Thread: Проблема произносить букву "ы" - всё ещё!

Originally Posted by Valda

Когда у меня более время, я буду ставить клип что вы будете решить сами Но я имею впечатление что более важно чем говорить правильно, это не выгладить как тупица! Надо быть грациозной

*Когда у меня будет больше времени, я помещу видео, и вы решите сами. Но мне кажется, что лучше неправильно произносить звуки, чем выглядеть дурочкой.
Грациозной?

Thanks Lena

Was going for "gotta be graceful" at the end ^^

It's amazing what a big problem foreigners have with the "ы" sound! And at the same time many linguists believe that this sound doesn't even make a distinct phoneme! And they have their reasons. One evidence is there is no single word starting with the letter "ы" in Russian. Another is that there are such words as "предыстория" (prehistory) or "разыменование" (dereferencing) which have roots "история" and "имя", i.e. starting with "и", but after the hard consonants of the prefixes this "и" turns into "ы". The same thing happens on junctions of words, for example if I say the phrase "мой друг и товарищ" quickly, without a stop, the conjunction "и" will sound like "ы".
All these reasons mean that "ы" is only an allophone, i.e. a variant of the "и" phoneme. It is a product of the assimilation of the "и" vowel with the preceding hard consonant.
Therefore the problem of the sound "ы" is not the problem of that sound, it's the problem of the correct pronunciation of hard consonants. A person studying Russian should pay attention to mastering the difference between soft and hard consonants. And once he succeeds the "ы" problem will disappear all by itself, because Russian hard consonants are so hard that it is impossible to pronounce the "и" sound after them.

Serge you are right. The problem lies in the connection of the vowel and the preceding consonant. But I'd like to add that there's more than what you said. The problem is a bit deeper. Many languages have similar sounds like a Russian B and an English V or B/Б or something. There are also many similar sounds in French and Russian or French and English. Literally every language is similar to others in terms of how they sound. But there are also slight differences in the articulation of seemingly identical sounds between languages, which are normally called accents. These differences come from the shape of the tongue when we speak. These can be inherent to pronunciation of individual sounds, like the tip of the tongue in L touches or doesn't touch the teeth (just for instance).

There are also those going through all the sounds, through all the speech, they influence all sounds. This general feature of the Russian language compared to the English language is that the shape of the tongue of English-speaking people is flat or even slightly concave like a palm shaped to catch a drop of water. At the same time the Russian tongue is concave in the opposite direction, like an umbrella. This influences all the sounds so that the middle of the tongue in Russian works in a different way.

This very raised middle part of the tongue is used to create, for example, soft consonants. It goes up when pronouncing them and touches the roof of the mouth right behind the alveolar ridge as if squeezing a berry inbetween it and the soft palate. The problem is that the English people use quite a different shape and this part of the tongue that normally goes up in Russian doesn't want to go up for an Englishman trying to produce a Russian sound. They may even not know that it SHOULD go up and where exactly it should bend and touch. They use slightly different points of the tongue to contact with the soft palate when pronouncing their consonants. And try to do it the same way for Russian, which is a mistake. No wonder they may suck in pronouncing soft consonants or Ы or something else.

As you said, the sounds in Russian influence each other when run together. But if pronounced with an incorrect form of the tongue they simply cannot be pronounced correctly. Moreover, it's quite inconvenient. Hell, it's a torture, it's more than just inconvenience. One of my friends said that the Russian Ы sounded like a zombie to him and that he couldn't get it pronounced right. And his tongue used to get tired in three minutes of speaking Russian. When we dug deeper into the problem it appeared that he used his habitual shape of the tongue. When he changed it (it definitely needed some training because his tongue muscles weren't used to working this way) and gotten the hang of it he started speaking more confidently and correctly.

Why does it happen with Ы, why does the shape influence the vowel? Because vowels need resonance in the mouth, in the resonating chamber inside the mouth, formed with the soft palate and a specific shape of the tongue. This resonance chamber in Russian and in English is different because of the shape of the tongue so one who wants to get the right sound should learn how to produce the correct resonance. Simply how to articulate in a Russian way.

One of the funny things I learned during my time learning English is that their (American, English, etc) doctors do not need a stick or a spoon when examining the throat of a patient. Because when they say Ah the concave shape of the tongue reveals the throat hole clearly. On the contrary, Russian doctors do need this spoon or a special flat stick made of stainless steel to push the tongue down when examining the throat of a Russian patient. Just because this raised middle stands in the view and they can't see what's happening behind it. So my advice would be: "learn the correct shape". Take a mirror, open the mouth and learn how to bend the tongue so that its middle hides the most part of the throat hole but you still can see the lower molars. Then hold the tongue in this position for a while so the muscles will learn this new shape. Then learn to give the tongue this position with the mouth closed. Keep it for a couple of minutes. Learn the transition from how your tongue usually lies in the mouth to how it should lie in the mouth when speaking Russian. And finally, use this middle of the tongue when producing Russian sounds.

