Key takeaways
- Wikipedia's article on the Russian alphabet lists ь and ъ as two 'signs' among its 33 letters, with no sound of their own.
- The soft sign marks the consonant before it as palatalised: брат (brother) against брать (to take).
- After ж, ш, ч and щ the soft sign changes no sound but marks grammar, such as feminine дочь against masculine меч.
- The hard sign separates a prefix ending in a consonant from a root starting with я, е, ё or ю: сесть against съесть.
- Before the 1918 spelling reform, ъ was written after every word-final hard consonant, as in котъ for кот.
The Russian soft sign, ь, and the hard sign, ъ, are the two letters in the alphabet that never make a sound of their own. They change how the letters around them are read. Wikipedia's article on the Russian alphabet describes them as two "modifier letters or signs" that alter the pronunciation of a preceding consonant or a following vowel. This explainer covers what each one does, the grammar the soft sign carries, and why the hard sign used to be everywhere. Romanisations follow BGN/PCGN, which writes ь as ' and ъ as ".
Where the two signs sit in the alphabet
Wikipedia breaks the 33 letters down as 20 consonants, 10 vowels, the semivowel й and the two signs. As a check, 20 + 10 + 1 + 2 = 33. Wikipedia's Hard sign article notes that most Cyrillic alphabets place ъ straight after щ.
Both letters began as vowels. The Soft sign and Hard sign articles explain that in Old Church Slavonic they stood for very short reduced vowels, the yers: ь a short front vowel and ъ a short back one. The Russian alphabet article says those pronunciations were lost by 1400 at the latest, leaving the letters with their modern jobs.
The soft sign: making the consonant soft
Wikipedia's Soft sign article explains that it marks palatalisation of the consonant before it: the middle of the tongue moves up towards the hard palate while the consonant is said.
This matters because, as the Russian alphabet article puts it, palatalisation is phonemic in Russian: it changes meaning. Its example:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| брат | [brat] | brother |
| брать | [bratʲ] | to take |
The only difference is the final т, hard in брат and soft in брать. In IPA the soft consonant is written with a small ʲ.
Before a vowel, ь adds a y-sound. Wikipedia's Soft sign article says vowels after the soft sign are iotated, meaning a /j/ is heard before them. It compares льют /lʲjut/, "(they) pour", with лют /lʲut/, "(he is) fierce". The combinations ья, ье, ьё, ью are read with that glide.
The soft sign as grammar
After certain consonants, the soft sign changes nothing in the sound. The Russian alphabet article says that after the always-soft ч and щ and the always-hard ж and ш, ь has grammatical significance instead. It marks:
- feminine singular nouns in the nominative and accusative;
- the imperative of some verbs;
- infinitives ending in -чь;
- the second-person singular of present and future verbs, ending in -шь;
- some adverbs and particles.
The noun rule is the easiest to spot. Wikipedia's Russian orthography article gives дочь (daughter, feminine) with ь against меч (sword, masculine) without it, and the Russian alphabet article cites тушь (India ink, feminine) against туш (a flourish after a toast, masculine), both pronounced [tuʂ].
The hard sign: a separator
The hard sign has one main modern job. Wikipedia's Hard sign article says it has no phonetic value of its own and is purely an orthographic device: it separates a prefix ending in a consonant from a following root that begins with an iotated vowel. So in native words it appears only before я, е, ё and ю, and it tells you to pronounce the /j/ separately.
| Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| сесть | [ˈsʲesʲtʲ] | to sit down |
| съесть | [ˈsjesʲtʲ] | to eat (perfective) |
In сесть the с is soft and runs straight into the vowel. In съесть the prefix с- stays separate and the е starts with a clear y-sound. The article adds that the consonant before ъ is often softened a little anyway, which led to 20th-century proposals to replace ъ with ь; they were never implemented, partly because the degree of softening is not uniform.
Before 1918: the hard sign at the end of words
Until the spelling reform of 1918, Wikipedia says, a hard sign was written at the end of every word that ended in a non-palatal consonant, though it had no effect on pronunciation. The word for "cat" was котъ; after the reform it became кот. The reform was politically charged, and the article describes sailors confiscating type for the "parasite letters" so that printers had to use an apostrophe as a separator for a time, as in с’езд for съезд.
Today the old final ъ survives in some brand names. The newspaper Коммерсантъ uses it to signal continuity with its pre-Soviet namesake.
Reading four words with the signs
Apply the rules to four words taken from the sources above.
- брать (to take): ь after т, so the final т is soft, [bratʲ]. Drop the sign and you have брат, "brother".
- дочь (daughter): ь after ч, which is always soft, so there is no sound change; the sign marks a feminine noun.
- Марья (Marya, a form of "Mary"): ь before я, so a soft р followed by a separate y-sound, Mar'ya. Wikipedia notes it coexists with the spelling Мария.
- съезд: ъ after the prefix с- before е, so the е starts with a clear y-sound, s"yezd. This is the word that printers had to spell с’езд when the hard sign type was taken away.
In the first word the sign only softens a consonant; in the second it is pure grammar; in the last two it brings in a /j/ glide.
Practising the signs
Regal - Learn Russian Language starts with the Cyrillic alphabet, with pronunciation activities tied to listening so that the sounds you make and the sounds you recognise develop together. It is one of our language-learning apps. For the alphabet as a whole, start with the Cyrillic beginner's guide; for how the signs look in handwriting, see the Russian cursive guide; and for the other big gap between spelling and sound, read Russian vowel reduction.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What does the soft sign do in Russian?
Why does дочь have a soft sign if ч is always soft?
What does the hard sign do in съесть?
Why did the hard sign disappear from the end of Russian words?
Sources
- Russian alphabet (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Soft sign (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Hard sign (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Russian orthography (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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