Hashimi wrote:I have a question for you: What is the difference between ʐ and ʑ? I've always thought that ʑ is the common sound in Russian, and I was surprised when I read that it's obsolete and that what I usually hear is a retroflex. Is this true?
Yes, the retroflex /ʐ/ is the default sound represented by the letter ж. It's a "hard" consonant that, as far as standard Russian phonology is concerned, doesn't have a "soft" equivalent. Nevertheless, the "soft" [ʑ(ː)] does appear in some people's dialects/idiolects in forms like дождя [dɐˈʑːa] and дрожжи [ˈdroʑːɪ] (as opposed to [dɐʐˈdʲa] and [ˈdroʐːɨ]); some people also pronounce the ж in certain loanwords as [ʑ], like жюри [ʑʉˈrʲi] (as opposed to [ʐʊˈrʲi]). The soft ж in Slavic words was traditionally a marker of a Moscow accent as opposed to a Saint Petersburg one, and back when the Russian alphabet was being reformed in the early 20th century there was apparently talk of introducing the letter җ to represent it, but the sound was ultimately deemed too marginal to require a letter. Nowadays even in Moscow you don't really hear people say [dɐˈʑːa] all that much, at least in my experience. I personally never use [ʑː] in Slavic words, but I may sometimes use the pronunciation [ʑʉˈrʲi] for жюри, though I can't be sure how consistently.