Russian tonic accent and its place (Questions About Your Target Languages) Language Learning Forum

Russian tonic accent and its place
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages

11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Ogrim
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France
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Message 9 of 11

15 June 2015 at 11:14am | IP Logged

I second Arnaud, it is somewhat comforting to see that even native Russian speakers sometimes get the stress "wrong". I struggle a lot with it, and when reading aloud in class I get the stress on new words wrong half the time. I wish Russian would have done like Greek and introduced an accent mark in every polysyllabic word, it would have made it so much easier.
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vonPeterhof
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Message 10 of 11

15 June 2015 at 1:00pm | IP Logged

Dragon27 wrote:

I will NEVER pronounce "афинянин" as "афИнянин" (instead of "афинЯнин"). It just sounds... wrong. It is one of those cases (like masculine "кофе") where natural "inherent" language tendency contravenes fixed standard rules (or, more accurately, standardized exceptions).

I guess in these two cases I'm the exact opposite in having internalized the exceptions to the extent that "афинЯнин" and "мое кофе" make me cringe. However, I never thought of those two cases as anything other than exceptions (or at least in the former case, I never thought of it as a word belonging to the same category as other toponym-derived nouns ending in /-ˈanʲin/) and never really wondered why it was stressed that way. That lecture looks interesting though, thanks!

Ogrim wrote:

I wish Russian would have done like Greek and introduced an accent mark in every polysyllabic word, it would have made it so much easier.

While this would definitely make things easier for non-native learners, I can see this as nothing but a headache for us native speakers. All those questionable cases that even native speakers get "wrong" on a regular basis will end up entrenched in the orthography, adding an extra level of essentially arbitrary difficulty to an already complex writing system. Imagine writing your high school final exam essay with all your arguments made clearly and logically, all the commas in the right places, all the abstract terminology spelled impeccably, but then still getting marked down for indicating the stresses wrong in relatively commonplace words that literally nobody you know pronounces the way you're expected to.

Edited by vonPeterhof on 15 June 2015 at 2:39pm
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Via Diva
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Message 11 of 11

15 June 2015 at 1:08pm | IP Logged

vonPeterhof wrote:

Imagine writing your high school final exam essay with all your arguments made clearly and logically, all the commas in the right places, all the abstract terminology spelled impeccably, but then still getting marked down for indicating the
stresses wrong in relatively commonplace words that literally nobody you know pronounces the way you're expected to.

This.
Plus there are words with several forms of pronunciation that are officially allowed. While I don't care for accents, some officially allowed things like neuter for coffee mentioned above are bloody ridiculous to me. I tend to think Russian is a bit free that
way, somewhat like having a relatively free word order. There are some ground rules, but also some freedom.

Edited by Via Diva on 15 June 2015 at 1:09pm

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