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I am very curious about the Russian word “Toska.” The word that is difficult to translate in English and means loosely: melancholy, longing, boredom, spiritual anguish. How is this word written and accented in Russian using Russian letters? What does it look like? Also, how do you pronounce it? Thanks.

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  • Тоска is pronounced as "таска" with the stress on last syllable.
    – Artemix
    Aug 8, 2014 at 17:40
  • Thank you so much... just a quick follow-up.. In English you would not call it "toska?" with an S? What would it look like in Russian using cyrillic? Thanks again.
    – Julia
    Aug 8, 2014 at 18:11
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    I don't understand your question. "Toska" in cyrillic letters is "тоска".
    – Artemix
    Aug 8, 2014 at 19:14
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    Google Translate reads aloud [tuskaah] similar to how "тоска" is pronounced in Russian: translate.google.com/#en/ru/tuskaah Just click on "speaker" icon at the lower right corner of the left text box.
    – Artemix
    Aug 8, 2014 at 19:26
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    Have you heard about Forvo? Answers questions like these really quickly. forvo.com/word/%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0/#ru
    – Shady_arc
    Aug 11, 2014 at 12:37

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Тоска - [tʌˈska]

стеснение духа, томление души, мучительная грусть; душевная тревога, беспокойство, боязнь, скука, горе, печаль, нойка сердца, скорбь.

further reading a definition from the dictionary by Dal you can find here

and good web formatted description and further meanings you can find here

  1. сильное душевное томление, душевная тревога в соединении с грустью и скукой, тягостное уныние

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enter image description here

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You can hear the exact pronunciation here for example:

http://slovari.yandex.ru/тоска/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqJKMv09mww&t=25m30s

Опять тоска, опять любовь!

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How is this word written and accented in Russian using Russian letters?

Тоска.

It accented (big character means accent):
taskA.
Like "task"+"A". Where A=[a]

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  • It seems like using latin letters to show the pronunciation is not a best idea. Task, for instance, sounds like "тэск". This is misguiding.
    – Artemix
    Sep 20, 2014 at 11:25
  • May be you are right. Wiktionary gives two pronunciatons -- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /tɑːsk/ ; (US) IPA(key): /tæsk/ . So Rus. word has pronunc. [tɐsˈka] (from Wiktionary) or simply [tasˈka].
    – Andrey
    Sep 20, 2014 at 16:33