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Phonology Russian / Arabic / Hindi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5324 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 9 of 23 10 February 2014 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
While щ is indeed often pronounced like ш, there are also words in which it's realized as two consonants in a row [ɕɕ], which many foreigners might find difficult to pronounce. If you don't believe me, ask any of your friends who doesn't speak Russian to pronounce, for example, Хрущёв (Khrushchev) [xruˈɕɕof]. I also cannot think offhand of another Western European language where one letter corresponds to a sequence of two identical consonants.
I certainly didn't want to downplay the complexity of Russian phonology in general and palatalization in particular. I just mentioned palatalization, because it's a well-known problem that many foreigners have.
Maybe, but only if there's only one rolling R in a word and only if the context is unambiguous.
I have yet to encounter a native Arabic speaker who cannot pronounce a rolling R. AFAIK, Arab children who cannot pronounce a rolling R are sent to speech therapists.
In that case [ɣ] is an allophone of [g] in Russian, however in Arabic [g] (which is only spoken in Egypt) and [ɣ] are phonemes. I.e. you replace this sound in a word you get a completely different meaning. It's the same case with [r] and [ɣ]. For example: بغى [baɣɑː] to seek, desire, covet برى [barɑː] to trim, shape, sharpen
Of course, native speakers speak their native languages effortlessly. That's not the point. What I meant by "manageable" is a phonemic inventory that doesn't use consonant types completely alien to Western European languages. Russian does contain a couple of difficult consonant clusters, but it doesn't have, for example, pharyngeal consonants. Edited by Doitsujin on 10 February 2014 at 12:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 10 of 23 10 February 2014 at 8:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Never (the only exception I can recall is помощник).
It's a long consonant, not two identical consonants. щ is lengthened only in certain positions and the lengthening is not phonemic. Хрущёв is usually pronounced with a short щ, so it's not a problem at all. Whether щ is long or short in Russian is a minor detail of pronunciation; I don't know why foreigners like to focus on that.
Russian children who cannot pronounce a rolling R are often sent to speech therapists too, yet there are plenty of people who cannot pronounce it.
год [ɣot] year рот [rot] mouth
Why consonant, not vowel types? Russian doesn't have any odd consonants, but it has many slight differences, which are hard to perceive and produce for foreigners. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5338 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 23 10 February 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I am not familiar with Hindi, but between Russian and Arabic, I would definitely say that Arabic is harder. That does not mean that Russian is easy, just that it is not as hard as Arabic. And actually French is not that easy to learn to pronounce well either if you speak a Germanic language. As a Norwegian, pronouncing German is a walk in the park, it is not even something we really think about. French is a whole different ball game. And given all the horrible French pronunciation I have heard, I would guess that we are not the only ones to struggle with it.
In Russian there are no sounds I cannot say at all - even though there are a couple I still struggle a little with with. In Arabic there were several that took me weeks to learn how to pronounce. I remember my teacher saying that I should not be miserable about it, that it was particularly difficult because I was a girl, that Arabic sounds were easier to learn for men. Yes. Cause that really helped. What was I supposed to do, take a sex change operation? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4711 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 23 11 February 2014 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
For the latter pairs it is much harder. However [χ] and [ʁ] aren't voiced/unvoiced - one is a fricative and the other an approximant. For me they sound very different, because one of them is g/ch to me and the other is r (in the Dutch dialect of my area). [x] and [ɣ] (velar) are historically the phonemes for ch and g in the Netherlands, but in the west they have hardened and merged to a uvular sound. The distinction between [x] and [ɣ] is hard for me to hear too and I come from a place where some people make this distinction and some don't (and very often voiceless/voiced merges in Dutch). As for the pronunciation directives of the different languages - all languages have their subtleties and I never find pronunciation straightforward for any language, whichever one it is. Russian palatalization vs iotation is tough, but there are not enough minimal pairs for me to bother with that difference more than ш/щ bothers me. (I find щ easier). As much as Mark likes to complain about palatalization in Russian, I could do the same for foreigners who cannot pronounce the diphthongs in Dutch correctly, or mix up h and g and ch (especially Slavic people who don't distinguish between h and ch and g, which are three different sounds in Dutch!!!!), or Anglophones who somehow seem to hear that coda -r in Dutch in some dialects becomes an English r, and thus mistakenly assume that all r's are like that (no, never). Or the subtleties of how "v" is pronounced in Dutch, and that it is not the same as "w", and that w is not English w but halfway between (and actually w historically is closer to Russian В). Once you get into any language you will find all of these little things, but they are not impossible to pronounce, however hard to master. The real trouble is that people do not pay enough attention to phonology (one thing in which I agree with Mark), and that suprasegmental pronunciation is entirely ignored in language teaching. My biggest problem in pronouncing is not with the individual phonemes usually, but how they roll together. When I pronounce Romanian, you can hear me stress-time it and go Faaată (mistakenly lengthening the a due to the ă ending which is a schwa and thus mispronouncing it). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5232 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 13 of 23 11 February 2014 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Some of you seem to be concentrating on spelling and its difficulty which is a different question from the difficulty of the phonology.