Kinda like that.

Medved, you say exactly what I wanted to say. The Russian phonetic system is very different from the English one. Even the sounds B and V are pronounced differently. In Russian they are always voiced before the vowels whether in English they can be partly unvoiced. Also there is such a thing in English as the fortis and lenis contrast in the pairs of voiced - unvoiced consonants which doesn't exist in Russian.
Every sound in a language doesn't exist by itself, on contrary it's an integral part of the phonetic system. So, if you are experiencing a problem with one sound it may indicate your whole system is wrong.
And I agree about the difference in tongue positions in the two languages. I also used to experience that painful feeling in the tongue when I was beginning to speak English. I would say more. When I say some phrase in English which contains a Russian proper name, its easier for me to pronounce that name with English accent than in clear Russian because it takes some time to rearrange my tongue position.
The rule of thumb in mastering Russian phonetics is to pay attention to the place of the tip of your tongue. In Russian it is moved more forward than in English. It almost always touches the backside of the lower or upper front teeth. Try to pronounce the syllables ти-ти-ти, then та-та-та. Then say tee-tee-tee, tah-tah-tah in English. When you say ти-ти-ти, the tip of you tongue MUST be on the backside of your LOWER front teeth and the upper surface of your tongue must touch the teethridge (alveolar ridge) before the air explosion of the "т" sound. And when you pronounce tee-tee-tee in English the tip of the tongue is on the alveolar ridge. When you say та-та-та the tip of the tongue touches the backside of the upper front teeth and the tongue is almost flat. Then, after the explosion it goes to the lower teeth. When you say tah-tah-tah in English the tip of the tongue also touches the alveolar ridge.
So unlike in English, there are not many sounds in Russian which need that the tip of the tongue be placed at the alveolar ridge or near it. They are: the soft "л" [л'], both hard and soft "р" [р, р'], "ж", "ш".

Found one old video Unfortunately, Valda "cheated" in both words: показывала и ужасным. (I wonder, how she is able to speak now.)
That`s pity, because the rest of it was almost flawless.

The difference between "Ы" and "И" is pretty solid. You can`t "fake" it.





Ты такой хищник -
Все счеты сводишь лично,
Сам себе считаешь,
Сам себя решаешь.

Всё было бы отлично,
Но раны-то зияют
Так глубоко, что слёзы
Чрез раны вытекают.

Жаждою стремимы,
Страстью полны мы.
Эти клыки хищник
Режет нам сердце.

Оставь нам любимых, оставь
Оставь их любить нас, оставь
Я зализал раны, поверь,
Уходи, зверь...

Неуязвимый -
В спину бьешь невидимый,
Бродишь то обиженный,
Только незнакомый совсем.

Пойми, такой странный,
Мы все одной саванны,
Только ты верил
Другим шаманам.

Я готов руку
Подать тебе хищник,
Если ты бы оставил её
Мне хотя бы по локоть.

Перегрысть одно горло
Можешь смело, достойно,
Только кровь эта, хищник,
Не смывается боле.

Оставь нам любимых, оставь
Оставь их любить нас, оставь
Я зализал раны, поверь,
Уходи, зверь...

...

"И" - soft, thin sound.
"Ы" - deep sound, full of bass, tube, ferry horn. It also changes the way how previuos consonant sounds like.

Probably, the best way to gain that kind of understanding would be to listen consciously as much as it is possible.
Just can`t believe you won`t be able to see the difference after 1000 of repeats...

Ой! Это была почти два года назад! Да......русский теперь намного лучше. Хотя не могу утвердить насчет моего текущего акцента, это вы засудите сами когда я загружу новый клип. Хотя в данный момент не могу снять его потому все в моем доме спят.

Спасибо за напоминание.

May be you can find this video interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9hogVBFECQ

Try to say "we" in English, in this pronouns, the sound Е sounds like russian Ы

Originally Posted by Dihamer

Try to say "we" in English, in this pronouns, the sound Е sounds like russian Ы

Not quite

pronounced as [ɨ] (close central unrounded vowel),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_...nrounded_vowel

Note the vowel chart halfway down the right side of the page.

Takes a lot of practice to be able to feel the vowels in your mouth as the chart describes; when I first started learning the chart, I felt like it was inverted from what my mouth felt, but it is indeed, correct.