I have restarted my Russian and find again a problem. Abt soft and hard vowels. I have a list of hard vowels: а, э, ы, о, у. It is said: "When a noun, adjective or verb ends in a vowel from this list, it means that the previous consonant is hard and to keep this 'hardness' a vowel of the list of hard vowels should be used along the declination / conjugation". OK. So стол, стола, столу, столом. But столе? Here the hard л becomes soft because оf this "e" and not "э". The examples given make it rather confusing . It is said "After hard consonants: C + e стол-е After soft consonants : Сь + е читатель+ е . Perhaps the better is to asume that the condition of hard consonants changes before "e" in these cases and full stop. What do you think about it? Thanks