Thread: Confused about soft vowels

Originally Posted by rebmaboss

I learned that the Russian vowels е, ё, ю and я have a distinct y-sound at the beginning of a word and after another vowel.

At first I thought this meant that there's no "y" sound after a consonant, especially after a native speaker told me that "медленно" is pronounced "MEHD-lee-nah". However, it seems that in all the pronunciation guides, the "y" sound is included even after consonants.

Is this because a soft consonant, when pronounced correctly, naturally provides the "y" sound?

It is because that is how the untrained ear of non-natives hears soft consonants

In fact, медленно does not have any "y" sound! But "м" and "л" are palatalized: ['m^je-dl^jɪ-nnə], where both [m^j] and [l^j] are palatalized ("soft") consonants. A soft consonant is a single sound, it does not really contain "y", but it is pronounced with the middle part of the tongue raised towards the front palate (during all the time of its pronunciation, not just at the end phase!).

For more details, see hear:
Russian phonology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The contrast between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants is important in Russian, but English lacks this feature entirely.