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Blurred word endings in russian

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13 messages over 2 pages: 1
Richard Burton
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Spain
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Speaks: Ancient Greek*

 
 Message 9 of 13
09 December 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged 
The more general topic of the problems speakers of language with syllabic rythm have when they study languages with other kind of rythm is in my opinion an extremely important issue in language learning, which, as usual: 1) nobody understand (even is aware of) 2) nobody (teachers, etc) explains/ make students aware of. It is a great contributor to unsuccess in learning, whereas, if you wise up to it, it is a great contributor to you being unexplicably -for the unaware- good at it.

The reason you find it strange is you come from Italian. You can think of it as if there would be two ways of speaking: in one the syllable is what is important, and all are important. In the other, the stressed syllable is "abnormally" (well you know, from your point of view) important, the others are abnormally not so important.

It is a latent tendency in many languages of the latter kind the possibility, if you want, to do away with the vowels if you want to, often in connection with level of language issues as noted above, since in this kind of systems unstressed syllables are not felt to be too important. In Portuguese Portuguese (I mean from Portugal) this is reaching levels of madness. You can turn words into this kind of structure:

CCCvCCC

In Russian you dont have too much of a problem, it is moderately stress-rythm, but still enough to make uncomfortable a syllabic-rythmer. The problem ultimately, I read from a professor which sounded to me like knowing what he was saying, is that apart from the well known "relaxation" other features comflate, even sort of pitch or something, but you dont worry about that: make the vocalic changes you find in the methods, take down the intensity you say it with, and go a bit quicker over it. You'll see the characteristic Russian music enters into you and then will never left you and you will wonder why you were so clumsy and silly at the beginning, so beautiful and logical is speaking like thant. Trust me on this, if you ever want to be a polyglot: you have to get out of your syllabic rythm prison and learn to play the other game.

Another phenomenon that complicate things for the silly ear of the syllable-rythmers is that you can compress the duration of the unstressed syllables, to the point of many of them lasting the same than a stressed one. This is very important in English, and an occult reason for the high rate of unsuccess for the syllabic-rythmers, one of the things there are sort of a destructive obscurantism about.

It is very important that you understand that the (unconscious) rule is that you can play with it; you can see that when Americans amazingly put /ei/ into the indefinite article "a" simply to gain time in a hesitation.

However I would recommend you that you get a clear picture (literally, using your visual memory of some sort of transcription) of a slow Russian pronunciation of all those endings: you will see that many are neutralized into the same thing, because psychologically you need to be clear about matters, if you are clear, the unconscious absorves it best and you then can forget about it. The nagging thing about this kind of matters is that they have a huge impact in listening comprehension, as you mention, it is not a question of perfectionism or something like that. You have to learn to process imput without reliance on unstressed syllables.

A piece of good news is that, one you overcome this in a language, you can transfer it to other non-syllabic rythm languages you tackle. The same way to be a remarkable polyglot you need to have an unusually big repertoire of (isolated) sounds you can utter, you need to be able to jump from a kind of rythm to other at will in your oral production -then it means it is also in your mind, which in turns it means you understand well too, because your brain is not trying to process the imput with an alien kind of rythm: the one you come from-.

My opinion/experience.

Opps: one more thing: dont lengthen the stressed vowel if in open syllable. Italians do that :)

Edited by Richard Burton on 09 December 2013 at 12:10pm

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Марк
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Russian Federation
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 Message 10 of 13
09 December 2013 at 12:25pm | IP Logged 
Don't Russians lengthen stressed syllables normally?
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Serpent
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serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 11 of 13
09 December 2013 at 3:18pm | IP Logged 
He said open. I guess in Russian the open-ness itself shouldn't make the vowel longer.

Edited by Serpent on 09 December 2013 at 4:02pm

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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 12 of 13
09 December 2013 at 7:20pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
He said open. I guess in Russian the open-ness itself shouldn't make the
vowel longer.

I agree with that. But lengthening of stressed syllables is not harmful, I think.
Especially when they are before a pause.
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Richard Burton
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Spain
Joined 4143 days ago

34 posts - 64 votes 
Speaks: Ancient Greek*

 
 Message 13 of 13
17 December 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged 
Hey Mark. Sorry my late replay. Thinking better, you are right, I was wrong. So that feature from Italian he can carry over to Russian without a problem. By "open" (probably wrong terminology) I meant not followed by a consonant. I understood in Italian you have to lengthen for example rOOOOma, but not cAlcio, and that's what I try to stick to. In Russian I suppose is in all stressed syllables, one more reason they contrast with the unstressed ones.


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