arwy Triglot Newbie Ukraine arwy.ru Joined 5046 days ago 4 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French
| Message 17 of 24 19 May 2011 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
I live in Ukraine, but my native language is Russian. There is no [o] sound in the end of «сердце». The transcription
provided above from Wikipedia is correct. Though when we learn Russian at school we never use latin characters for
transcription. We use cyrillic. So the transcription for сердце would be [c'эрцэ]. [c'] means that the sound [c] is
pronounced softly. This is the effect of the letter E. There is no [e] sound in out transcription. This letter just causes
the previous consonant to sound softly (apostrophe sign marks it) , and the actual vowel sound is [э] in a syllable
which starts with a consonant. This is not the case in the second syllable because [ц] can never be soft, therefore
no apostrophe in the transcription.
I don't know if my explanation is helpful for you but I hope it would be interesting for you to know how the native
speakers learn Russian at school.
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telephos Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6267 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: Norwegian, Ancient Greek
| Message 18 of 24 10 October 2011 at 8:53am | IP Logged |
I pronounce сердце differently at the nominative-accusative (I pronounce the final е as
[ə]) and at the locative (I pronoune the final е more or less like ы). Who makes the
distinction?
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 19 of 24 10 October 2011 at 8:57am | IP Logged |
telephos wrote:
I pronounce сердце differently at the nominative-accusative (I
pronounce the final е as
[ə]) and at the locative (I pronoune the final е more or less like ы). Who makes the
distinction? |
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No one makes this distinction. It simply does not exist in Russian.
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telephos Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6267 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: Norwegian, Ancient Greek
| Message 20 of 24 10 October 2011 at 9:14am | IP Logged |
This distinction exists in some grammar books written in the 1930's. I wondered if it was
still common now.
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leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6550 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 21 of 24 11 October 2011 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
The Princeton course says the unstressed e sounds like ə at the end of a word. ə is definitely not the same as ы. ə is
called "schwa", and is pronounced like the a in "above".
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arwy Triglot Newbie Ukraine arwy.ru Joined 5046 days ago 4 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French
| Message 22 of 24 23 October 2011 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
leosmith wrote:
regarding объяснИть - why does the я sound like и? |
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OK, again some explanations from Russian native speaker. In our cyrillic transcription (this is how we write it at
school) it would be [об|йас|нит']. Ъ (твёрдый знак=hard sign) makes the previous latter hard, so the next letter Я
is in different syllable. Т in transcription is marked by apostrophe because the sound if soft. It's as if you start
saying ТИ but you actually don't pronounce И.
As you can see in transcription, there are three syllables divided by |. Letter Я belongs to the second syllable. The
syllable starts with this letter. Thus its transcription is [йа]. If the syllable started with a consonant, for example НЯ.
its transcription would be [н'а] that is soft Н plus А. There is no sound Я in transcription and in saying. That
softness is very difficult to grasp for somebody whose native language doesn't belong to Slavic group. Foreigners
usually think that we say something like [ниа] though it's not the case. As I said above H becomes soft, it's like
you start saying НИ but don't say И. The same thing happens when there is Ь (мягкий знак=soft sign) in a letter.
For example, пьяный [п'йа|ный] (drunk). Ь softens the previous letter П. But most foreigners think that we say
something like «пианый» and even write so like my Korean friend who learns Russian. Because in most of the other
languages and in English in particular, those soft vowels that like I, E, Y don't soften the previous consonant. F.e., a
knee is pronounced [niː]. In English N remains hard and thus to a Russian ear [iː] after that sounds like something
in between our [и] and [ы] because in Russian И would always make the previous sound soft. That's why many
Russians have strong accent in English, they say [niː] like [н'и] in Russian, making N soft. That's why for the people
who are not used to vowels softening previous consonants it's hard to hear correctly what we say.
Maybe, you hear И because it's somehow alike Й in transcription, but there is no such sound in that word.
By the way, my name is Anna or Anya (Аня). When I lived in the USA and asked people to call my Аня I would get
something like Ания [ан'ийа] or Анъйа [анйа] and no way anyone could say Аня correctly even though they tried
hard. So don't worry you are not alone.
Edited by arwy on 23 October 2011 at 1:20pm
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 24 of 24 30 October 2011 at 10:42am | IP Logged |
arwy wrote:
leosmith wrote:
regarding объяснИть - why does the я sound like и?
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OK, again some explanations from Russian native speaker. In our cyrillic transcription
(this is how we write it at
school) it would be [об|йас|нит'].
That softness is very difficult to grasp for somebody whose native language doesn't
belong to Slavic group. |
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абйис'н'Ит' (I capitalized the stressed vowel, б can be either hard or soft). Do you
really think that phonemic
palatalization doesn't exist beyond the Slavic group? All the Slavic languages have
soft
consonants but in a different degree. Russian is the softest. Czech has only three
pairs:
t-t', d-d', n-n'. So Czechs have problems with Russian сь, рь, мь and so on.
Edited by Марк on 30 October 2011 at 10:44am
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