciation guide

Special care should be taken of the letter "Ё -ё" “YO”, you won't see it anywhere in Russian papers, it is even not present on the Russian keyboard, it is always replaced with the letter "Е", and as these letters are pronounced differently it will be difficult for a learner to know which sound to pronounce when seeing the letter "Е" in a word. In fact, all the words with the letter "Ё-ё" should be learned by heart, and there many of them. So to help learners I will use the letter "Ё-"ё in writing words.

You probably noticed that letters "Ъ" (hard sign) and "Ь" (soft sign) have no Latin equivalents. That is because these letters are never pronounced in Russian, the former one is used only as a partitive letter between the prefix and the root of the word, e.g. сьесть
(to have eaten), the latter is used as a softening sign telling that the consonant after which it is written must be palatalized (softened),

compare мол[mol] (particle used in retelling the other person's words) - моль [mol’](moth).

Soft sign is also used as a portative sign but mainly in the root of the word, e.g пьет[p’yot] (he) drinks), it is used to underline some grammatical features (feminine gender, imperative mood) as well.

The letter "Ы" [ AY] can never start a word .
The letter "Й"[ y/i] also very rarely starts a word.

Well, first to be mentioned, there is no division into long and short vowels in Russian, that means that it is no matter how you pronounce a vowel: long or short, it won't change the word's meaning.

The second is that almost all consonants in Russian appear in two forms: palatalized (soft) and non-palatalized (hard) ones. The term palatalized means that while pronouncing the sound the middle part of your tongue is lifted toward the hard palate and makes what is being uttered sound in a higher pitch what is perceived by us as softness.

You can determine where your hard palate is by pronouncing the sound [j] like in "yes": it is where your tongue touches the upper jaw.
Try to compare sounds [n] and [n'] ( ' denotes palatalization) in words "not" and "new": in the first one you pronounce [n] because the next [o] vowel is on open vowel and does not require your tongue to lift while pronouncing [n]; on the contrary, in the second word you pronounce [n'] because your tongue automatically adjusts to the pronunciation of the next [j] consonant and lifts toward the hard palate.

You see that soft and hard consonants appear in both Russian and English but the difference is the following: in English for example you can't pronounce [n'] before [o] like in "not", you can pronounce it only in certain positions before the sounds with the similar articulation (e.g. [j] or [i:]),

but in Russian the sound [n'] can appear before every sound no matter how it is articulated, for example there are two absolutely different in meaning words in Russian differing only in palatalization or non-palatalization of [n] consonant:

"нос" [nOs] (nose) and "нёс" [n'YOs] (past masculine form of "нести"[nyestEE] (to carry), carried).

Another example is "мат" [mAt] (mate) and "мать" [mAt'] (mother).
Now you see that palatalization bears word differentiating function in Russian so you must manage to pronounce every Russian consonant in both hard (which is easy) and soft (more difficult) forms to be understood properly.

As mentioned above you should always pronounce soft consonants by lifting the middle part of your tongue toward the hard palate. The problem is how to mark the softness of consonants in writing.

Russian uses two variants of vowel letters: it uses "я"[ya] after a consonant letter to mark both its softness and vowel [a] after it (compare мать[mAt’] (mother) and мять[mYAt’] (to crumple)),

"Ё" “YO”- to mark the softness of preceding consonant and vowel [o] after it
(compare вол[vOl] (bullock, ox) and вёл[vYOl] ((he) was leading)),

"Ю-YU" - softness of the consonant + vowel [u] after it, "е" - softness of the consonant + vowel denoted by letter "э" after it.

Besides, letter "И-‘EE" always denotes the softness of preceding consonant plus vowel [ee] after it as well (e.g. один [adEEn](one)) but the same vowel [EE] can also be expressed by the letter "и" apart from the consonant (e.g. искать[eeskAt’] (to look for)),

so "и" has no counterpart while "я"-[ya], "ё"-[yo], "ю"-[yu], "е"-[ye] do have it. If there is no vowel following the soft consonant softness is marked by the letter "ь" (soft sign), e.g. мать[mAt’] (mother), кольцо [kal’tsO](ring).

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When I drink, I think, (kаgdA Ya p'YU - Ya dOOma-yu ) Когда я пью- я думаю,
and when I think , I drink. ( a kogdA Ya dOOma-yu - Ya p'YU) А когда я думаю-я пью.( Francois Rabelais)

to be continue.......