Thread: Russian Pronunciation

OK

When stressed:
О is always [О],
А is always [А].

When unstressed, those two phonems become undistinguishable due to the process of reduction (a phonem is a base phonetic unit of a language).
To put it bluntly, they sound somewhat close to a weak [А]. That's what all Russians know

To be more precise, we have to admit there are two degrees of reduction. No Russian (except lingusts and philologists) is aware about this fact!

1^st degree of reduction (reduced, but not too much) always occurs in the syllable which immediately precedes the stressed syllable. О and А in such syllables are pronounced [ɐ] (this vowel is almost [a], but pronounced with the mouth slightly less open).
Please find a detailed description of this vowel (with audio!) here:
Near-open central vowel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Examples:
самá [sɐ-`ma]
водá [vɐ-`da]
катóк [kɐ-`tok]
акнó [ɐ-`kno]

2^nd degree of reduction (strongly reduced) occurs in all other unstressed positions.

In the examples below I underlined the vowels with the first reduction degree, and did not underline the vowels with the second reduction degree. So you can see the unstressed vowels which are not underlined are reduced stronger (i.e. pronounced weaker).

О and А in such syllables are pronounced [ə] (this vowel is usually called schwa).
Please find a detailed description of this vowel (with audio!) here:
Mid-central vowel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Pre-stressed syllables which are farther away from the stressed one (unlike the examples above):

хорошó [xə-rɐ-`ʂo]
карандáш [kə-rɐn-`daʂ]
сапоги́ [sə-pɐ-`g<sup>j</sup>i]
покажи́ [pə-kɐ-`ʐɨ]

• Any post-stressed syllable:

кóлос [`ko-ləs]
кóмпас [`kom-pəs]
потóмок [pɐ-`to-mək]
закáзано [zɐ-`ka-zə-nə]

Please also note: what I explained is not just a “reading rule”, that is rather a general pronunciation rule, i.e. how russian phonetics works.
And please note: most of the native speakers are not aware about the difference between [a], [ɐ] and [ə], they just think it is [a] sound

There are 2 more nuances about that, but they are not too important for the whole picture, so I will write about them later.

Also, by the way, there's a classic Russian children's novel (and an animated adaption of it) called В стране невыученных уроков ("In the Land of Unlearned Lessons") -- if you're familiar with The Phantom Tollbooth, the premise is rather similar, though the Russian book is aimed at younger kids and the humor is therefore a bit less sophisticated.

Anyway, the hero of the story is a lazy Soviet schoolboy who gets dragged to a fantastic world of talking textbooks, who challenge him on basic geography and the proper use of commas as well as the spellings of common words like холодильник ("refrigerator"), which is pronounced хəладИльник. Along the way, he learns some useful tricks and mnemonics: for example, the noun холод ("coldness") is stressed on the first "о" and the adjective холодный ("cold") is stressed on the second, so this gives him some clues about how to spell the word for "refrigerator."

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Also, by the way, there's a classic Russian children's novel (and an animated adaption of it) called В стране невыученных уроков ("In the Land of Unlearned Lessons") --

I would translate it as
In The Land of Unfinished Homework