Thread: ого and eго

Originally Posted by pushvv

Also there are words like "Бог". I am really not sure how to read "Г" in this case =) There are variations.
Пирог, сапог and so on. Since "Г" is not in the ending here it is "К". Пироги - it is "Г" since vowel is after, but "Г" is not in ending.

I was taught in my college Russian classes that пирог and сапог should be pronounced пирок and сапок, but Бог is an exception -- the "Г" is pronounced as a "voiced" letter "Х" (a sound for which there is no letter in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet!). And the vocative Господи! also begins with a "voiced Х" sound -- not a "Г" or "К", and not a normal unvoiced "Х".

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

I was taught in my college Russian classes that пирог and сапог should be pronounced пирок and сапок, but Бог is an exception -- the "Г" is pronounced as a "voiced" letter "Х" (a sound for which there is no letter in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet!). And the vocative Господи! also begins with a "voiced Х" sound -- not a "Г" or "К", and not a normal unvoiced "Х".

Throbert,
Your college teachers of Russian taught you well. Indeed, DEVOICING (or: "devocalization") of voiced Russian consonants /б/, /в/, /г/, д/, /ж/, /з/ in the end of Russian words is a norm. You provided several good examples to illustrate this devoicing.

However, the tendency to pronounce the inflexions "-ого" as /ава/ and "-его" as /ива/ is a different rule, because 1) there is no devoicing of "-г-" to /к/, and 2) this rule applies not just to any word, but to adjectives, pronouns and ordinal numerals, as was shown earlier.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

... but Бог is an exception -- the "Г" is pronounced as a "voiced" letter "Х" (a sound for which there is no letter in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet!). And the vocative Господи! also begins with a "voiced Х" sound -- not a "Г" or "К", and not a normal unvoiced "Х".

It's rare for me to hear Бог with "voiced" Х, usually we say "Бох", with "unvoiced" one, for example "Да Бог его знает! (Да Бох ево знаит!"). But in "Одному Богу известно, когда это произойдёт!" г is g. Господи with the "voiced" X sounds a bit просторечиво, I myself say it Gospody, with usual g.

Originally Posted by Barsuk

It's rare for me to hear Бог with "voiced" Х, usually we say "Бох", with "unvoiced" one, for example "Да Бог его знает! (Да Бох ево знаит!"). But in "Одному Богу известно, когда это произойдёт!" г is g. Господи with the "voiced" X sounds a bit просторечиво, I myself say it Gospody, with usual g.

Thanks for this explanation, Barsuk. And, by the way, I love the Eleanor Roosevelt quotation in your .sig! But how would you translate it into Russian to preserve the "aphoristic/proverbial" quality? (I found several different Russian variations of this quotation by Googling, but I'm really not sure which one sounds the best.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

I love the Eleanor Roosevelt quotation in your .sig! But how would you translate it into Russian to preserve the "aphoristic/proverbial" quality?

Спасибо Элеоноре Рузвельт!
Честно говоря, не пытался переводить это на русский. Придумаем? Мой вариант: "Чай, не собака, не виляй хвостом, коли не просят.".