help?

[sparklethedarkx.livejournal.com]

So I'm kind of new to the language, and a few things have been nagging at my mind and making it more difficult to comprehend.  I understand most of the alphabet, except for two letters:

"the hard sign" ъ
and
"the soft sign" ь

I've tried to find their meanings on a few different websites, and I've asked my Russian friend, but her english isn't too good, so I could not really understand.  What do they really mean?

Comments

Re: Joking

[ekaterinak-rus.livejournal.com]

Btw, do you know how to pronounce "Yale University" as English native speaker? Russian says something like "ye", English says as "ya" like in "yahoo", is not it? I've interested to know the true :-)
According to your [subj'?kt]. How does "J'" sound? It seems to me that "j'" sounds like first sound in the word "genius". Anyway, I explained to Katee the way of reading (pronounsing) of Russian letters in Russian words. :-)

Re: Joking

[zauberer.livejournal.com]

In the transcription I used symbols according to International Phonetic Alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet), so [j] is definitely not like in “genius”.

Re: Joking

[ekaterinak-rus.livejournal.com]

да здравствует истина. :-)

Re: Joking

[monkeedreamer.livejournal.com]

I know this is older, but actually in "genius" it is very much a J sound. "Genius" has the same sound as a pair of "jeans," for instance.

Re: Joking

[zauberer.livejournal.com]

Yes, "genius" and "jeans" start with the same sounds, namely "dʒ"

Re: Joking

[monkeedreamer.livejournal.com]

I know your comment is old, but I wanted to reply if you were still curious. The Y in "Yale" is pronounced like in "yahoo," but the A is like in the word "fail." Actually "yale" and "fail" rhyme. So if you know how to pronounce that, or other similar words (mail, ailment, tail, etc), then you know how to pronounce Yale. =)

Re: Joking

[ekaterinak-rus.livejournal.com]

If I understood you correctly it sounds in Russian as "Ель" (Йель), doesn't it?
"Йель" and Фейл (fail) looks as a rhyme. "Яль" doesn't suit for this rhyme. :-)

Re: Joking

[monkeedreamer.livejournal.com]

Umm, it's similar, but not quite. I'm not as advanced with Russian so I was looking back at the beginning of my one book (it has been put aside for a bit since I am supposed to be trying to learn Dutch, since I just moved to Belgium this summer) to see about the different vowel sounds, since off the top of my head I couldn't think of one that works, and if the book is proper, Russian doesn't utilize that particular "A" sound. From my understanding, the letter "е" has more of a sound comparable to the English word "yell," than to "yale."

Ah, perhaps all my rambling would be better set aside in favor of providing this: Hear it yourself (http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?bixyal01=Yale), that should work to provide you with the Merriam-Webster's online dictionary pronunciation of the word. =)

Re: Joking

[ekaterinak-rus.livejournal.com]

Thanks monkeedreamer. I've just listened to the record. It sounds very close to Russian pronunciation of “Йель”. Russians and English native speakers are almost agree with it. It is not like “Яль” at all. Thank you.