Thread: Iotated vowels

I have some questions about iotated vowels (ye, ya, yo, yu). I know that they make the iotated sound when they are in the first letter or initial position as well as after vowels. The thing is, I'm not exactly sure what that means. Could anybody help explain that for me.
Some things with these are easy to figure out- either because the Russian word is so common that you have got to pick up on it (ie нет (nyet) meaning no) or because it's so obvious (such as Я as in Я Михайл. (ya as in ya Mikhail meaning I as in I am Mikhail).Others, however, are not so easy to figue out such as the e in Сделано в ссср (sd(e or ye)lano v sssr (meaning Made in the USSR). I asked a friend that has some background in Russian as well as other Cyrillic based Eastern European languages, but he wasn't familiar enough with Russian to explain it to me. Could one of you please help me?
Спасибо! (Thanks!)
Joe

I'm guessing "iotated" is prissy phoneticist lingo for "makes a ye/ya/yo/yu sound" instead of "soften preceding consonant + a/e/o/u." Add a word to your vocabulary list, TATY.

Originally Posted by Pravit

I'm guessing "iotated" is prissy phoneticist lingo for "makes a ye/ya/yo/yu sound" instead of "soften preceding consonant + a/e/o/u." Add a word to your vocabulary list, TATY.

It's Jotated (pronounced Yotated).

It means the vowel has an initial Y sound.

Baysickly Е Ё Ю Я are pronounced ye yo yu ya at the beginning of a word, after a vowel, after a znak (hard or soft sign)

When they come after a consonant, the consonant is pronounced soft (palatised) and the unjotated vowel (e o u a) is pronounced after:
Нет = three sound: Soft N + e + hard t
Юля = three sounds: Yu + soft L + a
Тётя = four sounds: Soft T + o + Soft T + a

А что если говорить с грузинским акцентом? И постепенно стараться исправить произношение.

Why would you want to speak like a Georgian? Georgia isn't as good as Azerbaijan, and that is based on fact.

What you think is a "jotated vowel" is really not.

What we have is a particular sound called "semi-vowel" or smth like that, phonemically indicated /j/.

So you have a versus я

Phonemically these are /a/ and /ja/, where the second one, spelled with one Russian letter, is really two phonemes /j/ and /a/.

Words that are spelled with initial Я Е Ё И Ю are really the /j/ followed by a vowel.

Не я, а Юля ела её икру!

[ignoring stress markings here:]

/ja/
/jul'a/
/jela/
/jijo/
/jikru/

NB what I said about /ji/ might not be correct, it may actually be /i/ initially. So it might be /ikru/

But basically, Russian has two ways to spell vowels. There are five vowels, which phonemicists note (we use the slashes to denote phonemes as opposed to brackets, which denote allophones) /a/, /e/, /i/ /o/, /u/.
So you find them spelled initially
анна
эскимо
идёт (but see note above)
он
угол
writing these words phonemically might help:
/anna/
/esk'ima/
/id'ot/
/on/
/ugal/

When those vowels appear written IN INITIAL POSITION as ЯЕИЁЮ they are preceded by the phoneme /j/
/ja/ 'I'
/jemu/ 'to him' really should be /jimu/
/jigolka/ 'needle' but see above
/jop/ (not gonna translate this one)
/juk/ 'south'.

When they occur after consonants, they represent the normal vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ but also show that the preceding consonant is palatalized.

дядя /d'ad'a/
дед /d'et/
дикий /d'ik'ij/
пойдём /pajd'om/
люди /l'ud'i/

In the above phonemic representations I have not indicated stress positions, but I have correctly presented unstressed vowels and expect y'all will know where the stress falls.

Originally Posted by Adept

А что если говорить с грузинским акцентом? И постепенно стараться исправить произношение.

That's what I have done with other languages ie German. That is really a good idea- to start trying to pronounce the language using an easier to pronounce dialect. I know that (with German at least) the more appropriate pronunciation pretty much came on its own (after a while).
A little practice should eventually get it to work. When I started with Spanish, a few years ago, it took a while to actually pronounce ll as in
Me llamo _________ (My name is ________). Now it does actually sounda like the European j as oposed to the letter l!


Спасибо!

Originally Posted by mp510

Originally Posted by Adept

А что если говорить с грузинским акцентом? И постепенно стараться исправить произношение.

That's what I have done with other languages ie German. That is really a good idea- to start trying to pronounce the language using an easier to pronounce dialect. I know that (with German at least) the more appropriate pronunciation pretty much came on its own (after a while).
A little practice should eventually get it to work. When I started with Spanish, a few years ago, it took a while to actually pronounce ll as in
Me llamo _________ (My name is ________). Now it does actually sounda like the European j as oposed to the letter l!


Спасибо!

In parts of Latin America, like Colombia, ll and Y have a slight English J sound in them.

In at least Mexican Spanish the sound /j/ is spelled double-ell.

Me llamo David.

Has no ell sounds in that sentence.

Originally Posted by chaika

In at least Mexican Spanish the sound /j/ is spelled double-ell.

Me llamo David.

Has no ell sounds in that sentence.

By the /j/ sound, do you mean as in English Jam, or as in the German Jan?

By European J, I was referring to the sound made by the German letter J- such as in the name Jan (pronounce Yan)!
Seems prtty straightforward!
I still don't get why ye makes the ye sound in nyet (latin letter spelling).

mp510, don't confuse how we normally write foreign sounds.

