002 – Russian alphabet: vowels Я, Ё, Ю, Е, И

Alphabet

The audio for the lesson is available at the bottom of the screen under the blue button.

In the previous lesson we’ve learned five vowels of the Cyrillic Russian alphabet. Today we’ll cover the other five. If you memorized well the vowels from the previous lesson, it will be easy for you to learn these ones. Let’s begin!

Here is a trick to memorize the rest 5 of Russian vowels:

All the vowels of the Russian alphabet form a sort of pairs: there are 5 pairs of vowels, in each of them one of the vowels is a “soft” version of its pair. Look how it works:

А а [a] – Я я [ya] (like ‘yu’ in ‘yummy’)
О о [o] – Ё ё [yo] (like ‘yo’ in ‘yours’)
У у [u] – Ю ю [yu] (like ‘yu’ in ‘you’)
Э э [e] – Е е [ye] (like ‘ye’ in ‘yes’ or ‘e’ in ‘exit’)
Ы ы [y] – И и [ee] (like ‘ée’ in ‘free’)

The audio includes all the letters of the today’s lesson and a little test: I pronounce a vowel, your task is to pronounce its pair.

In the following three lessons we’ll learn more Russian letters:

– Russian consonants (1st. part)
– Russian consonants (2d. part)
– Hard sign (Ъ) and soft sign (Ь)