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Russian difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 25 of 40 10 April 2014 at 1:58am | IP Logged | |||||
The anecdotes on the trickiness of Russian vowel reduction are corroborated by this study which was brought up in this thread. Of relevance is the following:
Word stress is closely linked to vowel reduction. In Belorussian, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Ukrainian, vowel reduction also exists but it's not quite as a problematic for learners as in Russian because the contrast between stressed and unstressed is weaker and in the case of Belorussian, at least some of the reduction is shown in spelling thus easing the burden on the user to recall stress placement and associated reduction. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4032 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 26 of 40 10 April 2014 at 3:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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That paper seemed to generalize the equivalents in English of things like intonation and vowel reduction, it says
English reduces all unstressed vowel to only always a schwa, while Russian seems to only be the one with variations, and actually says English cannot use different intonations for single words unlike Russian! That seems like a joke. This has to be a joke! This forum treats the vowel reduction a too uniquely, there a no posts on the vowel reduction of other languages being difficult, but there will always be a mention of Russian phonology and morphology crud, wow, if millions spoke Russian in the USSR but people now need to go into the amount of detail that happens in this forum, we must suck! I have never seen any other language given the same amount of attention and fawning that this one has. Edited by Stolan on 10 April 2014 at 3:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 27 of 40 10 April 2014 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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A couple of things came to mind while reading your reply:
1) Have you studied Russian? (not that I have, but I don't give short shrift to foreigners (especially adult ones) who struggle with Russian phonology (not just vowel reduction but palatalization)) 2) As to people speaking Russian in the former USSR as a second language, it'd be enlightening to get some commentary from native Russians on how those speakers of Russian fare. I remember that Марк observed how people from the Caucasus who are fluent in Russian do speak it differently although I don't remember how their speech differed from Standard Russian. Vowel reduction in English is difficult too but it tends to come out or be presented in how people (even native speakers) complain how much spelling and current pronunciation differ (cf. writing "should have" as "should of" which betrays vowel reduction at work combined with a seeming lack of understanding of the functions of the preposition "of" and the auxiliary verb "have") 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4032 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 28 of 40 10 April 2014 at 4:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, I think I know what you mean. (Not sarcastic)
The paper is a going a bit far in saying that English cannot give different intonations to single words then providing classic examples of how one would say the word for "Water" in Russian in very familiar ways, and the vowel reduction claim was inaccurate. But being wrong in one area doesn't discredit everything, Russian of course has its unique phonemic properties which make a native accent and pronunciation difficult (like all languages) Edited by Stolan on 10 April 2014 at 4:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 29 of 40 10 April 2014 at 11:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Stolan: vowel reduction is what makes Russian easier, not more difficult. You can pronounce words without vowel reduction and still be understood.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 30 of 40 10 April 2014 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
The Portuguese one is mostly mentioned by those who focus on the European variety, and there aren't many of us here. And yeah, as Chung said, we often refer to the related phenomena instead. The thing about the Russian spelling is that it would be very clear and logical if "only" it wasn't for the vowel reduction and consonant devoicing. In English this is just one part of the problem, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 31 of 40 10 April 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's nothing unclear or illogical about Russian vowel reduction and devoicing. It occurs, when it occurs, in easily specified environments. Edited by ScottScheule on 10 April 2014 at 5:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 32 of 40 10 April 2014 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm glad you think so. But clear and logical spelling should go both ways. You can't really predict the spelling based on what you hear, without relying on etymology etc.
I think an important difference from English is that indicating the stress can help a great deal. In English it's pretty much useless. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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