Thread: Confused about soft vowels

Originally Posted by zedeeyen

No one is suggesting speaking "Russian with English sounds", merely that the distinction between hard and soft consonants is rarely (if ever) a real-world impediment to understanding on its own, especially for beginners who are struggling with so much more already.

It's a somewhat harmful point of view in a way that it gives a learner an impression that hard and soft consonants are less important than other aspects of pronunciation. It's the same as telling a Japanese ESL learner that he should not bother learning to distinguish between R and L, because the difference is hard to explain and people would understand him anyway (from the context, if anything).
And they would. But does he really wants to speak with a cartoonish accent after putting so much effort into learning grammar and vocabulary??? Or people having to decipher his every word and constantly asking him to repeat yourself?

My personal point of view that there's no reason to postpone mastering correct pronunciation. Relearning it could be hell. And if you won't be able to pronounce some sounds from the start (maybe even for months), it's one more reason to start early.

An additional bonus of decent pronunciation is that it makes your language seem better than it is! It's a fact (really).

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

It's a somewhat harmful point of view in a way that it gives a learner an impression that hard and soft consonants are less important than other aspects of pronunciation.

They are less important. They're not completely unimportant, but comparatively they are less important.

It's the same as telling a Japanese ESL learner that he should not bother learning to distinguish between R and L, because the difference is hard to explain and people would understand him anyway (from the context, if anything).

No, it's not the same, because there are plenty of circumstances in English where mixing up R and L could lead to ambiguity or confusion.

But does he really wants to speak with a cartoonish accent after putting so much effort into learning grammar and vocabulary???

Personally, I only ever cared about being able to communicate, and all else being equal I'd rather be able to say what I want even in a funny accent than have perfect pronunciation but not be able to express myself. Of course that's an exaggerated distinction and learning is not as zero-sum as that, but in the initial stages of a beginner text it's not far off.

Or people having to decipher his every word and constantly asking him to repeat yourself?

You're exaggerating the distinction. Pronouncing ся as sa or s-ya does not cause listeners any problems, and in the context of all the other mistakes and hesitations a beginner will be making it's not even going to be noticeable. It might give you a slightly funny accent, but on its own it's not going to turn you into Равшан from Наша Russia.

My personal point of view that there's no reason to postpone mastering correct pronunciation. Relearning it could be hell.

Don't be silly. There's nothing to "relearn" by skipping over this initially, you just pick it up later when you're ready, either by progressing to more advanced texts or simply through familiarity with the language as spoken by natives.

And if you won't be able to pronounce some sounds from the start (maybe even for months), it's one more reason to start early.

I really don't understand the insistence that all aspects of pronunciation must come right at the start. There are countless aspects to learning a language and we generally only tackle them one at a time, so we have to prioritise. We learn basic verbs before we learn reflexive verbs, and the simple present tense before the past tense. We learn declarative sentence structure before we learn interrogative sentences, we learn nominative nouns before we tackle the instrumental case. We learn standard adjectives before we learn short form adjectives. First the basics, then fill in the gaps, and then refinement. What is so special about pronunciation that it can't be prioritised in this way and must be presented to the learner in its totality before they are even equipped to understand some of what they're being taught?

An additional bonus of decent pronunciation is that it makes your language seem better than it is! It's a fact (really).

Absolutely, I just think getting to a point where you can communicate effectively before worrying about the subtleties is a better strategy than wasting time on perfecting something that won't really help you at the stage you're at. It's like learning elaborate cursive handwriting without even learning how to recognise and print the basic letters first. And of course it's not really possible to convey pronunciation properly in text anyway, the learner is always going to have to use additional resources for that, so why bother wasting the page space on more than a summary?