Russian letters are not always what they pretend to be! In this audio, each pair of words features a voiced consonant: Б, В, Г, Д, Ж, and З. However, in the second word of each pair, you will actually hear П, Ф, К, Т, Ш, and С respectively! This is because consonants in Russian lose their "voiced" component whenever they occur at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant. Why, you ask? It's simply easier to pronounce П than Б, and Russian pronunciation is all about reducing effort. In fact, once you get the hang of it, you might notice that you barely need to open your mouth when speaking Russian!
