Thread: Здравствуйте Confusing

Originally Posted by kozyablo

здравствуйте from old fashion здравие (now здоровье - health).
When you say Здравствуйте! you really say = I wish a health to you!

I've been recently learning about relationships between Modern Russian (MR) and Church Slavonic (CS). One of the relationships is город град pairs. This pair здоровье здравие looks like one of these MR - CS pairs.
Interesting!

And although it can sound similar to the "ch" in "cheese", that "ch"

But ветер is by no means вечер.

Originally Posted by Marcus

But ветер is by no means вечер.

And thin is by no means tin (or sin), and bad is by no means bed. But for Russians who are new to learning English, those words can seem almost like homophones!

It just takes time for the ear and tongue to get used to hearing and pronouncing the distinctions. And after Ammonite has learned to clearly pronounce the difference between ть and ч, he'll wonder how he ever got them confused.

And in the Spanish word mañana ("tomorrow" or "morning'), the ñ is actually very close to a "soft н" in Russian, while the n is close to a "hard н".

I'm smacking myself on the forehead because I overlooked a native English example -- the difference (in some dialects of English) between "do" and "dew", or between the initial sounds of "tool" and "tulip".

And the reason I overlooked this example is that in my own dialect of US English, I pronounce "do" and "dew" identically, and the "t" sounds in "tool" and "tulip" are also the same for me. But for other English speakers, the initial sounds in "do" and "tool" are similar to the hard д and т in Russian, while the initial sounds in "dew" and "tulip" are similar to the soft Russian consonants.