Thread: Fluent in 11 languages.

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by xdns

Another excellent А/О example - "Россия молодая":


In this TV series the protagonist Ivan Ryabov (he is a real historical figure, a Pomor, i.e. a Russian from the shores of the White Sea) speaks with beautiful northern А/О accent.
You may hear him, for example, at 44:50 where he is captured by the Swedes and pretends to agree to steer their ships and circumvent shoals on the track to Arkhangelsk, which the Swedes are going to destroy. He accepted the offer for a reward of 500 riksdalers, but in the end ran Swedish ships aground right in front of cannons of a Russian fortress. It is a very good TV series, based on a book of the same name. I remember Estionian guy helping Russians, Swedish spy in disguise of a Danish person (Denmark supported Russia because Russia opposed Sweden). This book/film definitely arouses Russian patriotic feelings

PS: In the scene which I described Swedes and Russians communicate with the help of English-Russian interpreter. I wonder how truthful this detail is...

Cool, I'll see if I can watch that film some other time!

Obviously if Swedes and Russians had met at that time, they would either have had communication difficulties, or perhaps they would have communicated in German or French. Definitely not English.

Russian is not a language that Swedes traditionally study in large numbers. For the last 3 years in school, students can choose a third foreign language to study (after English and German/French). That's when Russian becomes available to choose. So nobody has studied more than 3 years of Russian in school, and most people choose another language that is easier. But those who start studying Russian really fall in love with the language, I have noticed, and learning about Russian culture is interesting because most people here have a quite shallow understanding of Russia - when they learn more about the culture they find it really appealing. Very similar to ours in some ways, yet exotic and very different in many aspects.

I did not know Denmark sided with Russia against Sweden, but I am not surprised to hear that!
The fact that Russia brought about the end of Sweden's empire on the Baltic is not exactly my favourite thing about your country.
It was a long time ago though, and Sweden was acting quite aggressively against a larger enemy. Not so smart, perhaps....

Originally Posted by Hanna

I did not know Denmark sided with Russia against Sweden, but I am not surprised to hear that!

Denmark-Norway, Poland-Lithuania, Saxony and Russia joined in the Northern Union against Sweden in 1699-1700.
But only Russia remained an active member of this union all the time during the Great Northern War.

Oh, I've remembered one curious thing about Denmark-Russia relations: there was even a privateer Karsten Rode, Danish subject at the service of Ivan the Terrible, who boarded many Swedish ships (Russia had no fleet at the time and the tsar payed Danish pirate for annoying Swedish and Polish sailors in the Baltic sea!). I'm sorry Hanna, it just came to my mind because I read from time to time about Danish history and culture

Here is some generally accepted terminology about the A/O thing: оканье and аканье (in both words the first syllable is stressed). We say они окают about northern speakers and мы акаем about "standard" Russian speakers. Other information about Russian language varieties can be found here: Диалекты русского языка.

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