Quote Originally Posted by Steven_Seagal View Post
I've been studying the language for about a month, but I still have some questions about pronunciation even though I'm starting to develop my pronunciation skills.

- How is "щ" pronounced and how is it different from "Ш"? I have heard it was "shsh" but then I heard it was "shch". Which one is correct and how does it actually sound?
Okay, imagine that Marian the Librarian is cliff-diving into a lovely tropical lagoon -- she jumps off the cliff, and being a librarian, she's going "Sshhhhh!" the whole way down. Now imagine the "sh" being high-pitched at the start of her jump, but deepening to a much lower pitch as she falls towards the water. Basically, the щ is like the very high-pitched "sh" at the top of the cliff, and the ш is like the very deep "sh" when she's about to splash into the lagoon!

I am very confused about the letter "e". Is this pronounced "ye" always? Or is there a point when it turns into "eh"? When I heard it was pronounced 'ye' I just started to pronounce it that way always. However, why don't English translations always translate the 'ye' sound and instead leave it as 'e'?
You pronounce it "ye" when there's no consonant before it -- i.e., after another vowel sound, or at the beginning of a word. But when there's a consonant before it, the "y" sound sort of gets absorbed into the consonant (and changes the phonetic quality of the consonant), and is no longer a distinct, separate sound. If you're familiar with how Spanish speakers pronounce the word cañon, and understand how the ñ is different from the n-y in the English word "canyon," then this may help you understand what I mean when I say that the "y" sound of the Russian е is "absorbed into the consonant."

I do not know when or how "o" changes into the "a" sound. Can someone please explain how I can know when to pronounce 'o' as 'a'? I am not sure what is meant by "stress position" like I've heard explained.
Pronounce о like о when it's in a stressed syllable, as in English "FO-cus". Pronounce о like а when it's in an unstressed syllable RIGHT BEFORE the stressed syllable. Pronounce о like ə (also called the "schwa sound", or "uh") if it's in an unstressed syllable in any other position other than right before the stressed syllable. As an example, the word for "milk": молоко. There are three о's, but the stress is on the final one, so the word is pronounced like мəлако (muh-lah-KOH).

- the letters 'Г' and 'Х'. Is Г pronounced g? If so, why is Hamlet in Russian "Гamlet"? Does X pronounce as "kh" always? I have heard it was just "h" before.
I think chaika has already given a good explanation, but as for the pronunciation of х, I would advise that you try to do your best impression of Darth Vader's respirator: Ххххххх! Люк, ай эм йор фадр! Ххххххххххх! A lot of English-speaking beginners in Russian make the mistake of trying to do a rather "wet"-sounding х with too much "k" in it, like they're trying to cough up phlegm. But you gotta keep it dry, like Vader breathing.

- I am confused by all those 'b' letters. Can someone explain all of them and what they do exactly? I know two of them are just stress marks or something, but I just want to get more information on this.
ы is a vowel -- I would describe it as sounding kinda-sorta like that "schwa sound" ə, followed by the vowel -y as in "happy". So if you try saying "əy", you'll be getting it approximately right. The letters ь and ъ are totally silent, but they affect the pronunciation of consonants that come immediately before them. The ъ is hardly ever used and you can pretty much forget about it until later in your study of Russian. The ь is more important, and (going back to that example of Spanish cañon), it's kinda-sorta like the Spanish ~, except that it's written AFTER the consonant instead of OVER it. Basically, when you see the ь, it means that the consonant right before it has a consonantal "y" sound blended into it, like the ñ in Spanish piñata.

Hope this was helpful!

P.S. Я очень рекомендую офигенный фильм The Music Man всем русским!