Help:IPA/Belarusian

This help page is a how-to guide.

It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Belarusian language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles.

See Belarusian phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Belarusian.

Consonants
IPA	Cyrillic	IPA	Cyrillic^[1]	English approximation
b	б	bʲ	б	boot; beautiful
d	д			do
d͡z	дз	d͡zʲ	дз	birds, adze
d͡ʐ	дж			jug
f	ф	fʲ	ф	fool; few
ɣ	г	ɣʲ	г	roughly like go but without completely blocking the air flow
k	к	kʲ	к	cooter; cute
l	л^[2]	lʲ	л	loot; lute (for some dialects)
m	м	mʲ	м	moot; mute
n	н	nʲ	н	noon; canyon (for some dialects)
p	п	pʲ	п	paw; pew
r	р			trilled r, like in Spanish
s	с	sʲ	с	soup; super (for some dialects)
ʂ	ш			shore
t	т			tool
t͡s	ц	t͡sʲ	ц	cats; quartz
t͡ʂ	ч			child
v	в^[2]	vʲ	в	voodoo; view
x	х	xʲ	х	bach; huge (for some dialects)
z	з	zʲ	з	zoo; resume (for some dialects)
ʐ	ж			rouge

Marginal consonants
IPA	Cyrillic	IPA	Cyrillic	English approximation
ɡ	г, ґ	ɡʲ	г, ґ	goo; argue

Vowels
IPA	Cyrillic	English equivalent
a	а, я ^[3]	father
ɛ	э, е ^[3]	met
i	і ^[4]	meat
ɨ	ы ^[4]	roses
ɔ	о, ё ^[3]	born
u	у, ю	choose

Semivowels
IPA	Cyrillic	English equivalent
j	й^[5]	yes, boy
w	ў^[2]	water

Other symbols
IPA	Explanation
ˈ	Stress (placed before the stressed syllable)
ː	Gemination^[6] (doubled consonant)

Notes

^ Belarusian has a contrast between palatalized ("soft") and unpalatalized ("hard") consonants. Palatalized consonants, denoted by a superscript j, ⟨ʲ⟩,are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. /j/ is also soft, but /d, t, d͡ʐ, t͡ʂ, r, ʂ, ʐ/ are always hard.
^ ^a ^b ^c /v/ and /l/ merge into /w/ ⟨ў⟩ in the syllable coda.
^ ^a ^b ^c Unstressed /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are reduced to [a]. Unlike Russian, this is reflected in writing.
^ ^a ^b [i] and [ɨ] are in complementary distribution: [i] occurs at the beginning of words and after soft consonants; [ɨ] occurs after hard consonants.
^ The "soft" vowel letters ⟨я, е, і, ё, ю⟩ represent a /j/ and a vowel when they are initial or after other vowels.
^ Nine Belarusian consonants can be contrastively geminated: /d͡zʲː, lʲː, nʲː, sʲː, ʂː, t͡sʲː, t͡ʂː, zʲː, ʐː/.

[1] Belarusian has a contrast between palatalized ("soft") and unpalatalized ("hard") consonants. Palatalized consonants, denoted by a superscript j, ⟨ʲ⟩,are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. /j/ is also soft, but /d, t, d͡ʐ, t͡ʂ, r, ʂ, ʐ/ are always hard.

[w-2] /v/ and /l/ merge into /w/ ⟨ў⟩ in the syllable coda.

[reduced-3] Unstressed /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are reduced to [a]. Unlike Russian, this is reflected in writing.

[i-4] [i] and [ɨ] are in complementary distribution: [i] occurs at the beginning of words and after soft consonants; [ɨ] occurs after hard consonants.

[5] The "soft" vowel letters ⟨я, е, і, ё, ю⟩ represent a /j/ and a vowel when they are initial or after other vowels.

[6] Nine Belarusian consonants can be contrastively geminated: /d͡zʲː, lʲː, nʲː, sʲː, ʂː, t͡sʲː, t͡ʂː, zʲː, ʐː/.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

v t e International Phonetic Alphabet keys
Adyghe Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Modern Standard Egyptian Hejazi Lebanese Tunisian Armenian Assamese Asturian Australian languages Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Berber Breton Bulgarian Burmese Catalan Standard Insular Chinese Mandarin Cantonese Hokkien Jin Wu Xiang Corsican Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Old English Emilian-Romagnol Esperanto Estonian Extremaduran Fijian Finnish Franco-Provençal French Galician Georgian German Standard Alemannic Colognian Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Haitian Creole Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Inuktitut Inupiaq Irish Isan Italian Central Japanese Kazakh Khmer Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Lakota Lao Latin Latvian Ligurian Lithuanian Lombard Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Manx Māori Marathi Marshallese Mauritian Creole Mayan Mongolian Mirandese Nahuatl Navajo Neapolitan Nepali Northern Thai Norwegian Occitan Odia Pashto Persian Piedmontese Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua Romanian Romansh Russian Sanskrit Sardinian Scottish Gaelic Serbo-Croatian Shan Sicilian Slovak Slovene Sorbian Spanish Swahili Swazi Swedish Sylheti Tagalog Tai Lue Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Venetian Vietnamese Walloon Welsh West Frisian Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zhuang Zulu
Comparisons	IPA conventions for English English dialects Wikipedia pronunciation respelling Other English pronunciation respellings
Introductory guides	Symbols For English speakers Manual of Style: Pronunciation