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 Language Learning Forum : Русский |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5883 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 33 of 37 26 September 2011 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you know Belarussian? They do spell unstressed "o" as "a", even in cases where there is a shift in stress in declinations or conjugations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5084 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 34 of 37 26 September 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I know that. And I say that replacing all the unstressed "o" by "a" will simplify the
spelling. But the elimination of soft sign and soft vowels won't. Unstressed "o" and "a" are pronounced like "a" only in the pretonic syllable and at the beginning of the word, in other cases they are pronounced like shwa. Edited by Марк on 26 September 2011 at 9:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5883 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 35 of 37 26 September 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I understand the importance of the soft sign and soft vowels. I wished that these signs and vowels existed for English (eg the d in "do" and "dew") 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5724 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 36 of 37 26 September 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
That would be kinda neat, but one problem might be that different accents of English drop the soft sign in different places. For example, do" and "dew" are homophones for me, as an American English speaker. There was actually an ad campaign a while back with the slogan "do the dew", which relied on this. But it seems even amongst RP speakers there is variation, e.g. in words like suit, Zeus, lute. Of course you could argue that it'd be better than the way it is now, because speakers that have the hard sound in particular environments could ignore the soft sign in those words, and learners could pick in which environments they want to drop the sound, and in which they want to keep the sound. Wiki on Yod-dropping Edited by egill on 26 September 2011 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| matchboxauto Pentaglot Newbie Austria Joined 4833 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: German*, Portuguese, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Romanian | Message 37 of 37 02 October 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To me, spelling in Russian has always seemed rather easy and consistent. I used to have trouble with the soft sign as well, but it's more of a phonetic problem than an actual spelling problem, so I wouldn't count it as such.
The reason why so many learners make this type of spelling mistake is that it's hard to hear a difference between hard and soft consonants when your native language doesn't differentiate them. I remember learning to hear a difference between "л" and "ль" pretty soon, and I think I can hear a difference between "р" and "рь", and that enables me to spell words that contain them correctly, even if I've never seen them before. But to this day I find it difficult to hear what the soft sign does in words like "ткань" (that is, after "н"), and it's also very hard for me to pronounce it the right way. I know what my tongue is supposed to do in theory, but it never seems to come out the right way. Anyways, I think that spelling is one of the easier aspects of learning Russian (from the perspective of a German native speaker). Also, the fact that even native speakers have trouble with spelling isn't unique to Russian and therefore not very significant. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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