- I have read in several places online that it would be wrong to use the terms "soft vowels" and "hard vowels", and instead it's more correct to call them vowels which indicate a preceding soft/hard consonant. Would you agree?
Those writers seems to say that actually both groups of the vowels are the same vowels, they simply indicate that the preceding consonant will be pronounced in either soft or hard way.
Well it sounds right to me with а, о, у, э
versus я, ё, ю, е
, but not with ы
in which the vowel itself sounds different than и
.
What is your opinion on this?
When pronouncing
я, ё, ю, е
in a word, it sounds like in the soft case there is a /y/ that comes after (or with) the consonant, (or before a "hard" vowel). But in the case ofи
- not really (I am not sure about if there is a /y/ in that case), and also I have seen that it's compared to "ee" in the English "sheep" which has no /y/ after /sh/. Why don't they transliterate it as "yee", if they say thatя
is pronounced as "ya"? What is the right pronunciation ofи
inничего
- nyichyevo or nichyevo (or neither)?In the "hard" vowels
а, о, у, э
it seems like that the vowel itself is sharp and distinct (like in Spanish), not "rounded". But not inы
. What is the reason for this "inconsistency"? I would expect a hard vowel to sound like "ee" in the English "sheep". But it does not. And on the contrary,и
which is more sharp and distinct is a "soft" vowel.
What is your opinion on this?