Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Pronouniation of "j"

  1. #1
    Administrator MasterAdmin's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    MasterRussian.com
    Posts
    1,730
    Rep Power
    16

    Pronouniation of "j"

    Whenever Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian words are written in Latin, is "j" always pronounced as "zh" or it can be "y" (as in "yes") as well? I am interested in words like:

    nedelja/nedjelja/nedzhelja
    devojka/djevojka/dzhevojka
    gdje
    uvijek
    rijeka
    lijep
    ovdje
    ~ Мастерадминов Мастерадмин Мастерадминович ~

  2. #2
    Подающий надежды оратор
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Malta
    Posts
    16
    Rep Power
    14
    It's always, always pronounced "y" as in "yes"
    'Only the best people fight against all obstacles in pursuit of happiness'

    "...everywhere he goes, including where he lives, also strikes him as foreign; the point is, he's always the foreigner." ~ John Irving

  3. #3
    Guest
    By itself is it pronounced like the Y in yes, it never makes anything even close to a z sound. But when preceded by a L, it makes a sound which doesn't exist in the English language. I am unsure if it exists in the Russian language. In Serbian Cyrillic, you would not write lj, you would write љ for example недеља but in Croatian/Bosnian they use latin so they have to write lj.

    By the way I have never heard the words nedzhelja or dzhevojka with the z in them, so either you mispelled them or they are from some obscure village dialect that 99% of people wouldn't understand.

  4. #4
    Guest
    By the way I have never heard the words nedzhelja or dzhevojka with the z in them, so either you mispelled them or they are from some obscure village dialect that 99% of people wouldn't understand.
    ouch.

  5. #5
    Подающий надежды оратор
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    New Jersey
    Posts
    26
    Rep Power
    14
    Maybe the result of the confusion is that some people write đ as dj when using English latin letters. Those words do not have a dž (same as Russian дж) or đ (similar to dž but softer) in them.

    J is the same as the german j or English y. The letters lj and nj is just a soft l and soft n sound respectively such as ль and нь in Russian.

    Hope this helps.
    "In Wenceslas Square, in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head, and says: 'I know just what you mean.'"
    -Milan Kundera

  6. #6

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 14
    Last Post: March 24th, 2010, 04:03 PM
  2. Replies: 2
    Last Post: March 16th, 2010, 12:13 PM
  3. How to say "Bless our home" and "Happy Holidays" in Russian?
    By Ruby Daniels in forum How do you Say... in Russian?
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: December 19th, 2009, 03:29 PM
  4. Replies: 2
    Last Post: February 17th, 2009, 08:07 PM
  5. British "property" vs. "realty" or "
    By Propp in forum Learn English - Грамматика, переводы, словарный запас
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: November 12th, 2003, 03:20 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  


Russian Lessons                           

Russian Tests and Quizzes            

Russian Vocabulary