12
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11
votes
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"И" versus "Й" in Russian
Russian "и" is a vowel and sounds more like the 'ee' in "tweet", while "й" is a consonant and sounds more like the first sound of "young". Btw, you could try ...
- 136
11
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How prevalent is the sound /ʑ:/ in Russian?
When a native speaker speaks they never think of actual phonemes. Nobody is thinking like: "hey, I'm pronouncing "ɯ" in 10% of cases when it's actually spelled as "o". To answer your question - it's ...
- 37.9k
7
votes
Can Russians naturally pronounce "попал в бесперспективняк"?
I think it's a word which was specifically coined to be difficult to pronounce. There are many quasi-linguistic jokes about either complexity or uniqueness of the Russian language which feature silly ...
- 261
7
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How does one hear the stress in Russian words?
Pre-stress is a thing in Russian, and I remember struggling with the concept of stress as a child for that exact reason. Indeed, a lot of people would pronouce спасибо with the /а/ as the loudest, ...
- 19.3k
6
votes
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Are there any common words with the syllable "кы"?
After a couple of days of thinking over it all I have finally decided to put down the whole story of кы, гы, хы the way I understand it. My story will begin with what the answer by Quassnoi begins, ...
- 26k
5
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Can Russians naturally pronounce "попал в бесперспективняк"?
As for me, it's difficult to pronounce that phrase fast, but maybe it's because I've never even thought of saying such a silly word, and I can hardly imagine someone who'd use it. On the other hand, ...
- 26k
5
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Are there any common words with the syllable "кы"?
The difference between и and ы after consonants in Russian is not phonematic, and neither is the difference between palatalized and non-palatalized к, г, х.
You can probably find some degenerate ...
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5
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What are the Latin Transliterations of Hard Consonants Converted to Soft Consonants?
I understand that there are certain vowels that indicate whether a
consonant succeeding it would be hard or soft, for example the vowel
'e' would indicate that the consonant after it would soften ...
- 19.6k
5
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Why do some people pronounce "р" as uvular fricative?
such pronunciation of эр is a case of speech impediment
incorrect pronunciation of phonemes is a result of inadequate development of speech apparatus (anatomic or neurological) or uncured bad habits
...
- 19.6k
5
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Do Russians pronounce "Арбатская" and "Орбацкая" the same?
They can be pronounced identically or they can be not. Unstressed "o" is pronounced as "a", however "цк" and "тск" by many speakers are pronounced differently ...
- 37.9k
5
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The strange behavior of “обо” (=about), apparently valid only for two expressions? What is the historical reason?
In Proto-Slavic, this preposition was a merger of two earlier Proto-Indo-European words: one meaning "around" (> Latin ambi- > "ambiguous, ambivalent", > Greek amphi- > ...
- 52.2k
4
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Проверочное слово к слову «окрестность»
Помимо слова "окрест" можно проверить слово "окрестность" словами "крест", "перекресток", "крестильный".
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Укажите предложение где менее трёх мягких согласных
#6, there's only one. A trick question to test whether you know that -ться is pronounced [цца].
- 19.3k
4
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Vowel reduction of pretonic [о]
1. The prestressed o is also reduced at least in quite a few foreign words or their grammatical derivatives, e.g. баобаб [bɐɐˈbap], теология [tʲɪɐˈɫoɡʲɪɪ̯ə], биотопливо [ˌbʲiɐˈtoplʲɪvə], реостат [...
- 19.6k
4
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Why is the Russian informal phone greeting "алё" equivalent to the Turkish one?
Your assumption is plain wrong, we don't use Turkish informal phone greeting, алё is just a corrupted version of German "Hallo" - if you'll listen how some Germans pronounce it you'll find that the ...
- 37.9k
4
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What exactly is дольник?
After all Russian does not distinguish between long and short vowels...!
You confuse commonly spoken language and poetic/song language. Formally, дольник is a kind of accentual verse (тонический стих ...
- 15.3k
4
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Can you still pronounce “щ” as “ш + ч”?
My guess is that your ability to be understood wouldn't be greatly affected if you pronounced щ as [шч]. In fact, this pronunciation is a variant of the norm in words like счастье and счёт. Sometimes ...
- 16.1k
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What exactly is дольник?
These are stressed and unstressed syllables. Also you can think about them as of weak and stong beats in music. It is "слабая и сильная доли" for Russian. Доля - дольник.
So ДОЛЬНИК is a prosodic foot,...
- 492
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Can Russians naturally pronounce "попал в бесперспективняк"?
If they use this word in a conversation then I assume they used it many times and won't have trouble with it.
It's slang so not all native speakers will use it.
I would use something more precise ...
- 51
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What is the phonetical difference between phrases like "зачем пришел" and "за чем пришел"?
There's no phonetical difference, those phrases are pronounced exactly the same way. Whether one should write "не" together or separately, for instance, is quite often a source for confusion of ...
- 37.9k
3
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Why is the Russian informal phone greeting "алё" equivalent to the Turkish one?
All of such 'phone greetings' are adaptations of the German or English Hallo/Hello/Hullo to the local phonetics. Typically it comes from where the technology was adopted. I can't trace its exact ...
- 3,098
3
votes
Are there any common words with the syllable "кы"?
You will also hardly find гы, хы syllables. The common quality of these phonemes is that к, г, х are заднеязычные согласные and they followed the same patterns of phonological changes as they (the ...
- 3,012
3
votes
Accepted
When does "e" change to "ё" in plurals?
Actually, as Zaliznyak (1967) shows, it is, synchronically, ё>е in the singular not e>ё in the plural. Words like "десна'" are actually "дёсна'" (' for stress), but ...
- 1,003
2
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When does "e" change to "ё" in plurals?
жена - жёны
звезда - звёзды
some people say that the difference stems from the form of singular with or without the obsolete letter "ѣ - ять", which denoted the vowel "e", so i guess unless one ...
- 19.6k
2
votes
Why do some people pronounce "р" as uvular fricative?
That is speech defect. "Р" is a hard sound. When I was a child I had problems pronouncing it. It sounded like "ЭЛ" :)
I would say that guy in the video "картавит". Infinitive "картавить".
"Ротацизм" ...
- 61
2
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How do I split words into syllables?
For future reference, this is how syllables are split in Russian according to a good English language source — Terence Wade's A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, pp. 18-19:
Division into syllables
(1) ...
- 3,497
2
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Accepted
How to pronounce the unstressed е in прише́дшие?
Your expectation is justified, in speech прише́дшие is indeed pronounced like [priʃjedʃii], the final [е] gets reduced, пришеччыи
The transcription [priʃjedʃije] is also wrong about pronunсiation of [...
- 19.6k
2
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What is the phonetical difference between phrases like "зачем пришел" and "за чем пришел"?
#1.
"Зачем пришел?" ("Why did you come?")
"За чем пришел?" ("What thing did you come to take?")
Both sound the same, but if Russian ear hears this phrase with ...
- 511
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What is the phonetical difference between phrases like "зачем пришел" and "за чем пришел"?
Only the second example can show phonetic difference which reveals itself in interrogative tone rising on one or another word. In Выходите гулять? (in the context 'Is it for a walk that you are going ...
- 11.9k
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