Thread: Need help ensuring adequate pronunciation. =/

I am very new to Russian (I've only been studying a week) and I am learning from a book -- Russian: A Self-Teaching Guide. I am not completely happy with it and plan to purchase some language learning software as soon as I can afford it. However, that won't be for awhile, and so as of recently, I've been trying to memorize a lot of vocabulary from the lists that my book provides me. I keep doing the stupidest things, however. I'll remember how to write a word using the Cyrillic alphabet, that's usually no problem, but the only way I can remember the word is to recall a horrible pronunciation of whatever word it is, rather than something close to what the pronunciation actually is. I think I'm doing this because I'm not very confident in my pronunciation at this point, and I don't have any references to check myself against. For instance, I was trying to memorize the word философ, and I can get the letters out right, but when I say it in my mind I always say "philosph". Now, when I try to pronounce it correctly, I say something like fil-o'-sef. Is that correct? I'm pretty sure that the whole philosph business is just a safeguard. I also know that I'm still a little confused about hard and soft consonants, and that could be marring my progress quite a bit. Any suggestions or pronunciation exercises you could recommend?

(I'm probably also a little spoiled by m-w.com's pronunciation sound clips, I do believe -- if only I could find something similar in Russian. :D).

fil-o'-sef and philosph dont sound terribly different to me...

Maybe you can try listening to music.
http://www.russiandvd.com/store/
You can find the lyrics at this link
http://www.miditext.ru/lyrics/ru/

Here are some bards with lyrics
http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=5256

As recent newbie to Russian, I recommend you spend $14 on Pronounce It Perfectly In Russian.

This book and cassette describes, diagrams, and demonstrates the proper tongue position for every sound. This is extremely useful, because the relaxed tongue position for speaking Russian is dramatically different than for speaking English. I'm really glad I got this book when I was first starting out, because it has saved me a lot of effort and frustration. And my teacher was really surprised at how good my pronunciation had become after just a day or two of working with this book.

To get you started, here's the big first step:

In English, we form consonants by bringing the tip of the tongue up to the hard palate (e.g. "T") or the upper teeth (e.g. "Th"). But in Russian, the tip of the tongue usually just rests against the lower teeth (or at the bottom of the upper teeth), and consonants are formed by arching the tongue up to reach the palate. So it's the area on your tongue starting about an inch (2 cm) back from the tip that actually touches the palate and creates most of the consonants. Once you start doing that, the soft consonants come naturally, and the eee sound mixed with the consonant comes naturally.

For example, "сколько" (how many). For now, force yourself to keep the tip of your tongue against your lower teeth. The S and L sounds are created with the tongue arching up to touch the palate just above and behind the upper teeth. You should immediately notice how your S sound is slightly softer, and how easily you can get that eee sound mixed in with the L.

Next, try "дети" (children). If you pronounce the D by arching your tongue up to the palate, the "ye" sound of the e comes automatically.

Another fun word to practice is "долларов" (dollars). If you pronounce the L as you do in English, it's impossible to flip the R properly. But if you use the arche of your tongue to make the L, the flipped R can happen naturally. And my experience was, once I found the position of the L that made the flipped R easy, lo and behold, my "O" vowels suddenly sounded Russian too.

Disclaimer: I'm just another beginning student, and not an expert on pronunciation. The above is just what seems to work for me. For best results, try the book, and find a native speaker to guide you.

Originally Posted by Tom

Disclaimer: I'm just another beginning student, and not an expert on pronunciation. The above is just what seems to work for me. For best results, try the book, and find a native speaker to guide you.

Great explanations, I think!

I learned pronunciation in English listening English songs, that worked perfectly with me. And it helped to increase my vocabulary. I would advocate this method to anybody.

Ok, here is some advice. The incorrectly named "soft vowels" [я ё е и ю] are only pronounced as ya, yo, ye and yoo when they start words and when thet follow vowels. After those consonants which are either always soft or which have a soft face, the English "y" sound is dropped! The vowel serves to merely indicate that the preceding consonant is palatalized!! Take неделя. This word is not [n'jed'jel'ja], nothing close actually. Because the е and я merely indicate palatization after a consonant, and because unstressed е, и and ы almost always reduce to [i], and я to [ə], the word is [n'id'el'ə]

About vowel reduction... [а я о] usually reduce to ə when unstressed (ё is always stressed in native words). There are a few exceptions, but generally following this rule is a must. all of [е э и ы] reduce to [i] unstressed. That means that there should never be and ye ye sound going on outside of the stress. Even if a e meets the qualification of having a йот (polish j, English y), it is already being reduced to [i], which is merely a long form of й, and will envelop any possible йот sound.