I know this isn't terribly helpful, but in my view the three languages mentioned are comparable in terms of their phonological difficulty for an English speaker. Harder than Spanish, French or German, not as hard as a tonal or click language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 23 11 February 2014 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
The problem is not minimal pairs. The problem is that they are not associated with each other in Russian minds. That's like [v] and [w] in English: there are few minimal pairs but if you pronounce "wery vell", you sound wrong to a native English speaker. If you pronounce soft and hard consonants correctly and replace consonants + yod with soft consonants, that's OK. BUT if you think that soft consonants are [Cj] and pronounce them in such a way (as many textbooks teach), you get a terrible accent. That's why I'm so angry at textbooks of Russian. So, saying пяный instead of пьяный is much better than saying пьят instead of пять.
textbooks and about statements like "You can pronounce Russian as it is spelt (this "as it is spelt" has nothing to do with the way Russians pronounce something "as it is spelt") and be understood" "If you aren't a perfectionist, you don't need to work at your prnonunciation, you will be understood anyway" and other stuff like that. For some reason it is Russian which deserves such an attitude. Hard and soft consonants is a thing which creates significant problems for speakers of all the languages, not just some languages.
You said ch and g merged in some Dutch dialects too. [x] and [γ] are completely different sounds for Russians and for speakers of other Slavic languages too. Several Slavic languages have voiced h which is opposed to [x]. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4711 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 15 of 23 11 February 2014 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
And somehow, we have all survived... The thing I am trying to get at, though, is that h and /x/ are the same for Russian speakers, but /h/ and /x/ are different for Dutch speakers, and we merge /x/ and /χ/. For Dutch speakers, there is literally no way to understand soft signs because even the sound /sh/ doesn't exist in Dutch and is analysed as an allophone of s+j (and written as such). Therefore I understand that soft/hard consonants are a problematic concept to most foreigners, particularly to Dutch people. HOWEVER, the question of this thread was how it relates to the pronunciation of Hindi or Arabic, and in that sense, Arabic and Hindi both have pronunciation problems which are equally problematic when compared to Russian. Russian phonology is poorly explained in English textbook manuals, but so is Arabic phonology, Spanish phonology, French phonology and so on. Pronunciation is simply never or poorly taught in courses and textbooks and that is what gives us such problematic accents.
Correct. In common speech in the west, both often default to χ - you will hear it in the Hague and Rotterdam for example. In Amsterdam they usually merge voiced/voiceless anyway, and it goes for all consonant pairs except k/t/p (but since Dutch lacks the voiced equivalent of k it is effectively the same thing). However, in standard Dutch (but it's a utopia because NOBODY speaks standard Dutch anyway) [x] and [γ] are separate. It is true that Czech has h as opposed to ch. Russian, Polish and Serbo-Croatian however don't and form the major part of immigrants to the Netherlands when it comes to Slavic languages. I can easily tell whether someone is Slavic or not by the way they pronounce h, g, and ch. Edited by tarvos on 11 February 2014 at 9:35pm 2 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 16 of 23 11 February 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Fun fact: The Silesian dialects of Polish do have the [h] vs. [x] opposition, but unfortunately they're the only ones. Speakers from Warsaw don't even hear the difference, just like Russians. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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