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What is the difference in pronunciation between "и" and "й"?

They sound very similar and I can't really hear a difference.

Elements In Space
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Morella Almånd
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    Can you provide a couple of words where you cannot hear the difference between "и" and "й"? – Abakan Jan 21 '16 at 14:30
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    й is a consonant, и is a vowel. How one can confuse them? – Anixx Jan 22 '16 at 06:47
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    Interesting fact: do you know that Ь was "Е краткое" and Ъ was "О краткое" (or Ы, or something between О and Ы) once in old Russian? – yaapelsinko Jan 28 '16 at 23:02
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    @AlanEvangelista I repeat, й is not a vowel, it is a consonant like "y" in "yes". – Anixx May 05 '20 at 17:53
  • @Anixx because и and й are pronounced, respectively, [i] and [j], and both the IPA vowel [i] (pronounced in "ee" in the words "see", "bee" and "fee" in English) and the IPA semivowel [j] (pronounced in "y" in ""young") sound similar. The ear doesn't know if these Russian letters are classified as vowels, semivowels or consonants, just that they sound alike. – Alan Evangelista May 05 '20 at 17:59
  • @AlanEvangelista, no, й is never read as ee in see. Й is a consonant (fricative, voiced, soft) – Anixx May 05 '20 at 18:02

5 Answers5

12

Oй rhymes with "joy" and ои rhymes with "Joey".

Навозник
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    Cute way of explaining the difference! Not very accurate though. – InitK Jan 21 '16 at 14:41
  • I agree with @InitK. "joy" is pronounced /dʒɔɪ/ and the Russian letter й is pronounced /j/ , so this is a bad example. – Alan Evangelista Jun 22 '21 at 08:16
  • @AlanEvangelista Actually, joy is pronounced [dʒɔj]. The notation [ɔɪ] and [oʊ], to give just two examples, is outdated and unfounded. Modern phoneticians (of which I'm one) know better. Here's an interesting video on the subject: https://youtu.be/gtnlGH055TA?si=pJ-pU2q2AO4iYMSw – CocoPop Sep 05 '23 at 13:17
11

Russian "и" is a vowel and sounds more like the 'ee' in "tweet", while "й" is a consonant and sounds more like the first sound of "young". Btw, you could try listening to words on http://www.lingvo-online.ru/ to hear the difference.

CocoPop
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QuasiRus
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Russians transliterate boy as бой. The word бои is a plural form of бой and is pronounced distinctly differently — something like buyee.

So и is a vowel and sounds longer than the consonant й. Your confusion stems from the feature of Russian pronunciation where Russian sticks an invisible й in front of many vowels, which makes them sound a little longer. For instance, when Russians say ем (I'm eating), they actually say something like yem. So in the first example бои has that invisible й in front of и.

CocoPop
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Aksakal almost surely binary
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The Russian "и" sounds like the vowel [i] in the International Alphabetical Alphabet (IPA) and like the letters 'ee' in the English words "bee", "see" and "tweet".

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".

The difference between both is that the middle part of the tongue is raised to the hard palate only in [j]. I suggest watching this video: https://youtu.be/XhqGU1WxOfc .

Alan Evangelista
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и = "i" й = more like "y"

You can hear the difference by listening to the "i" and "y" sounds in two different words: "boy" and "blink", in first case it will be "boy" = "бой" while in the second "blink" = "блинк"

CocoPop
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Ruslan
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  • и is [ˈaɪ] and й is [ˈwaɪ]? I don't think so. – Abakan Jan 21 '16 at 14:18
  • Did you read my comment to it's very end? – Ruslan Jan 21 '16 at 15:05
  • Yes, I did read your ANSWER to its very end. But it doesn't make your first statement correct. Transliteration rules you used are not applicable in this case. – Abakan Jan 21 '16 at 15:17
  • Okay, but if we'll be honest then we can only compare mentioned by you [ˈwaɪ] to "и краткая" right? – Ruslan Jan 21 '16 at 15:25
  • й is pronounced as /j/ in Russian, but the letter "y" is not always pronounced as /j/ in English. Using your example, "boy" is pronounced /bɔɪ/ (i.e., the "i" is pronounced as a /ɪ/ instead of a /j/) (ref: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/boy). The words "yes" or "you" would be better examples. – Alan Evangelista Jun 22 '21 at 08:12