Originally Posted by Geoduck

Ok, here is some advice. The incorrectly named "soft vowels" [я ё е и ю] are only pronounced as ya, yo, ye and yoo when they start words and when thet follow vowels. After those consonants which are either always soft or which have a soft face, the English "y" sound is dropped! The vowel serves to merely indicate that the preceding consonant is palatalized!! Take неделя. This word is not [n'jed'jel'ja], nothing close actually. Because the е and я merely indicate palatization after a consonant, and because unstressed е, и and ы almost always reduce to [i], and я to [ə], the word is [n'id'el'ə]

About vowel reduction... [а я о] usually reduce to ə when unstressed (ё is always stressed in native words). There are a few exceptions, but generally following this rule is a must. all of [е э и ы] reduce to [i] unstressed. That means that there should never be and ye ye sound going on outside of the stress. Even if a e meets the qualification of having a йот (polish j, English y), it is already being reduced to [i], which is merely a long form of й, and will envelop any possible йот sound.

Very nice post actually, these things are pretty much the most defining, obvious and consistent features of English accent in Russian. It's probably just as consistent and just as funny for us as the Hindi (indenglish) accent is for americans (think Apu).

Originally Posted by Tom

As recent newbie to Russian, I recommend you spend $14 on Pronounce It Perfectly In Russian.

This book and cassette describes, diagrams, and demonstrates the proper tongue position for every sound. This is extremely useful, because the relaxed tongue position for speaking Russian is dramatically different than for speaking English. I'm really glad I got this book when I was first starting out, because it has saved me a lot of effort and frustration. And my teacher was really surprised at how good my pronunciation had become after just a day or two of working with this book.

To get you started, here's the big first step:

In English, we form consonants by bringing the tip of the tongue up to the hard palate (e.g. "T") or the upper teeth (e.g. "Th"). But in Russian, the tip of the tongue usually just rests against the lower teeth (or at the bottom of the upper teeth), and consonants are formed by arching the tongue up to reach the palate. So it's the area on your tongue starting about an inch (2 cm) back from the tip that actually touches the palate and creates most of the consonants. Once you start doing that, the soft consonants come naturally, and the eee sound mixed with the consonant comes naturally.

For example, "сколько" (how many). For now, force yourself to keep the tip of your tongue against your lower teeth. The S and L sounds are created with the tongue arching up to touch the palate just above and behind the upper teeth. You should immediately notice how your S sound is slightly softer, and how easily you can get that eee sound mixed in with the L.

Next, try "дети" (children). If you pronounce the D by arching your tongue up to the palate, the "ye" sound of the e comes automatically.

Another fun word to practice is "долларов" (dollars). If you pronounce the L as you do in English, it's impossible to flip the R properly. But if you use the arche of your tongue to make the L, the flipped R can happen naturally. And my experience was, once I found the position of the L that made the flipped R easy, lo and behold, my "O" vowels suddenly sounded Russian too.

Disclaimer: I'm just another beginning student, and not an expert on pronunciation. The above is just what seems to work for me. For best results, try the book, and find a native speaker to guide you.

That is an absolutely brilliant post, possibly the first explanation of pronunciation I've seen on this site that'll actually make sense no matter what flavour/ flavor of English the learner is coming from.

Good work!

Originally Posted by Pioner

I learned pronunciation in English listening English songs, that worked perfectly with me. And it helped to increase my vocabulary. I would advocate this method to anybody.

It is a good method, but I'd say that for most people it is probably insufficient. There are features in the language that a non-native speaker would usually not notice or would not pay attention to unless specifically instructed to.
It is harder for me to suggest what these would be in Russian. But in English for me there were quite a few things. such as:

-I couldnt detect even something as obvious as the difference between the vowel sounds in 'food' and in 'good'
-Also the difference between russian 'p' and 'k' and their english analogs, and a related issue with an english vs russian 't' (which I did notice, but still didnt pronounce right).
-the much less common vowel reduction in English and the importance of vowel length. These still require a bit of a concious effort on my part.

No matter how often I heard the english 'L', I was not able to make it right either because its quite different from either the soft or the hard russian "L". The middle consonant in 'water' was not something I pronounced right either. And some other things. All of these after 6 years in the US, pretty much daily communicating in English.

So I'd say if you want good pronunciation, professional instruction is the way to go, although good books definitely help. You will be able to teach yourself from tapes and songs, but only to some degree.

laxxy, I totally agree, I did not use songs only, but they helped a lot. I read the way to prononce as well from books, I found somewhere that when you prononce English 'p' you should shut down a candle next to your mouth. And so on. But songs gave me a lot of practise, which in result helped that I could speak to a foringer when I had my first chance quite fluently (not perfect at all, but we could communicate).

