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

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.