Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
In my first-year course, the concepts of "hard" and "soft" consonants were introduced extremely early, at the same time as students are learning the alphabet, and about аканье, and about voiced/voiceless consonant pairs, etc. In other words, it was all presented as part of a systematic introduction to Cyrillic orthography.
This is definitely not comparable. Soft/hard consonants are MUCH more important than the "аканье". It is pity that they are taught as if they were of the same level of importance. If you do not distinguish between soft and hard consonants you simply do not speak correct Russian. Note a Russian that when talking over a bad phone line when trying to speak a word distinguishably will pronounce it with exact vowels, without the "akanie".