ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7098 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical)
| Message 1 of 4 23 December 2010 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
I was watching a video on YouTube where they went through the names of different animals in Russian. They had cobaka (dog) and the O sounded just the an A, sabaka. Also with koza (goat). It sounded like kaza. Is my hearing just not attuned to the nuances of Russian or are O and A the same sound? Thanks muy mucho and كتير كتير!
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egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 2 of 4 23 December 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
I haven't studied Russian but I think this is what you're talking about:
Russian Vowel Reduction
Basically unstressed vowels often merge together. This strikes me as similar to what happens in English. I'm sure
other more knowledgeable people can elaborate on this.
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6358 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 3 of 4 23 December 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
A short answer:
The letter 'o' can have two different (and distinct) pronunciations. When you see the letter 'o' in Russian, you can rarely know whether it's pronounced like 'o' or 'a'. It depends on the stress.
The stress is often marked in dictionaries with an accent: ó.
So, for each word, you need to find a way to remember the pronunciation of the 'o's. Either by using some sort of dictionary, or by using some audio-based methods.
Good luck!
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Jase27 Newbie United States Joined 5670 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, French
| Message 4 of 4 23 December 2010 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
As M. M said, an "o" is usually pronounced like the a in sofa when it is unstressed. If it's stressed, it's pronounced
like an o.
However, outside of learning material/dictionaries, there is usually no indication of whether the o is stressed.
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