Thread: How To Say учусь?

This to me seems a difficult word for an Engllish speaker to pronounce. My teacher gave us an an English quivalent that sounds very close to учусь: shoe chew. Both of these word sounds the same to me.

Is this one of the words that is hard for an English speaker to pronounce?

Let's break down this word.

First of all, tell me which letter comes at the beginning.

The letter that is at the beginning of the word is у - so, that would be a long "oo". Gosh . . . textbook's at home . . .

Based on this, what can you say about "shoe chew"? If "shoe chew" begins with a "sh", and not an "oo", then it must be wrong.

Чусь - please ignore the soft sign for now, we will make it "чус". How do you pronounce this?

That would be pronounced "choos"

Right. So put together У and ЧУС, what do you get out?

"oochoos"

I think what the teacher was probably trying to point out that you use the sound from "shoe", minus "sh", and add that to "chew", plus "s". I'll have to ask my husband - maybe I misunderstood the teacher.

Ehhh...you can go with the "minus this plus that" method, or just learn the phonetic values of the letters and put them together. It all depends on what you understand and remember better.

shoe chew : шучу (I joke)

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

shoe chew : шучу (I joke)

The way I pronounce chew it would be written шучю

Yes, but you would be wrong!

шучу is the correct spelling, there is nothing called шучю

I know that, but spelling "shoe chew" with russian letters would come out as шучю

If you think that "учусь" is hard, just wait.

Originally Posted by Darobat

I know that, but spelling "shoe chew" with russian letters would come out as шучю

Darobat you are wrong, because Ч is always soft, чу is pronounced чю anyway.

Similarly Ш is always hard, so шю sounds the same as шу.

Therefore шучу шючю шучю шючу all sound exactly the same. But the letter ю can't be written after ш and ч anyways.

The word chew into russian would be Чью

EDIT. Actually, I saw choo in english, so my pronunciation can't be accurately rendered in Russian, because you can't get a hard Ч.

Originally Posted by Pravit

Чусь - please ignore the soft sign for now

BTW some natives speak the same way, they change a soft consonant in the end of verbs into the hard one.