Thread: how to do a russian accent

Red Alert 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtwDee-OnNo

Originally Posted by BappaBa

Red Alert 2

YouTube - C&C Red Alert 2 - Premier Romanov's broadcast

Hmmm -- among many other problems, he gets the "n" sounds in "United" and "New York" totally backwards. Stereotypically, the "n" in "United" should be over-dentalized ("Ю-най-тэд"), and the "N" in "New" should sound like a Spanish ñ ("Нью")-- but he says "Юньяйтэд" (with a soft, palatalized "ñ")and "Ну Йорк" (with a very hard, dentalized "n").

Which brings up another point about faking a Russian accent -- many English consonants are "alveolarized", meaning that when you pronounce them, the tip of the tongue (16 or 17) hits position 4 or 5 in this diagram:



However, Russian consonants are generally not aveolarized; instead they are either "dentalized" (so that the tip of the tongue, 16/17, is at position 3) or "palatalized" (the front of the tongue at 15 or 16 hits the roof of the mouth at position 6 or 7).

The best way to understand the difference is just to try it for yourself: If you're a native English speaker, say the consonant "t" a few times -- you'll notice that the tip of your tongue tends to strike the region labeled 4 and 5 in the above diagram. But native Russian speakers have two versions of the "t" sound -- one with the tongue against the upper teeth (position 3), which is called the "hard t", and one with the tongue against the palate (position 7), which is called the "soft t".

So, an English speaker wishing to fake a Russian accent should try to avoid positions 4/5, and instead go for position 3 (especially before vowels like "a" and "o" and "short e", as in tack, top, ten) or position 7 (especially before "long e", "short i", "long u", as in teen, tip, tune).

This is true for various consonants besides "t" -- for example, in English the sounds "d", "n", and "l" are all alveolarized, while the corresponding letters in Russian can be either dentalized or palatalized. And as you will notice in the diagram, the alveolar position is sort of a "happy middle" between the two "extremes" of dental and palatal. Thus, when faking a Russian accent, an English speaker needs to train his tongue to "go to extremes" with certain consonant sounds.

P.S. Note that all of the above is also useful if you're a serious student of Russian trying to reduce your English/American accent. And you can "reverse" the advice if you're an ESL speaker trying to reduce your Russian accent!