Originally Posted by Pioner

laxxy, I totally agree, I did not use songs only, but they helped a lot. I read the way to prononce as well from books, I found somewhere that when you prononce English 'p' you should shut down a candle next to your mouth. And so on. But songs gave me a lot of practise, which in result helped that I could speak to a foringer when I had my first chance quite fluently (not perfect at all, but we could communicate).

Yes, you are right. The things I was talking about are kinda finer things that do not really affect understanding too much.

Originally Posted by scotcher

Originally Posted by Tom

As recent newbie to Russian, I recommend you spend $14 on Pronounce It Perfectly In Russian.

This book and cassette describes, diagrams, and demonstrates the proper tongue position for every sound. This is extremely useful, because the relaxed tongue position for speaking Russian is dramatically different than for speaking English. I'm really glad I got this book when I was first starting out, because it has saved me a lot of effort and frustration. And my teacher was really surprised at how good my pronunciation had become after just a day or two of working with this book.

To get you started, here's the big first step:

In English, we form consonants by bringing the tip of the tongue up to the hard palate (e.g. "T") or the upper teeth (e.g. "Th"). But in Russian, the tip of the tongue usually just rests against the lower teeth (or at the bottom of the upper teeth), and consonants are formed by arching the tongue up to reach the palate. So it's the area on your tongue starting about an inch (2 cm) back from the tip that actually touches the palate and creates most of the consonants. Once you start doing that, the soft consonants come naturally, and the eee sound mixed with the consonant comes naturally.

For example, "сколько" (how many). For now, force yourself to keep the tip of your tongue against your lower teeth. The S and L sounds are created with the tongue arching up to touch the palate just above and behind the upper teeth. You should immediately notice how your S sound is slightly softer, and how easily you can get that eee sound mixed in with the L.

Next, try "дети" (children). If you pronounce the D by arching your tongue up to the palate, the "ye" sound of the e comes automatically.

Another fun word to practice is "долларов" (dollars). If you pronounce the L as you do in English, it's impossible to flip the R properly. But if you use the arche of your tongue to make the L, the flipped R can happen naturally. And my experience was, once I found the position of the L that made the flipped R easy, lo and behold, my "O" vowels suddenly sounded Russian too.

Disclaimer: I'm just another beginning student, and not an expert on pronunciation. The above is just what seems to work for me. For best results, try the book, and find a native speaker to guide you.

That is an absolutely brilliant post, possibly the first explanation of pronunciation I've seen on this site that'll actually make sense no matter what flavour/ flavor of English the learner is coming from.

Good work!

Except that in English the letter T is not formed from the tongue being in contact with the hard palate, but with the alveolar ridge. T is not retroflex.
And Th is formed by placing the tongue between the upper and lower teeth.

Also the statment that most English consonants are formed this way is not true. Neither is the statement that most Russian consonants are formed by arching the tongue to make contact with the palate.

The rest is good though. The Deti, Skol'ko and Dollarov bits.

Conceptually, in terms of helping explain how to sound more Russian to an English speaker, it works.

It may not be accurate to anyone with as much of an obsession with theoretical phonetics such as you, but since there no-one else on the entire bloomin' planet who falls into that category, it's a small caveat.

Fact is, that post was infinitely more useful than all of the hundreds of posts you have made on the subject of pronunciation since you've been coming here, put together.

Originally Posted by scotcher

Conceptually, in terms of helping explain how to sound more Russian to an English speaker, it works.

It may not be accurate to anyone with as much of an obsession with theoretical phonetics such as you, but since there no-one else on the entire bloomin' planet who falls into that category, it's a small caveat.

Fact is, that post was infinitely more useful than all of the hundreds of posts you have made on the subject of pronunciation since you've been coming here, put together.

The fact is, the parts I highlighted are not accurate to anyone.
E.g. T is produced with the tip of the tonuge in contact with the hard palate. It's a lie, I tell you!

Geoduck, a couple of comments on your great post --

>[я ё е и ю] are only pronounced as ya, yo, ye and yoo....
the /j/ does appear after hard consonants: подъём, объятие etc. [padj

It's a valuable clarification. I used the term "hard palate" to include both the hard palate and the "alveolar ridge". A quick web search shows up many medical references that use "hard palate" to refer to everything between the front teeth and the soft palate, so my description wasn't really in error. (And far more people know the term "palate" than know "aveolar ridge".) But it did make my post somewhat ambiguous, so could lead to confusion for those who consider the aveolar ridge and the hard palate as two distinct objects, rather than one being a feature of the other. Technical descriptions of diction (such as IPA's for singers) refer to them as two distinct parts of the anatomy.

Also, I neglected to say "most consonants", creating an over-generalization which could confuse future readers. ("I use the tip of my tongue to make a K sound in English? Holy Tow, I've been speating trazy since I was a tid! Aw, Futt!") But I figured most people would figure that out.