Pronouncing the letter "е"

Question

I'm studying Russian through the Foreign Service Instutute course available here.

I'm confused about the pronunciation of the letter e. In lesson 1, it says the following about the pronunciation of the letter e:

1. In Russian the vowels e and я are given full pronunciation only when they are stressed.

Then

2. When unstressed these vowels are pronounced as a short i.

So what I understood was: "Pronounce e as "ye" when they are stressed, otherwise pronounce them as an "i".

But this can't be right, as then I found words in the prepositional case where I hear the unstressed e being pronounced as "ye". Examples below:

живёте
Москве

I looked up a previous question about the pronunciation of e and it seemed to suggest that what's happening is that the previous consonant is palatalized and the e is still pronounced as Э.

So am I hearing the e as "ye" even though it's being pronounced as Э with a palatalized consonant? Or is there some rule that I am missing?

Answer 1

There're two aspects to their pronunciation: 1) reduction 2) "threshold"

These aspects are complementary and not mutually exclusive, so must be considered in parallel.

1) When reduced due to being unstressed (save for Ё which is always stressed) the letters Я and Е don't sound like themselves but like И instead or something in between.

2) As a double phoneme that is with the addition of preceding [y] or [й] (the threshold) the letters Я, Ю, Е, Ё are pronounced at the very beginning of words - яблоко [йаблоко], ехать [йэхать], and after Ь and Ъ - семье [cимйэ], съел [сйэл].

^{In the cited rule 1 'full pronunciation' apparently stands for the letter's alphabetic pronunciation (aspect 1 above) with no regard for the threshold (aspect 2 above), which the rule author probably didn't take into account.}

In Москве since
1) [e] is stressed it is NOT reduced - масквЕ instead of масквИ
2) it's not placed at the beginning and neither follows Ь or Ъ, it doesn't have a threshold, thus масквИЭ instead of масквЙЭ. масквЕ = масквИЭ

In живёте since
1) [e] is unstressed it is reduced - живётИ instead of живётЕ
2) it's not placed at the beginning and neither follows Ь or Ъ, it doesn't have a threshold, thus живётИ instead of живётЙИ.

(pronunciation of Ё in живёте could be analyzed in a similar fashion, which i leave to yourself as an assignment)