Russian uses phonetic transcription for the Cyrillization of its many loanwords from French. Some use is made of Cyrillic's iotation features to represent French's front rounded vowels and etymologically-softened consonants.

In the table below, the symbol ⟨ʲ⟩ represents either a "softened" consonant or the approximant /j/. When applicable, a softened consonant can be indicated in transcription either by a following iotated vowel or by ⟨ь⟩.

Doubled French consonants remain doubled in their Russian transcription: Rousseau – Руссо. Silent consonants (common in French) are generally not transcribed, except where they exist in the surface form due to liaison.

Finally, the softened consonants modify the following vowels:

Neither ⟨й⟩ nor ⟨ь⟩ are doubled.