Thread: Soft "Р" vs hard "Р"

Originally Posted by LurkingDarkness

Thank you very much! The riddle is helping a lot! One more thing, how do you do soft and hard "Л"?

In English: Luke is a hard L. Lieu (as in 'in lieu of') is a soft L. (Lieu is not 'loo')

Originally Posted by Seraph

In English: Luke is a hard L. Lieu (as in 'in lieu of') is a soft L. (Lieu is not 'loo')

Actually, in US English, "lieu" is quite often pronounced with a hard L, making it a homophone with "loo".

Similarly with "duke" (герцог), "tulip" (тюльпан), "dew" (роса), and "new"/"news" (новый/новости) -- in US English (or some dialects of US English), the consonants before the "u" are more often pronounced hard (ду, ту, ну) but in UK English, they may be pronounced soft (дю, тю, ню).

I would also add that in US English, although the hard pronunciation is frequently heard, using the soft consonants for these words also sounds "normal", and not "affected". (Using British or French-style pronunciation can sometimes sound affected or grandiose in US English, but not with the words I listed above.)

I hope this doesn't make things more confusing for LurkingDarkness -- my point was that if you're aware that in some dialects of English, the words "do" (делать) and "dew" (роса) are pronounced quite differently (with a "hard Д" in the first word and a "soft Д" in the second one) then the same basic difference applies to "hard Л" and "soft Л".

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Actually, in US English, "lieu" is quite often pronounced with a hard L, making it a homophone with "loo". &c.

American English is shifting away from the soft consonants, as in lieu and dew. I should have mentioned that. Throbert has complete agreement from me about these points. People that use the hard pronunciation variants sometimes have a hard time noticing the difference between the hard and soft. They can't tell what softness is.

Originally Posted by Marcus

Anyway, all of them are wrong sounds in Russian. "d" in "dew" can be pronounced like English j, can't it? This sound is neither hard nor soft and does not exist in Russian. ...

You can hear many variants, including the Russian type of soft d.

Some other consonants in English sometimes in soft mode: dueling mewling pew rue imbue (some of these also heard in hard mode) whew! No Russian soft w, I know.