Consequently, ⟨э⟩ and ⟨е⟩ are written in accordance with pronunciation: ⟨э⟩ for initial [e] and after hard consonants, ⟨е⟩ for initial and postvocalic [je] and after soft consonants. That also means that ⟨э⟩ is much more frequent in Belarusian than in Russian.
The Russian letter "э" is pronounced [e] like in the word "edit". But be careful, remember that the Russian letter "e" is pronounced [ye] like in "yellow".
Russian and Belarusian
Following a consonant, Ye indicates that the consonant is palatalized, and represents the vowel /e/ (phonetically [e] or [ɛ]), like the pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ in "yes".
As a variant of the letter e, it also appears in Acehnese, Afrikaans, Breton, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, Luxembourgish, Piedmontese, Russian, the Abruzzese dialect of the Neapolitan language, and the Ascolano dialect.
The letter ⟨ё⟩ is a stressed syllable in the overwhelming majority of Russian and Belarusian words. In Russian, unstressed ⟨ё⟩ occurs only in compound numerals and a few derived terms, wherein it is considered an exception.
Today, both the Hard sign (Ъ) and the Soft sign (Ь) are used to separate a consonant and a vowel (mostly Я, Ё, Е, Ю), only the Hard sign (Ъ) separates a Hard consonant and a vowel, and the Soft sign (Ь) separates a Soft consonant and a vowel.
Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: Ф ф) is a Cyrillic letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative /f/, like the pronunciation of ⟨f⟩ in "fill, flee, or fall". The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as ⟨f⟩.
The Russian й" sounds like the semivowel/consonant [j] in the IPA and like the letter 'y' in the English words "young", "year" and "you", and the letter 'u' in the English words "use" and "unit".
Ya or Ja (Я я; italics: Я я) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus (Ѧ ѧ) or maybe even 'Ꙗ'.
The main thing to remember is that in Russian the rules of capitalization are different from those in English. For instance, days of the week, nationalities, or names of the months are not capitalized in Russian. The English I is capitalized but the Russian я (ya) is written in lowercase.
я ► Meaning: I, me, mine, myself. Pronunciation: [yah] Part of speech: pronoun.
Use. It is the 9th letter in the Lithuanian alphabet, and is also used in the Colognian language of Cologne, Germany, Potawatomi language and Cheyenne language. It was coined by Daniel Klein, the author of the first printed grammar of the Lithuanian language – Grammatica Litvanica (1653).
Э э (Э э; italics: Э э; also known as backwards ye, from Russian е оборо́тное, ye oborótnoye, [ˈjɛ ɐbɐˈrotnəjə]) is a letter found in three Slavic languages: Russian, Belarusian, and West Polesian.
Short I or Yot/Jot (Й й; italics: Й й) (sometimes called i-kratkoye, Russian: и-краткое) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve. Cyrillic letter Short I.
In Modern Russian, the letter "ъ" is called the hard sign (твёрдый знак / tvjordyj znak).
Zhe or Že (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced retroflex sibilant /ʐ/ (listen). It is also often used with D (Д) to approximate the sound in English of the Latin letter J with a ДЖ combination. Zhe is romanized as ⟨zh⟩ or ⟨ž⟩.
The letter "ь" does not have any sound itself. It softens the letter before it. For example the words "есть" (to eat) and "ест" (he/she eats) sound different thanks to "ь".
However, this new rule was applied inconsistently throughout the Soviet period. Therefore, today, we still use Ъ when separating the prefix and root of a word, but only if the root begins with Е, Ё, Ю or Я.
The Letter Ы
This vowel sound should be pronounced like something between “i” and “u.” For the right pronunciation, try to say “u” with your lips open as if you're saying “i.”
Russian's ы lies somewhere between the [i] sound in the English word "hockey" and the [u] sound from "boom". If you watch your lip position and practice going back and forth between these two sounds you should be able to find the ы sound.
а о у э ы - indicate that the preceding consonant is hard. я ё ю е и and ь - indicate that the preceding consonant is soft.