Thread: Fluent in 11 languages.

Originally Posted by Marcus

That's not actually spelling. That's graphics and pronunciation. It is useless and very hard to remember all the spelling rules.
Could you tell those words with ъ? сел - съел?
I don't know why is the ш - щ distinction more difficult than л -ль, м - мь?

Well I am really tired now, but I think he said that the hard sign means there is a sort of break and so it sounds different... ш - щ is difficult simply because this is an "artificial difference" for me, just like adding "the" and "a" is for you. To me, this is more or less the same sound and it seems a bit picky to differentiate between them. For words that I have memorised, I have obviously memorised the correct spelling and I don't mix it up once I learnt it for a particular word. But it just feels unnatural and complicated.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Well I am really tired now, but I think he said that the hard sign means there is a sort of break and so it sounds different... ш - щ is difficult simply because this is an "artificial difference" for me, just like adding "the" and "a" is for you. To me, this is more or less the same sound and it seems a bit picky to differentiate between them.

I think that pronouncing ш instead of щ sounds like speaking Russian with Belarussian accent
Like these two guys, for example:

Originally Posted by xdns

I think that pronouncing ш instead of щ sounds like speaking Russian with Belarussian accent

Oh dear, I couldn't hear any difference.
But one thing that I definitely CAN hear which I don't think sounds very nice, is that some Belarussians say "х" or "h" in places where there is a "г".

For example, "загореть" , they say "заhореть". I learnt the word from a Belarussian when I was there, and I actually checked the dictionary for захорить or something like that when I checked it up! LOL.There were several words like this.
I was told that this is a somewhat "uneducated" way of speaking Russian in Belarus.
Nothing strange about that at all, there are a million such nuances to English... But Russian is said to have "no accents", but I would definitely call this way of speaking a local accent.

Pronunciation of Russian has its regional varieties too. The Г/Х issue is probably the most noticable one - southerners (close to Ukraine) say Х instead of Г. Other well-known difference is А/О pronunciation - some Russians, mostly from the North of European Russia, pronounce молоко like it is written - молоко, while the majority pronounce it like малако. Every firstgrader in Russia has struggled with this problem. But wait... apparently those notherners have not? Never thought about that!