Look at the Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and even Putin. How we spell and/or pronounce these names in English is only distantly related to their Russian pronunciation.

The only reason we spell нет as nyet is that it's the closest we can come. It is not how Russians pronounce the word, just how we can spell what we think their pronunciation is. In fact, we ourselves have a different way to spell the sound - think "soviet", where we have an "i" instead of "y". They are the same vowel sound following different consonants.

Soviet has no /i/ in it, Khrushchev has no /k/ in it, no /e/. Gorbachev has no /e/. And the best way to spell Путин in English to make it sound similar to its Russian sound -- poo-teen with stress on the first syllable. I bet you have never seen his name spelled that way!

Buy a textbook, with workbook and CD sound disk. I bet no textbook you can buy will contain the term "iotated vowel." I don't know where that comes from, but it's not from a Russian linguistic, since we (I am a Slavic linguist by training) all know that the sequence is really consonant /j/ plus vowel. (BTW, /j/ is like the J in German Jan, not English jam).

HTH.

With certain consonants the y sound is much more audible than with other consonants, due to the position of the mouth where they are produced.
Soft N has a much more audible y sound than that of soft Z, for example.

Originally Posted by chaika

mp510, don't confuse how we normally write foreign sounds.

Look at the Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and even Putin. How we spell and/or pronounce these names in English is only distantly related to their Russian pronunciation.

The only reason we spell нет as nyet is that it's the closest we can come. It is not how Russians pronounce the word, just how we can spell what we think their pronunciation is. In fact, we ourselves have a different way to spell the sound - think "soviet", where we have an "i" instead of "y". They are the same vowel sound following different consonants.

Soviet has no /i/ in it, Khrushchev has no /k/ in it, no /e/. Gorbachev has no /e/. And the best way to spell Путин in English to make it sound similar to its Russian sound -- poo-teen with stress on the first syllable. I bet you have never seen his name spelled that way!

Buy a textbook, with workbook and CD sound disk. I bet no textbook you can buy will contain the term "iotated vowel." I don't know where that comes from, but it's not from a Russian linguistic, since we (I am a Slavic linguist by training) all know that the sequence is really consonant /j/ plus vowel. (BTW, /j/ is like the J in German Jan, not English jam).

HTH.

He wasn't asking that, he was saying why is there a ye SOUND in nyet. Not why is nyet spelt with a ye.

Originally Posted by chaika

I bet no textbook you can buy will contain the term "iotated vowel." I don't know where that comes from, but it's not from a Russian linguistic, since we (I am a Slavic linguist by training) all know that the sequence is really consonant /j/ plus vowel. (BTW, /j/ is like the J in German Jan, not English jam).

HTH.

This term comes from "Old (Church) Slavonic language" linguistics, where there were "iotated" letters [ja], [je], nasal [ja] (--->я in Russian) and nasal [jo] (----> ю in Russian).

taty, I answered his question when I said:

>The only reason we spell нет as nyet is that it's the closest we can come

Isn't that right?

Originally Posted by Propp

Originally Posted by chaika

I bet no textbook you can buy will contain the term "iotated vowel." I don't know where that comes from, but it's not from a Russian linguistic, since we (I am a Slavic linguist by training) all know that the sequence is really consonant /j/ plus vowel. (BTW, /j/ is like the J in German Jan, not English jam).

HTH.

This term comes from "Old (Church) Slavonic language" linguistics, where there were "iotated" letters [ja], [je], nasal [ja] (--->я in Russian) and nasal [jo] (----> ю in Russian).

You won't see iotated, because the standard spelling is jotated. I've seen jotated in two Russian textbooks and a Ukrainian textbook.

Originally Posted by chaika

taty, I answered his question when I said:

>The only reason we spell нет as nyet is that it's the closest we can come

Isn't that right?

No, because the question he was asking was:
People were saying that when a soft vowel comes after a consonant, the consonant is soffened and the hard vowel is pronounced:
Совет = C + O + Вь + Э + Т

i.e., the y sound of E isn't pronounced separately.
The y sound is only pronounced separately, (the soft vowel is jotated), at the beginning of words, after vowels or znaks.

mp510 then said then why can you clearly hear the y sound in Нет. And the answer I gave was that with certain consonants, when they are softened, the y sound of the soft consonant is more audible than with others.

He didn't say, "why is nyet spelt nyet?". The spelling wasn't in question.

Originally Posted by TATY

Originally Posted by Propp

Originally Posted by chaika

I bet no textbook you can buy will contain the term "iotated vowel." I don't know where that comes from, but it's not from a Russian linguistic, since we (I am a Slavic linguist by training) all know that the sequence is really consonant /j/ plus vowel. (BTW, /j/ is like the J in German Jan, not English jam).

HTH.

This term comes from "Old (Church) Slavonic language" linguistics, where there were "iotated" letters [ja], [je], nasal [ja] (--->я in Russian) and nasal [jo] (----> ю in Russian).

You won't see iotated, because the standard spelling is jotated. I've seen jotated in two Russian textbooks and a Ukrainian textbook.

I have one textbook (Basic Russian by Elizabeth A. Domar) that speells it as iotated. Other ones that I have checked do use jotated ie A Modern Russian Course by GA Birkett.

Another trick is that [а][о][у][э] after soft consonants are not exactly the same as [а][о][у][э] after hard consonants. They are different allophones, if someone knows this word. They are pronounced in the slightly more forward position, and sometimes are represented with two dots in the linquistic transcription.