Pronunciation with the endings ие and ия

Question

Example: эпидемия If you listen to everything on forvo.com and the voice they left on wiki they all sound like эпидемя like the й is not even there, is there a reduction rule for this? Even in the ipa it clearly shows there is a й included in the word, i have been coming accross a lot of words with the endings ие and ия that do this.

https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/эпидемия

Example : сообщение In this case they do not pronounce the и in the word as if it is сообщене

Answer 1

You may be confusing Й with И, because explicitly only the latter features in this word.

I've listened to the clips on Forvo and Wiki and only in one on Forvo the ending was 'swallowed'. The rest display pretty standard pronunciation, where И is shorter due to being unstressed but not entirely absent.

There's no rule for reduction of И in the -ия ending of foreign words.

However Russian native words ending with -ие exist in two variations, that is with the endings -ие and -ье. In writing the latter form is considered poetic but it also is easier to pronounce because of brevity and so suitable for fluent speech.

Answer 2

It varies and depends mostly on word part splitting.

In "сообщ-ени-е" the ending is -е, not -ие. And you may reduce the suffix "ени" to "ень" in pronunciation without losing sense. (All word parts are present and distinguishable.)

But in "эпидем-ия" (loanword) - there is no suffix and the ending is "ия". It means no reduction is possible without losing sense.