According to the spelling of the word, I would think it would be pronounced
Seguhdnya - Сегодня
However, i've seen several lessons in Russian where it would be pronounced
SeVuhdnya - (but spelled Сегодня)
Is there a reason why it's pronounced like this? Would a Russian speaker consider this incorrect pronunciation?
For the purposes of completeness, and as no-one has explained why -его/-ого has the "v" pronunciation in the first place, it can be pointed out that the spelling reflects Church Slavonic norms - and the pronunciation in Church Slavonic is with "g". The standard pronunciation in Russian, with a "v", reflects the Northern Russian pronunciation, although there are parts of the south where /ɣ/ is or was the pronunciation (most comments on southern Russian are applicable to Ukrainian too, as there is a dialect continuum between Ukrainian and the Russian spoken in places like Rostov-on-Don). So the mismatch between the spelling and the pronunciation comes from the Church Slavonic influence on Russian. It was never pronounced with a "g" in Northern Russia.
The adverb cегодня is derived, like many other Russian adverbs, from a noun phrase, cего дня ("[on] this day"). Both words in this noun phrase are in the Genetive case, the first one having a typical pronominal declension endinhg -его, in which г is written, but в is pronounced:
сего - pronounced as [си'во],
его - pronounced as [йи'во]
синего - pronounced as ['синива]
(the same rule applies to the variant of this ending, -ого - большого - pronounced as [баль'шовa])
The pronunciation of the letter e as [и] in these words is due to the rule of the reduction of unstressed vowels. According to this rule, the letter e in the syllable that precedes the stressed syllable is pronounced as [и].
So, the IPA for cегодня is [sʲɪˈvodʲnʲə], practical Russian transcription is [сиˈводьня].
Also, you can listen to the recording of this word pronounced by a native speaker of Russian.
Pronunciation with [г]/[g] is incorrect.
The reason that this is pronounced "сиводня" is because дня, meaning day is part of the genitive case of on this (сиво) and the rule is:
The Letter Г in the masculine and neuter genitive singular ending is pronounced like the English V
This is the authoritative answer I was looking for :)
I don't think that Russian native speakers should be too hard on English speaking people trying to learn Russian :) If one is not a linguist giving IPA [sʲɪˈvodnʲə] would not help a bit. Here is an alternative pronunciation for English native speakers for "сегодня": "S'ehvohdn'a", where apostrophe indicates palatalization.
It's pronouncing like this: "Sevodnya" or (in Cyrillic) "Сиводня".
The pronunciation is [s'ivodn'i] with stressed o and apostrophee for palatalisation. There is [v] because it comes from сего дня, where -его is ending of pronoun which is always pronounced with [v] instead of [g].
I would say that Moscow version of today will sound likе "Sevodnya". Where "o" is somewhere between "o" and "а" in its sound. And "ya" means short soft "n" together with "ya" sound like in nyan cat. "Sego" sounding like Sega with "o" on the end is not used in actual spoken language for close to 100 years. Even in written language you will not see "sego" separately in last hundred of years.
It is NOT pronounced "seVuhdnya" - there are NO "u" and "y" sounds in this word.
The pronunciation is [с'эводн'а] or [с'иводн'а] - these pronunciations are correct and allophonic. Pronunciation with [г] is incorrect.
