Quote Originally Posted by Anixx View Post
Some consonants are always soft or always hard. For example, й and ч are always soft while ж and ц are always hard. Any Russian can pronounce the soft ж as well but there are just no words with such sound in Russian. Some dictionaries advise to pronounce several words such as жжёшь with soft ж but this sounds a bit provincial to me.
This is where the problem lies for me, I have adequately learnt the basic rules but it comes up with such IPA sounds in this book such as you mentioned with жжёшь being soft ж but I have no way to envision this in my head... and to me the sound zh sounds very soft, I was surprised it is a hard sound.

I guess what I'm asking is their a sound board with IPA symbols just so I can visualise this. I had found one but it was for english and didn't use hardly any symbols that were used in Russian. I did watch that video you linked but again its hard to envision without a single sound solo'd as I am just a beginner.