On the scale of 1-5, how hard is russian pronunciation for english speakers? (1 being very easy and 5 being very difficult)
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On the scale of 1-5, how hard is russian pronunciation for english speakers? (1 being very easy and 5 being very difficult)
Which English speaker, specifically?
The answer could fall anywhere on that scale depending on which part of the English-speaking world he comes from.
5
Not to put you off or anything...
Actually maybe 4. I just remembered mandarin! :lol:
See, there you go, if I were to answer that regarding myself, I'd say 1.
Ya its really not that hard. Maybe like a 2. Getting rid of your accents is the hard part.
5
Try pronouncing здравствуйте :D
On a scale of 1 to 17, how hard is it to judge how hard it is for an English speaker to pronounce Russian.
I do it everyday. Its pretty easy.
2. depending on what dialect of English you speak.Quote:
Originally Posted by firefaerie
I think that you should just give up right now!!Quote:
On the scale of 1-5, how hard is russian pronunciation for english speakers? (1 being very easy and 5 being very difficult)
It gets easier after the third or fourth vodka.
My friend who speak several languages used to say, Only first five or six language are difficult, after that it's very easy...
Do not judge and will not be judgedQuote:
Originally Posted by TATY
Is he scoffing ???Quote:
Originally Posted by SSSS
There is a joke in every joke...Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuvak
This has, afaik, been scientifically proven (there are publications) for most languages :)Quote:
Originally Posted by RavinDave
Are you trying to quote what has passed into an English proverb, or is this a Russian thing?Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuvak
Its a russian thing "Не суди и не судимым будешь"Quote:
Originally Posted by challenger
Is there an English proverb, similar to that ?
Tehcnically, it's a guote from the Bible... What you presented is just a Russian translation... Unfornutnaltely, I don't know the English original... Which is kinda the same to my knowladge...Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuvak
Do you really believe that the Bible was originally written in English? :oQuote:
Originally Posted by SSSS
[quote=pisces]Do you really believe that the Bible was originally written in English? :o[/quote:bt7az65i]Quote:
Originally Posted by SSSS
I think ORIGINALLY ALL the texts were written in English (but some dont believe in it)
Yes, God told me just the other day that english is his official langusge. He took out his monocle and looked at me and said in His stuffy British accent, "I have always liked you DDT and I want you to know that I have made English my official language." And then He left in order to play a game of polo.
Все произносят:Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow1
Здрасьте!
Некоторые более культурные особи произносят "Здраствуйте". :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Wowik
Когда здороваюсь с одним педагогом, я выговариваю каждую букву: "Здравствуйте, Владимир Анатольевич". И очень-очень боюсь запнуться :oops:Quote:
Originally Posted by gRomoZeka
Но с другими я здороваюсь не так старательно :lol:
Близким друзьям я говорю, "Здарова, карова..."
Я "Здрасьте" вообще не люблю - звучит как-то по-детски. Всегда говорю "Здравствуйте" - длинно, сложно, но зато солидно
I didnt know that the Lord has a British accent...Quote:
Originally Posted by DDT
Actually, Russian pronunciation is quite easy because in the main, it's a phonetic language - once the script is mastered, pronunciation is quite straightforward. One of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce as a non-native speaker is - English, which is one lf the least phonetic languages in existence - and if you doubt this, just think of the English combination of -"-ough" and the various ways this is pronounced - and there are no rules about this combination to guide you!
But that is just spelling and memorising which sound goes with each word. Saying the sounds themselves is the difficult part.
That's exactly the point. Without being told how to pronounce a particular 'ough' combination, there is no way a non-native speaker can 'guess' how to pronounce it. With Russian, once you know the sound values of the individual letters of the alphabet, you can pronounce any Russian word even if you've never met it before - you may not understand what the word means, but you can still pronounce it - try that with English, or Dutch - another language where there is little correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. I could cite other examples of where English is tricky - what about the 'th' combination which has two distinct sounds - or the infamous 'schwa' vowel - the most common sound in the English language!
You are exaggerating a bit. There aren't many of such combinations.Quote:
Without being told how to pronounce a particular 'ough' combination, there is no way a non-native speaker can 'guess' how to pronounce it.
And it's not THAT hard to guess how to pronounce certain word for a non-native speaker unless it's a really weird exception. After all, there are some rules of pronunciation. Besides, a lot comes with experience. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions as well, but not all of them THAT difficult to guess.
Anyway, the most difficult thing in the English language for me is article usage. And the second place in this respect belongs to verb tenses. Everything else is relatively easy I daresay.
P.S. Well, since pronunciation is the main issue, I would place it in the third place. I mean it's the third most difficult aspect of English for me. But I'm pretty satisfied with my pronunciation. I'd even say it's better than your average non-native pronunciation 8)
Well, I've taught lots of different nationalities English (I'm a qualified TEFL teacher) and the one thing they have all agreed on is that English pronunciation is probably the most difficult part of the language to master simply because there are so few set rules - so I don't really think what I've said is an exaggeration. Let me give you an example - imagine you have never seen the English word 'banana' - how would you say it?
By the way, I absolutely agree with you about English verb tenses - nightmare! (And excuse me for ranting on like this - I get fascinated by linguistics - I shall stop now :) )
Well, then I must be an exception. Of course, I can't guess every single word but I don't regard this as a terrible problem. When I don't know how to pronounce a word, I look it up in dictionary. And then, after I've heard the word couple of times in somebody's speech, in context, I know the pronunciation virtually by heart. What's so difficult, says me :) It's article usage that's REALLY difficult to master.
Sorry, I can't imagine this. I just know how to pronounce it and it's great :lol:Quote:
Let me give you an example - imagine you have never seen the English word 'banana' - how would you say it?
I'm more concerned about article usage than pronunciation. By the way, what do your students think about article usage? :)
What about the schwa vowel? It's probably the most common sound of the Russian language, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Storebror
My big problem (in both English and Ukrainian, actually) has always been that I would pronounce it where it does not belong.
I think the hardest part (in AmE, at least) for the Russians to get correctly is the word stress and the sentence intonation patterns in general, which are rather different and much more pronounced in English compared to Russian.
Irregularities are a problem, too (it took me like 8 years to realize that "leasing" is pronounced with "s" instead of "z", and it is a fairly common word that I hear and use often). Luckily there are not too many of them.
I would not call Russian "phonetic", or you would have to call e.g. French phonetic, too... Byelorussian is phonetic, Russian is not :) And that even without touching the subject of stress and je/jo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Storebror
But yes, it is more regular than English.
Oh, I forgot to ask what the 'schwa' vowel is and why it is infamous :? Could somebody just give some examples, some words with the sound? I can only think of the "governator" - Schwarzenegger :lol:
It's usually denoted with an inverted "e" in R-E dictionaries. It's essentially the same as a weak unstressed Russian a/o.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vadim84
Some examples of the schwa vowel:
the 'e' in brother
the 'a' in postman
the 'o' in forget
the 'o' and the last 'e' in forever
the 'o' and the last 'e' in together
As for Russian not being phonetic - er, it IS and that is not opinion it's simple linguistic fact - go and take a look at the pronunciation section of a Russian Grammar or at this example: http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/pronounc.html
or here
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/azbuka-e-xr-a.html
- and by 'phonetic' is meant that each letter represents one sound and one sound only, which by and large is true for Russian. Yes there are exceptions such as unstressed vowels, but there are clear rules as to how they are pronounced - my point in starting this dialogue was that in languages like English that are NOT phonetic, one letter can have a whole variety of sounds and, in English at least, there are no rules about how or why certain words are pronounced the way they are and it is that that makes it a hard language to pronounce just by looking at how the word is written -
This is simply false, and this is not at all limited to unstressed vowels. If it were, learning to write in Russian without mistakes would not be such a large issue for Russian children.Quote:
Originally Posted by Storebror
At best, you can say that you can normally correctly guess how to pronounce a specific written word. But you can do the same in e.g. French. Is smth like "les oiseaux" phonetically written? If it is to you, then I guess maybe you can call Russian phonetic too (forgetting about stress and a few other things, of course).