So far, we have dealt with the letters common for both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Before getting to letters which are different from Latin, we’ll take a step aside and look exclusively at the vowels. We need to learn them sooner rather than later because no words in Russian can be formed without them. 

There are 10 vowels in Russian, which can be neatly divided into 2 groups of 5. Click on the letter!

The upper and lower vowels form natural couplets: Each of the lower vowels (except for the last "И" ) begins with a ‘j-slide’ and is a kind of ‘diphthong reflection’ of its upper counterpart. If you sing or drawl a lower vowel (except "И"), you wil end up singing its corresponding vowel above.

Notice the "y-slide" quality of four vowels above -- Я, Ё, Ю, Е:

This division of all vowels into couplets is very important for good pronunciation, spelling, and some grammar choices (as you will see later).

Any of the upper level vowels makes a preceding consonant sound hard; any of the lower level vowels makes it sound soft.

Consonants can also be softened by the soft sign - "Ь" -- (we'll deal with it at the end of Chapter 1 in Lesson 7).

It's worth knowing that:

1. The vowel ë is always stressed and for that reason you will never see a stress mark above it.
2. There are no words beginning with the vowel Ы.

Meaningful vowels: