Originally Posted by Lordlofty
Thanks all for the response.
I of course want to learn the standard pronunciation where possible. It's likely that on the recordings I have, the speaker was using 'real speach' (as ZZC put it) rather than standard. In fact the entire "ую" section of "следующий" came out as more of an English-style "eh": Sled-eh-shee is how I hear it. Although I suspect my ears just aren't fully accustomed to Russian as yet.
Thankyou Quartz for the link but my Russian isn't that good yet, hehe.
From what I can gather, it seems that words with unspoken letters (intended or via casual speach) are idividual occurences, rather than examples of a grammatical rule. Would I be correct in saying this?