Thread: how hard is russian pronunciation for english speakers?

[quote=pisces]

Originally Posted by SSSS

Originally Posted by Chuvak

Originally Posted by challenger

Originally Posted by Chuvak

Originally Posted by "TATY":bt7az65i

On a scale of 1 to 17, how hard is it to judge how hard it is for an English speaker to pronounce Russian.

Do not judge and will not be judged

Are you trying to quote what has passed into an English proverb, or is this a Russian thing?

Its a russian thing "Не суди и не судимым будешь"
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...

Do you really believe that the Bible was originally written in English? [/quote:bt7az65i]
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.

Originally Posted by shadow1

Try pronouncing здравствуйте

Все произносят:
Здрасьте!

Originally Posted by Wowik

Originally Posted by shadow1

Try pronouncing здравствуйте

Все произносят:
Здрасьте!

Некоторые более культурные особи произносят "Здраствуйте".

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Некоторые более культурные особи произносят "Здраствуйте".

Когда здороваюсь с одним педагогом, я выговариваю каждую букву: "Здравствуйте, Владимир Анатольевич". И очень-очень боюсь запнуться
Но с другими я здороваюсь не так старательно

Близким друзьям я говорю, "Здарова, карова..."

Я "Здрасьте" вообще не люблю - звучит как-то по-детски. Всегда говорю "Здравствуйте" - длинно, сложно, но зато солидно

Originally Posted by DDT

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.

I didnt know that the Lord has a British accent...

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!

Without being told how to pronounce a particular 'ough' combination, there is no way a non-native speaker can 'guess' how to pronounce it.

You are exaggerating a bit. There aren't many of such combinations.
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

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.

Let me give you an example - imagine you have never seen the English word 'banana' - how would you say it?

Sorry, I can't imagine this. I just know how to pronounce it and it's great

I'm more concerned about article usage than pronunciation. By the way, what do your students think about article usage?

Originally Posted by Storebror

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!

What about the schwa vowel? It's probably the most common sound of the Russian language, too.
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.

Originally Posted by Storebror

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!

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.
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

Originally Posted by Vadim84

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

It's usually denoted with an inverted "e" in R-E dictionaries. It's essentially the same as a weak unstressed Russian a/o.

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 -

Originally Posted by Storebror

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.

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.

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).