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Phonology Russian / Arabic / Hindi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4953 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 23 09 February 2014 at 5:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello everyone,
So, which one of these three languages do you think has the hardest phonology. I have only skimped through Wikipedia articles on the phonology of the three, so I don't know much beyond the fact that each has something unique from my perspective (something the languages I can speak do not have): Arabic: lots of uvular and pharyngeals (the latter scare me, they just seem so hard to learn as an adult) Hindi: murmured consonants (I have no idea about them, I have never heard them. I know how to make unvoiced, voiced, and aspirated but not this category) Russian: the hard-soft pairs (again, no idea what this entails, but it seems very interesting) In the medium-future, 3-5 years from now after I have some acceptable fluency in Chinese I plan to learn at least one of these languages, mostly for pleasure (though knowing myself, it will morph into high-hell duty eventually). This is my little indulgence into wanderlust. Which of these three you think has the most difficult sounds, both in your own opinion, and judging by my languages which one you think would be hardest for ME? Edited by outcast on 09 February 2014 at 6:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6440 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 23 09 February 2014 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've been toying around with Arabic script and Devanagari for a while, and for me Arabic
phonology is way crazier than Hindi. Pharyngeals and emphatic consonants are driving me crazy. I never had trouble with English, German and Mandarin phonology, but with Arabic phonology we are talking about a different dimension... :/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 3 of 23 09 February 2014 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Arabic has several dialects, which have different phonology. I suspect that many native
Arabic speakers cannot pronounce certain MSA sounds. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5324 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 23 09 February 2014 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You suspect wrong. Even though there are many dialects, IMHO, educated Arabic speakers who were taught MSA at school usually can pronounce all Arabic phonemes. (There might be some minor regional variations, though.) Also since Classical Arabic pronunciation has been conserved in the language of the Qur'an and most students have to learn at least some verses from the Qur'an from an early age on and hear it spoken in the mosque all the time, they're definitely familiar with all Arabic phonemes. E.g., a dialect speaker might realize MSA ث [θ] as [s] or [t], but wouldn't have a problem pronouncing ث as [θ], if asked to do so. I don't know anything about Hindi pronunciation, but, IMHO, Russian pronunciation is slightly more difficult than French pronunciation for a speaker of a Germanic language. Russian does have a couple of unusual sounds (e.g. Щ [ɕɕ]) and many students seems to struggle a bit with palatalized consonants, but all in all Russian pronunciation is "manageable." It's also slightly more "forgiving" than Arabic. For example, if you cannot pronounce a rolling R [r] in Russian words and approximate it with a similar R sound, you'll most likely still be understood, if you pronounce all other Russian phonemes correctly. However, Arabic has two R sounds ر [r] (rolling R) and غ [ɣ] (close to but not the same as a French R [ʁ]), and there are a couple of words that contain both sounds in the same word, for example, غريب ġarīb [ɣa'riːb]. (Arabic also has number of other phonemes that take some time to learn.) Edited by Doitsujin on 09 February 2014 at 12:52pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4848 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 5 of 23 09 February 2014 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Palatalized consonants in Russian are one thing, but I'd like to remind you that there is also vowel reduction. Vowels in unstressed syllables get reduced to murmured vowel sounds, similar to a schwa. While this wouldn't be much of a problem if you took an audio-only approach to the language, it gets difficult as soon as you are dealing with texts. You will often mispronounce words because of wrong vowel reduction.
This leads me to the next point, which is mobile stress. Simply speaking, Russian words can be stressed on any syllable and often they really are. While other languages like Polish have fixed stress on a certain syllable, this isn't the case in Russian. That means you have to know where the stress of a word is in order to reduce the vowels correctly. Often a change in stress is a change in meaning. Famous example: óкнa vs. окнá (the first is nominative and accusative plural, while the second is genitive singular). Yes, that's right: stress in a word can change when it's inflected. So, I'm in no position to compare Russian to Hindi or Arabic, but Russian phonology certainly isn't trivial and way more complex than French! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6065 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 23 09 February 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't know about Russian, but Arabic seems to me harder than Hindi. There are sounds in Arabic that took me years to master, whereas I have Devanagari more or less controlled after two months. More or less...
All of this does not hinder communication as much as it seems, though: my Sanskrit teacher tells me often that it's a language of context, and I guess the same applies to Arabic, now that I come to think of it. I agree with Doitsujin on the topic of Arabic pronounciation: yes, it's hard, and many speakers don't use all the correct sounds everyday, but educated ones know how to use them. Of course, knowing how many are educated is another thing. But I guess religion plays a positive, unifying role in that aspect. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4953 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 23 09 February 2014 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My only exposure to [ɣ] is with the Spanish allophone of [g]. But I think it is an approximant and not a full fricative, as in e.g. "mago" (magician). I don't seem to understand the difference between voiced [ɣ] and unvoiced [x], produced in the same velar area but with the voicing difference for the former. Another Arabic sound is [χ], this one is something I read on German pronunciation some time ago. This sound, according to the author, is realized by some speakers in words like "Nacht, Krach, Schlacht", whereas in -ech/och words /x/ is used (like in Spanish "mujer" or Mandarin 'h'). I can actually feel the difference between French or German uvular r and that [χ] sound, but don't know if in isolation I am doing this sound 100% right. Basically, I'm not good at recognizing when I am doing voiced vs unvoiced, if I am doing it at all. I can tell the difference with /b] and /p], [t] and [d], [k] and [g], but not [x] and [ɣ] (velar) / [χ] and [ʁ] (uvular).
But there must be a set of rules (no matter how complex or full of exceptions), that govern these changes, it can't be arbitrary. Somewhat like tone changes in syllables of Chinese languages. Edited by outcast on 09 February 2014 at 3:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 8 of 23 09 February 2014 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What's unusual in щ? It's not more unusual than ш. Щ is exactly the same as French ch in chi and chu, for example.
A bit?! Palatalized and non-palatalized consonants create a very big problem for any learners of Russian. Russian has a phonemic distinction between palatalization and adding a [j], which is extremely difficult to grasp for speakers of almost all languages of the world. Russian has a lot of consonant clusters, more than Hindi or Arabic. But the main difficulty of Russian is that its textbooks often write nonsense about its phonology and how phonemes are represented in the writing system.
You'll mostly still be understood if you mispronounce Arabic R too. There must be a lot of native Arabic speakers who cannot pronounce the alveolar trill either and they are somehow understood. A significant part of native Russian speakers pronounce г as [ɣ], so the example is irrelevant. Any pronunciation is manageable because native speakers manage to speak effortlessly. P.S. One more difficulty of Russian pronunciation (can't compare with Arabic or Hindi here): Russian general question intonation. It's often the case that learners of Russian can't distinguish between a general question and a statement and can't pronounce questions correctly. Edited by Марк on 09 February 2014 at 7:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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