Thread: IPA Pronunciation for Russian

I understand all that is being said, I truly do, and I only used "zh" as a placeholder, ofcourse i know that the Latin alphabet approximations are not exactly the same as the Russian counterparts. All I am really looking for is a sound clip of [ɛ] and a sound clip of [е] (not reffering to the Russian letter е). This is as my problem lies with the fact I can't isolate the sound in either лес or весь and they both sound the same to me and the fact with all the rest of the sounds I am unfamiliar with I have no reference, only writing and tongue positions which are confusing as hell :P

I have actually been subject to a lot of Russian as I use the Rosetta Stone program and talk often with a Russian native on skype. I have become good at saying certain words but it would just help me sleep better if I understood it and then could copy the rules onto all new words I come across, look at the word, analyse if its ɛ or е and put it into practice. Obviously like I said this is just a small sound but with such things as the sound of а and о it is more useful.

ShakeyX, I think you took my IPA advice way too seriously. If you can't really see any substantial difference between [ɛ] and [е], - OK, that's the point: just use the sound from "red". Russians have only one conceptual "Eh"-like sound, which is realised slightly differenty depending on surrounding sounds.

It would be another story if you were to generate synthesized speech. In that case playing the EXACT sound from лес in the word весь would lead to a somewhat unnatural result for an ear trained to hear normal Russian. If you insist, sound example for [ɛ] demonstrates a "generic" Э i.e. if you were to ask me how "э" sounds in Russian, I would say it whis way.

As for the soft/hard vowels, calling them so is a convention in some books. In reality, Russians tend to only differentiate between six vowel sounds: А, И, У, Э, О, Ы. Now, there are soft and hard variations for consonants. OK, consonants before И always become soft, and consonants before Ы always remain hard. What about numerous words where consonants become soft before А or, say, Э? You have a choice: either introduce 14 more consonant letters - or reuse vowels, which are smaller in number (or use Ь each time, which would be a disaster for Russian). Russian takes latter approach. 4 more symbols for vowels are introduced: Я = йа/ьа, Ю = йу/ью, Е = йэ/ьэ and Ё=йо/ьо.*** If such a vowel letter is word-initial or comes right after some other vowel, it starts with Й (яблоко ~ /йаблака/). Otherwise it just softens previous consonant**** (unless a consonant doesn't have a soft counterpart, like Ж/Ш/Ц) like this: ветер ~ /в'эт'ир/. И is a naturally softening vowel, its "hard" counterpart is Ы (which sounds pretty different).
*** I have written Э=йэ/ьэ and so this way just for sake of clarity. In actual Russian orthography soft sign + vowel means BOTH softening a consonant AND adding Й. For example: бульон = /бул'йон/
**** In many foreign borrowings Е stands for Э and doesn't soften previous consonant: термос /`тэрмас/, экзодерма /экза`дэрма/, интернет /интэр`нэт/. As you can see, it is mostly for dentals (Т/Д/Н).

Which browser should I use to hear those sounds on the web page? Neither Firefox nor Opera can do and Chromium just crashes.