Thread: How do you pronounce ь

I'm having trouble coming up with a way to pronounce the soft sign (ь). Any help would be good.

I know that it needs to be with another letter to even have a sound. but if you could even tell me how it sounds in the word знать that would be great.

Well, you can not pronounce the letter ь because it has no sound. It just makes other letters sound softer (that's why it is called the "soft sign").

So Знат would have a hard ending and знать has a soft ending... it really depends on the letter it accompanies how it will sound.

That makes more sense to me. But I'm still confused. Why do pronunciation guides use a superscript y. Is that just to give some sort of hint on how to make the consonant soft?

Originally Posted by youngmatthias

That makes more sense to me. But I'm still confused. Why do pronunciation guides use a superscript y. Is that just to give some sort of hint on how to make the consonant soft?

Yes, it is. You can treat "Ь" as a very very short sound [i]. In old slavonic languages this letter (small Yer) denote a very short reduced vowel [ĭ].

That's makin' much more sense to me now. Thanks!

Тут можно послушать.

спасибо!
That's all I needed.