Russian High Front and Central Vowels

The Russian high front and central vowels are often in complementary distribution. The high front unrounded vowel is very common among languages, but the high central unrounded vowel is not. Russian has the five full vowels of Spanish, and it also has unreduced vowels. The high central unrounded vowel is classified as a vowel phoneme by many, but there are linguists who claim it is an allophone of the high front unrounded vowel.

The Russian high front vowel occurs after soft consonants, and the high central occurs after hard consonants. The soft consonants are palatalized, and the hard ones are not. All Russian consonants can be classified into two groups, hard and soft.

Though the two vowels are often in complementary distribution, there are instances in which their distribution is contrastive. They can contrast in word-initial position. For this reason, many linguists consider the high central vowel a phoneme.

The high central vowel is relatively rare among languages. It always follows hard consonants. On the other hand, the high front vowel always follows soft consonants. The high central vowel is a vowel that distinguishes Russian from many other languages.