In Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, the term spelling rule is used to describe a number of rules relating to the spelling of words in the language that would appear in most cases to deviate from a strictly phonetic transcription.

All the spelling rules found in the Russian language dictate that certain consonants cannot be followed either under any circumstance or in an unstressed syllable

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

by certain vowels. In most cases where spelling rules exist, they do not actually affect the pronunciation. this is a result of the fact that five of the eight Russian consonants for which spelling rules of one sort or another apply can only be either "hard" or "soft" and cannot be both. Only with the three velar consonant

Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....

s, which like most Russian consonants have both a hard and a soft form, does the spelling rule actually reflect phonetically based pronunciation.

Spelling rules are of major importance in the study of Russian morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

. They have a very considerable effect on the declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

 of nouns and adjectives and the conjugation

Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...

 of verbs because many of the endings produce consonant-vowel combinations that the spelling rules strictly forbid. In some cases where stress dictates whether or not a spelling rule is to be applied, "mixed declensions" can result. Russian grammar goes so far as to dictate that the spelling rules must take precedence over any other rule.

Basic Russian Spelling Rules

• Spelling Rule #1
  • After the velar consonants г, к, and х:
  • and the sibilant consonants ж, ч, ш, щ:
    • one must never write the "hard" vowel ы, but must always replace it with its "soft" equivalent и, even though after ж and ш, и is pronounced as if it were written ы.

• Spelling Rule #2
  • After the velar cons г, к, and х:
  • the sibilant consonants ж, ч, ш, щ
  • and the hard consonant ц:
    • one must never write the "soft" vowel ю, but must always replace it with its "hard" equivalent у, even though after ч and щ, у is pronounced as if it were written ю.
    • one must never write the "soft" vowel я, but must always replace it with its "hard" equivalent а, even though after ч and щ, а is pronounced as if it were written я.

• Spelling Rule #3
  • After the sibilant consonants ж, ч, ш, щ and the hard consonant ц:
    • one must never write the letter о unless the syllable in which the о is to be added in the suffix is stressed.
    • if the syllable in which the о is to be added in the suffix is unstressed, then one must always write е.

This spelling rule does not have a great deal of effect on actual Russian pronunciation, because when unstressed, the vowels о and е are weakened to a very weak sound like the schwa

Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...

.

Note that this rule relates to the fact that stressed о after ж, ц, ч, ш and щ is pronounced the same as the always-stressed letter ё after the same letters. In most words, ё is preferred over stressed о after ж, ц, ч, ш and щ. When stress changes, ё invariably loses its accent.

• Spelling Rule #4
  • If any of the vowels ь, й or я is at the end of a word, it is dropped in order to add another suffix. This is the case with many feminine
    Grammatical gender
    Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
    
    and masculine (those ending in й) nouns in Russian:
    • One must always replace the ь, й or я with и and never with ы, even though after ж, ш, and ц, и is pronounced as if it were written ы and other suffixes for nouns allow ы after the always-hard consonant ц.