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Russian & French pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ColdBlue Groupie Angola Joined 6574 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 23 29 November 2006 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Which is harder, Russian or French when it comes to pronunciation? I always thought that Russian was somewhat impossible to pronounce the words right, but with practice it seems like you can speak them perfectly in a Russian manner. Now I tried to speak some French sentences and it seems like no matter how hard you try you can't get the sound correct like a native.
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| salvius Bilingual Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 6585 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: French, German | Message 2 of 23 29 November 2006 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've tried Russian before, and I will eventually come back to it, and it it infinitely easier to pronounce; it could be that my knowledge of Serbian is greatly helping things here, but just the lack of non-nasals and the guttural R greatly helps things. Palatalization is pretty easy to learn.
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| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7105 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 3 of 23 29 November 2006 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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French is harder in my opinion, absolutely, hands down.
With French, there's a surprisingly tricky R, nasal vowels and that's not all. Those can be mastered and produced in a native-like way after practising them. Yet the rules for pronunciation still proves difficult, so it's not that easy. Russian isn't free of its problems. Although the only ones I'd mention are the difference between ы and и and the soft and hard consonants. Russian isn't completely phonetic either, but its exceptions are easy to learn. However, that's just my opinion and I'm sure others have experienced otherwise. And of course, I wouldn't want anyone considering Russian of French to assume one is easier than the other based just on pronunciation. Edited by Sir Nigel on 29 November 2006 at 10:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paul Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7122 days ago 114 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 23 30 November 2006 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
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For an english speaker Russian is MUCH harder. French shares most of it's
sounds with english, even the nasals are present in english to some degree. (in english words like song, sang - easy to convert to the french variety) Russian has several difficult vowel and consonant sounds that do not exist at all in english. The wet form of the rolled R, something like 'yr' rolled is incredibly difficult for an english-speaker. Most words in russian take considerable effort to pronounce correctly, whereas in french only the occasional word presents any significant difficulty. There are no difficult consonant clusters for example, and only one difficult vowel - the french u). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SwedishChef Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Sweden Joined 6662 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 5 of 23 30 November 2006 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Paul, my native languages are
swedish/english and I have a much harder time learning russian pronunciation then I did learning french. French is a pretty logical language and learning to pronounce it correctly does take some time, but its not that hard really. Trust me, russian is much harder. You never know where the stress falls if you dont know the word, and russian contains difficult sounds as Paul states above. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7225 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 6 of 23 30 November 2006 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I disagree.
I find French pronunciation much more difficult. However, by pronunciation, I do not mean approximating a native-like accent; rather, I mean getting the words out of one's mouth with ease. The fact that Russian has, at times, unpredictable stress is not really the point in my opinion (or at least not what I mean when I say "easy to pronounce") Russian pronunicaition is very clear. French pronunciation (primarily the [r] for me) is a nuiasance at time. I suppose it depends on the learner. For me, the "wet" [r] in Russian is very easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 23 30 November 2006 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm starting to remember something I've observed before.
The hardest language is the one that you are currently learning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Paul Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7122 days ago 114 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 23 30 November 2006 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
So, i assume you can produce a rolled R? Why not use the rolled R in French? Quite a few french people pronounce it that way, it's common in the south of France. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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