Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
"Гол and голь, кров and кровь?" Hmm... yeah, I don't know what the first two mean, but I'd assume that "funny, double vowel" is in голь? But is there really a difference between кров and кровь?
No, no, no! There is no double vowel in "голь" (which is derived from "голый" -- "naked" and means poor people; there are many other words with similar meaning, like "голытьба", "сброд", "чернь" -- they have derogatory connotations and correspond to English 'rabble', 'riffraff'). it-ogo meant that many foreigners whose native languages do not include soft consonant can't ponounce them and replace them with и/й + the vowel (e.g, they would pronounce "тебя" [tjebja] instead of [т'иб'а] -- the [t'] and [b'] sounds are both soft. So the phrase "Я тебя люблю" -- "I love you" can sound very funny. )

The "мягкий знак" "Ь" letter makes the preceding consonant soft/wet ("мягкий" = soft). The "твёрдый знак" Ъ is indeed more or less unimportant, it is mostly used in orthography to show that the preceding consonant is hard ("твёрдый" = hard) and there are some other functions but I don't remember them.

So, "голь" should be read [гол'/gol'] -- with a soft [l], in "гол" the [l] sound is hard -- [gol] ("гол" comes from the English sports term "goal" as in "goalkeep", "to score a goal". Except that in English you do have a double vowel or diphthong. There are no diphthongs in Russian.

The same goes for "кров" and "кровь" -- they should be read [кроф] and [крофь/кроф']. The end consonant always becomes voiceless and in "кровь" the [f] sound is soft.

I don't think it's that difficult to learn to pronounce soft consonants but it's always better to have a teacher/tutor who can help you there.

It seems that the soft consonant are indicated by [j] in the International Phonetic Alphabet which is perhaps what confuses foreigners learning Russian. For ex., the name "Катя" will be transcribed as "Katja" which is NOT the right way of pronouncing it.