Thread: What is and what is not important in Russian pronunciation

I saw many people paid much attention to vowel reduction and voising-devoicing consonants. It's not so important while speaking because lack of vowel reduction does not impact comprehension. Many people have problems with ы sound. But ы and и are often regarded as allophones. ы appears after a hard consonant and и appears after a soft one. So it is more important to pronounce the consonant correctly.

I'm not entirely sure if I agree with this. It is understandable what you are saying; but when speaking, to my knowledge vowel reduction is huge. And it can make or break your conversation. You say that it is more important to pronounce the consonant correctly.

What about the verbs:

бить

быть

Both of the vowels are following a hard consonant. And if they mean entirely different things, so it seems like vowel reduction would be very important.

Originally Posted by krwright13

What about the verbs:
бить
быть
Both of the vowels are following a hard consonant. And if they mean entirely different things, so it seems like vowel reduction would be very important.

Ok, I see some confusion here.
Ы and И have nothing to do with vowel reduction. They are different vowels, and so they affect previous consonants in different ways. Or rather Ы does not affect them at all, and И palatalize them.
It means that most consonants in Russian can be EITHER soft OR hard, depending on the following vowel.

In your example the first "б" is soft (palatalized by following И) - and is pronounced as such, and the second "б" is hard.

Vowels that palatalize previous consonants: ё, и, ю, е, я.
Their alter egos that DO NOT palatalize previous consonants: ы, у, э, а.
For example,
люк (hatch) - лук (onion)

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Vowels that palatalize previous consonants: ё, и, ю, е, я.
Their alter egos that DO NOT palatalize previous consonants: ы, у, э, а.
For example,
люк (hatch) - лук (onion)

There is another important thing to be said about this. The vowel after the soft "л" (л') in люк is not "у". When I hear foreigners speaking Russian I get the impression they are trying to say things like л'ук, and this is very difficult to do, and even if you succeed it won't come out right anyway. It's like trying to pronounce в'ыть instead of вить. The vowel in люк is almost as much different from "у" as "и" is different from "ы".

и-ы are two differenct vowels. However the vowel sound in 'люк' is indeed 'у' . It's not a German ü . When someone pronounce words like л'ук and sound awkward because of pause between 'л' and 'у' ... well, just don't make pause then.

I thought it was impossible to pronounce л'у smoothly, but it seems the French can do it (люблю at 0:20 and 0:53):



Of course, it still sounds wrong, because of "y". The vowel should be close to this :



A native speaker (0:28 ):

One more thing - intonation. In Russian it is more important than in English especially in questions.

Very useful informations...

Very useful informations...

Are you joking?

Thank you for this explanation. I've been struggling with this for a long time, based on my own predispositions to 'accent' growing up in the USA... Long, *long* before I attempted to learn any foreign language, I learned from TV/media the set of "accents" for different European places.. The general Londoner accent with insinuated "ahh" r's, the French soft rolled "rrr," the Latin-language sharp-angled r "eh-reh;" and in that set of stereotyped accents (for stereotypes is what they were), the Russian "l" was an "L", a very thick and heavy sounding "L" that signified a Russian accent.. It seems Russian "L" 's come in all shapes and sizes.. for "люк" it seems the palatial opposite of the Russian (stereotyped) hard "L" - name the soft "l" that might be used in pronouncing "really" with a heavy French accent, sounds like it would be more fitting for this word... When I first tried to learn pronunciation, the hard "L" next to a "yuh" sound, as the beginning of ю or ё, was hard to pull off without sounding like "lee-oo" or "looo"(ie either pronounced too slowly or skipped entirely the "yuh" sound)... but when I try a soft "l" as in French-accent "really," then my clumsy American lips can say люк without sounding too bad.. imho.. =)

Thanks again for this explanation, I can say as a native English speaker it helps me to understand better how not to butcher the Russian language.. =)

Check this video too! These kids repeat "ля-ля-ля" over and over again (it's a sol-fa lesson). There's also a very nice and clear rolling 'R'.

Palatalized (soft) consonants here are: ми, соль, ля, си

Originally Posted by Marcus

Are you joking?

. No, I was not joking , you can trust in me.