Pronunciation of "жёлтый"

Question

I thought that ё was always stressed, but in the word жёлтый its pronounced ZHOL-tiy, if this is right then when is ё unstressed? Is it because of palatalization? Thank you in advance 😇

Answer 1

Жёлтый is pronounced as [жолтый], so ё here stands for o. The reason why it is the case is actually that ё wherever right after consonant just indicates that that particular consonant is palatalized. In some cases this give an illusion that ё is a sound sort of similar to the german ö - this happens for instance in тёмный. However, it's not the case.

But ж in modern Russian is never softened, so words like жёлтый, жёлудь, жёваный, жёсткий, жёны are pronounced as жо- - and there's no even slightest trace of ö-illusion one might get with soft consonants. By the way, same story with ш, so шёпот is actually pronounced шопот.

And actually in this case ё is stressed - almost like always except some foreign words like сёрфинги́сты and some very exotic exceptions in compound words like четырёхчастный, трёхчастный etc.