Thread: Fluent in 11 languages.

So why is it said that there is no accent in Russian then?

It is said there are no dialects in Russian. It's not true but the difference between cities is minute, and the difference between the countryside is also decreasing. There are differences in pronunciation, mainly in vowel reduction and something else. They are weaker than between villages and become weaker and weaker.

It means you can listen to the person speaking and say where he comes from.
You can say for example, "you come from the South of Russia, near Ukraine".
Just like I can listen to someone and say "you come from the North of England, near the Scottish border".

That's not easy.

hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
This, I don't notice either - I have to really focus to say it right. To me it is the same sound with only a very minor difference.

Americans say there is no difference between soft and hard L. Yet they immediately notice when a foreigner does not velarize his Ls. I think if you hear Swedish with soft Rs or hard Ls, you won't say the difference is very minor.
I haven't listened to the video yet, I just mentioned some features I heard in Lukashenko's speech and know from books.

But x and G are two different letters. It's impossible to miss....

Still many Anglophones pronounce [k] instead of [x]. I don't know if they hear like that or can't pronounce the sound.

Originally Posted by Marcus

It is said there are no dialects in Russian. It's not true but the difference between cities is minute, and the difference between the countryside is also decreasing. There are differences in pronunciation, mainly in vowel reduction and something else. They are weaker than between villages and become weaker and weaker.

That's not easy.

Americans say there is no difference between soft and hard L. Yet they immediately notice when a foreigner does not velarize his Ls. I think if you hear Swedish with soft Rs or hard Ls, you won't say the difference is very minor.
I haven't listened to the video yet, I just mentioned some features I heard in Lukashenko's speech and know from books.

Still many Anglophones pronounce [k] instead of [x]. I don't know if they hear like that or can't pronounce the sound.

English does not have the x sound or rolling Rs, so obviously that is the challenge for them. Rolling Rs in particular are apparently very difficult to learn for an adult.

For me there is no Russian sound in itself that is hard to pronounce, the trick is keeping track of sounds where Russian has distinctions between different sounds which are never emphasised or discussed in other languages. Perhaps as a Russian you are able to tell that English in fact does have "soft" and "hard" Ls, but it would never occur to anyone else to think of it that way.

Russian is just really particular with how certain consonants should be prounounced, to the point that it's indicated by the spelling (soft / hard) and words could even change meaning. Whereas in other languages you just have no learn from native speakers work out the logic yourself.

Debates about linguistics is not my cup of tea though.... I am sure I sound rather ignorant to someone with a special interest in this area which I do not have.

Now I've listened to a part of the Belorussian video. They really pronounce hard R instead of soft: тры, итерэсно...
One has to find natural speech, not videos made for fun or where accent is imitated.

Every youtube video with Lukashenko features some elements of Belarussian accent, but not in every word.

For me there is no Russian sound in itself that is hard to pronounce, the trick is keeping track of sounds where Russian has distinctions between different sounds which are never emphasised or discussed in other languages. Perhaps as a Russian you are able to tell that English in fact does have "soft" and "hard" Ls, but it would never occur to anyone else to think of it that way.

Russian is just really particular with how certain consonants should be prounounced, to the point that it's indicated by the spelling (soft / hard) and words could even change meaning. Whereas in other languages you just have no learn from native speakers work out the logic yourself.

Yes, it sounds rather funny. Any language has its own distinctions which are hard to hear or imitate for a non-native speaker. I think Swedish vowels will be a nightmare for a Russian.
Those distinctions are often represented by spelling.
Phonemic Palatalization is not very widespread, and it might be not very much developed, but it is present in some languages. In all the Slavic (Russian is the champion in this position), in Lithuanian, in Romanian (at the end of words), in Irish (it is even more developed there than in Russian), in some Finno-Ugric languages of Russia.
For example French represents an extensive non-phonemic palatalization. All the consonants are palatalized before i, u. [k] and [g] are also palatalized before a, and at the end of words after i.

At the end Lukashenko is speaking, you can comapare him to the dictors.