Thread: Нравятся

Hi everyone,

Just want to check I’m hearing this one correctly.

The 3rd person singular of нравится is нравится (nrav-it-sya) and the 3rd person plural is нравятся, right? Now being as the stress falls on the а, wouldn’t one expect the 1st я in нравятся to reduce? Because, as far as I can hear it gets pronounced unreduced as nrav-yat-sya?

Is it just an exception... or is there a rule I’m not aware of in play... or I am just hearing it wrongly?

Thanks,

Simon

Ya to i reduction is a good rule of thumb, but you'll sometimes hear it reduced less than you'd expect. Maybe the speaker is trying to be particularly clear for the benefit of your foreign ears, or perhaps they're from Ivanovo.

What I've been told:
1° я & е do not reduce to и when they are post-tonal. десять осень
2° in desinences, я & е do not reduce to the same sound.

Originally Posted by Zubr

What I've been told:
1° я & е do not reduce to и when they are post-tonal. десять осень

Hmm... Actually they do. And in the examples above the words sound [осинь] and [десить] (it is not a perfectly clear "и", but anyway it's the closest sound; it's definitely not a "я" and a "е" there).

This is a good question.

Actually, the difference between нравится and нравятся is very subtle in natural Russian speech. I cannot affirm I can always clearly hear the difference. I think the person who recorded that sound just over-pronounced this form in order to make it clearly audible for learners.

This is true not only for the given particular verb. I think every Russian verb with unstressed endings does not clearly distinguish between -ит and -ят forms in pronunciation, e.g.
он видит
они видят
- we usually understand the difference from context. To be precise, there is some difference to my ears, but it is often hardly recognisable in speech unless it is a slow declamation.

Originally Posted by Оля

Hmm... Actually they do. And in the examples above the words sound [осинь] and [десить] (it is not a perfectly clear "и", but anyway it's the closest sound; it's definitely not a "я" and a "е" there).

I did not say they do not reduce at all. They do reduce, but the reduced sound has no strict equivalent amongst unreduced vowels.