Short I or Yot/Jot (Й й; italics: Й й) (sometimes called i-kratkoye, Russian: и-краткое) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve. Cyrillic letter Short I.
The Russian letter "й" is called "и краткое" (it is pronounced [i kratkaye]). We represent its sound as [j], that is, a shorter sound than "и" similar to the sound of "y" in "oyster" or "boy".
The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics Ь, ь), also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel.
Russian ⟨ы⟩ is used to transliterate Polish ⟨y⟩ into Cyrillic: Maryla (Марыля). However, Latin ⟨y⟩ may be used for other purposes as well (such as for ⟨й⟩, or as part of digraphs, e.g. ⟨я⟩). In most Turkic languages that use Cyrillic, ⟨ы⟩ represents the close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/, like in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, etc.
The letter "ъ" is called in Russian твёрдый знак (tvyor-dyj znak), which means "hard sign".
Today, both the Hard sign (Ъ) and the Soft sign (Ь) are used to separate a consonant and a vowel (mostly Я, Ё, Е, Ю), only the Hard sign (Ъ) separates a Hard consonant and a vowel, and the Soft sign (Ь) separates a Soft consonant and a vowel. In some other languages, a similar function is given to an apostrophe.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɨ⟩, namely the lower-case letter i with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as barred i. Occasionally, this vowel is transcribed ⟨ï⟩ (centralized ⟨i⟩) or ⟨ɯ̈⟩ (centralized ⟨ɯ⟩).
Pay attention to the pronunciation of the vowels ы and и. Note that ы sounds like [ i ] in ill, whereas И и sounds like [ee] in meet. The letter ы never occurs as the first letter in the word, therefore it is never capitalized.
Letters: Ь
This letter is called “soft sign” (м'який знак in Ukrainian). As the name of the letter suggests, its purpose is to soften the sound of the previous letter.
ь and ъ are used to make a letter such as 'л' softer, or separate two colliding letters. The two serve the same purpose and will be often mixed up. Ы is not used to separate anything or mak something softer. In fact, you will hear it makes the sound harder.
Yu or Ju (Ю ю; italics: Ю ю) is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in East Slavic and Bulgarian alphabets.
Shcha (Щ щ; italics: Щ щ), Shta or Sha with descender is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Russian, it represents the long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕː/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in Welsh-sheep.
Zhe or Že (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced retroflex sibilant /ʐ/ (listen). It is also often used with D (Д) to approximate the sound in English of the Latin letter J with a ДЖ combination.
The sound of the letter Ш in a word corresponds to the English “Sh”. воздушный (Voz-dush-nyi) — airy (adj.) Usually, it is a straightforward “sh” sound. The letter Щ does not have a similar English equivalent as far as the sound it makes.
а о у э ы - indicate that the preceding consonant is hard. я ё ю е и and ь - indicate that the preceding consonant is soft.
Russian's ы lies somewhere between the [i] sound in the English word "hockey" and the [u] sound from "boom". If you watch your lip position and practice going back and forth between these two sounds you should be able to find the ы sound.
The Letter Ы
This vowel sound should be pronounced like something between “i” and “u.” For the right pronunciation, try to say “u” with your lips open as if you're saying “i.”