Soft sign (‘Ь’) & hard sign (‘Ъ’): How to use them?
The Russian alphabet has two complicated letters that are not actually spoken. However, they are very important as indicators of how a word should be read.
Мягкий знак (‘soft sign’) – ь
Твердый знак (‘hard sign’) – ъ
Foreigners usually struggle a lot while learning how to use these letters.
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that both have functions of separating letters, usually vowels from consonants.
"Both 'ъ' and 'ь' show us that the following letters 'е, ё, ю, я, и' should be read with ‘j’ in the beginning," as Gramota.ru writes about the Russian language.
The ‘ъ’ (‘hard sign’) is used after the prefixes that end up on consonants, before 'е, ё, ю, я'. Here's an example: 'подъехать', 'объявление'.
In other cases, the ‘ь’ (‘soft sign’) is used in front of 'е, ё, ю, я, и'. As in the words: 'платье', 'вьюга', 'воробьи'.
Compare the difference. If you read the word ‘лягушка’ (‘lyagushka’; ‘frog’), you won't pronounce ‘я’ as ‘ja’. You will just make the letter 'l' sound softer – ‘l'agushka’. But, if you read, for example, the word ‘платья’, you need to distinctly say 'platja'.
As all rules, this one, of course, also has exclusions.
For example, if you see some words that came into Russian from other languages. Then, ‘ь’ (‘soft sign’) can be met before the letter ‘о’ – ‘бульон’, ‘компаньон’, ‘лосьон’, ‘шампиньон’, ‘сеньор’, etc. as Gramota.ru states.
The soft sign, however, has several other functions… Stay tuned and we’ll help you learn this, too!
READ MORE: 10 reasons to use Gramota.ru while learning Russian
