Russian alphabet: vowels Я, Ё, Ю, Е, И
The audio for the lesson is available at the bottom of the screen under the blue button.
In the previous lesson we’ve started learning the Russian alphabet and got acquainted with five its vowels: А, О, У, Э, Ы. Today we will 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 little trick to memorize the other 5 of the Russian vowels:
All the vowels of the Russian alphabet form a sort of pairs, in total 5 pairs of vowels, in each of them one of the vowels is a “soft” version of its pair. Have a look at 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’)
As you can see, to make the second vowel in a pair, all you need to do is to add “y” in front the the first vowel (except for the last pair “Ы – И”).
The audio of this lesson includes all the letters above and a little test: I pronounce a vowel, your task is to pronounce its pair.
More lessons on the Russian alphabet
- 001: Russian alphabet: vowels А, О, У, Э, Ы
- 002: Russian alphabet: vowels Я, Ё, Ю, Е, И
- 003: Russian alphabet: consonants (1st. part)
- 004: Russian alphabet: consonants (2d. part)
- 005: Russian alphabet: soft sign (Ь) and hard sign (Ъ)
- 158: Russian handwriting
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i cant find the audio, thank you for your help
Hello Maciej,
The audio is at the bottom of the page, blue button. You need to click on it to see the player.
Is there a handwriting script for the alphabet? Thanks
You can find an example of hand written Russian here – Everyday Russian – Alphabet.