Russian pronunciation is shaped heavily by word stress — and unlike Latvian's fixed first-syllable rule, Russian stress is genuinely unpredictable and must be learned per word.
Standard Russian text doesn't mark which syllable carries the stress, so learners typically memorize stress placement alongside each new word, the same way English speakers just "know" where stress falls without a written mark.
Unstressed vowels in Russian are pronounced differently — and often less distinctly — than stressed ones. The most cited example is akanye: an unstressed "o" is typically pronounced closer to "a." This means Russian words often sound noticeably different from how their spelling alone might suggest.
Nearly every Russian consonant has a "hard" and a "soft" (palatalized) version, distinguished by the following vowel or the soft sign (ь). This isn't a subtle accent detail — it's a core, meaning-distinguishing feature of Russian pronunciation.
No — unlike Latvian's fixed first-syllable stress, Russian stress placement is unpredictable and generally must be learned per word, since it isn't marked in standard writing.
The tendency for an unstressed "o" to be pronounced closer to "a" — one of the clearest examples of how unstressed vowels in Russian sound different from their spelling.
It refers to "soft" versions of consonants, pronounced with the tongue positioned closer to the roof of the mouth than their "hard" counterparts — a real, meaning-distinguishing feature, not a minor accent detail.
That's the plan, matching the audio-based approach already used in Tarc's Arabic and Latvian courses.
See also: Russian Alphabet · Russian Grammar · Learn Russian