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?

Quote:

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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?

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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! :D

Тут можно послушать.

спасибо!
That's all I needed.