# Forum Learning Russian Language Pronunciation, Speech & Accent  Confused about soft vowels

## rebmaboss

I learned that the Russian vowels е, ё, ю and я have a distinct y-sound at the beginning of a word and after another vowel.   
At first I thought this meant that there's no "y" sound after a consonant, especially after a native speaker told me that "медленно" is pronounced "MEHD-lee-nah".  However, it seems that in all the pronunciation guides, the "y" sound is included even after consonants. 
Is this because a soft consonant, when pronounced correctly, naturally provides the "y" sound?

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## Боб Уайтман

> I learned that the Russian vowels е, ё, ю and я have a distinct y-sound at the beginning of a word and after another vowel.  
> At first I thought this meant that there's no "y" sound after a consonant, especially after a native speaker told me that "медленно" is pronounced "MEHD-lee-nah". However, it seems that in all the pronunciation guides, the "y" sound is included even after consonants. 
> Is this because a soft consonant, when pronounced correctly, naturally provides the "y" sound?

 It is because that is how the untrained ear of non-natives hears soft consonants  ::  
In fact, медленно does not have any "y" sound! But "м" and "л" are palatalized: ['mje-dljɪ-nnə], where both [mj] and [lj] are palatalized ("soft") consonants. A soft consonant is a single sound, it does not really contain "y", but it is pronounced with the middle part of the tongue raised towards the front palate (during all the time of its pronunciation, not just at the end phase!). 
For more details, see hear: Russian phonology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
The contrast between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants is important in Russian, but English lacks this feature entirely.

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## rebmaboss

> It is because that is how the untrained ear of non-natives hears soft consonants  
> In fact, медленно does not have any "y" sound! But "м" and "л" are palatalized: ['mje-dljɪ-nnə], where both [mj] and [lj] are palatalized ("soft") consonants. A soft consonant is a single sound, it does not really contain "y", but it is pronounced with the middle part of the tongue raised towards the front palate (during all the time of its pronunciation, not just at the end phase!). 
> For more details, see hear: Russian phonology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
> The contrast between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants is important in Russian, but English lacks this feature entirely.

 That makes sense.  So, with palatalization, "ся" is pronounced "ca", and те is pronounced "te", right?  Not "cya" and "tye"?

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## Marcus

> However, it seems that in all the pronunciation guides, the "y" sound is included even after consonants.

 All those "guides" must be burnt, because they mislead learners. The pronunciation of a hard consonant and "y" instead of a soft consonant is a typical mistake. lya will be written лъя, in fact.

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## gRomoZeka

> That makes sense.  So, with palatalization, "ся" is pronounced "ca", and те is pronounced "te", right?  Not "cya" and "tye"?

  Noooo!  "Ся" and "ca" are pronounced differently. You may say, that "ca" + palatalization = "cя", and vice versa, "ся" without palatalization = "са". 
It's important to understand, that there's no such thing as soft vowels, but there are *soft and hard consonants*, and that most Russian consonants can be either hard or soft, depending on the following vowel. It' crucial for correct pronunciation. 
Check these two topics. There are explanations on a similar issue and helpful videos. What is and what is not important in Russian pronunciation Confused over "e" in these words

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## chaika

Many Russian consonants come in "hard"/"soft" pairs, and the quality is expressed in print by the letter used to represent the vowel. That is, the letters in these pairs a/я, э/е, о/ё, у/ю are all pronounced the same! (the pair ы/и is a slightly different issue). It is the preceding consonant that is pronounced differently. Except for word-initial position, where both members of the pairs can occur, in which case you get the "y-glide" as in English "yet" occurring before the "soft" member of the pair (the second one in my examples). So the word for Christmas tree ёлка is phonemically represented with this y-glide (a semivowel) as /jólka/, but the word тёлка has an initial palatalized ("soft") consonant: /t'о́lka/

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## Боб Уайтман

Just to make it clearer. There are 4 possibilities: 
са [sa] - hard s + ah
ся [sja] - soft s + ah
съя [sja] - hard s + y + ah
сья [sjja] - soft s + y + ah 
The IPA symbol of [j] stands for the English "y" sound in "yes", [sj] stands for the palatalized [s] (a single sound!). 
All the four syllables above are pronounced differently.
But the difference between the latter two (съя and сья) is never used to distinguish between different words, although the difference is still noticeable.

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## rebmaboss

> Just to make it clearer. There are 4 possibilities: 
> са [sa] - hard s + ah
> ся [sja] - soft s + ah
> съя [sja] - hard s + y + ah
> сья [sjja] - soft s + y + ah 
> The IPA symbol of [j] stands for the English "y" sound in "yes", [sj] stands for the palatalized [s] (a single sound!). 
> All the four syllables above are pronounced differently.
> But the difference between the latter two (съя and сья) is never used to distinguish between different words, although the difference is still noticeable.

 What a perfect summary!  Just what I needed! 
Wow, I guess Russian isn't as hard as english after all  ::

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## Marcus

> Just to make it clearer. There are 4 possibilities: 
> са [sa] - hard s + ah
> ся [sja] - soft s + ah
> съя [sja] - hard s + y + ah
> сья [sjja] - soft s + y + ah 
> The IPA symbol of [j] stands for the English "y" sound in "yes", [sj] stands for the palatalized [s] (a single sound!). 
> All the four syllables above are pronounced differently.
> But the difference between the latter two (съя and сья) is never used to distinguish between different words, although the difference is still noticeable.

 I wonder why many textbooks fail to explain that.

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## zedeeyen

> I wonder why many textbooks fail to explain that.

 Most anglo beginners will struggle to hear or even understand the distinctions between soft and hard consonants, let alone be able to reproduce them, and in the meantime explaining "ся" as "s + ya" gives a good enough approximation of the correct sound to get by on.

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## Marcus

> Most anglo beginners will struggle to hear or even understand the distinctions between soft and hard consonants, let alone be able to reproduce them, and in the meantime explaining "ся" as "s + ya" gives a good enough approximation of the correct sound to get by on.

 No, it doesn't. It is absolutely wrong. Sya and ся are as similar as w and v in English. If it is difficult to hear and understand, it must be properly explained and emphasized.
These are all PHONEMIC distinctions which are represented by Russian orthography. When we studied English, we used to write phonemic transcriptions in the IPA. We did not hear the difference between many English sounds, especially vowels, but we were taught that there were different sounds.
Replacing soft consonants with a consonant + yot is not an approximation at all for a Russian ear. Saying lya instead of ля is worse than saying la with hard L. Georgian accent with their нэт sounds better. Such explanations do not allow to understand the meaning of the disjunctive signs, how to pronounce soft consonants at the end of a syllable, give wrong and simulteniously difficult pronunciation.
In this case it is really better to pronounce са in reflexive verbs because such pronunciation exists.
And it is very difficult to correct then, because the pronunciation must be established at the first stages of language learning and because people say: "It was written in textbooks".
It is a comon mistake made by anglophones to say a consonant + y instead of a soft consonant, because to an untrained English ear it can sometimes really sound like that. But textbooks should pay attention at it and say that students should avoid this pronunciation. 
The words лёд and льёт differ by the presence of this "y" sound, they are [l'ot] and [l'jot]. Do you know how Russians pronounce the word "word"? вёрд. Does it sound similar? No. But that's how "nyedyelya" sounds to a Russian, with the same degree of accuracy.

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## zedeeyen

I'm not arguing the toss one way or the other, I was just pointing out the justification for glossing over that aspect of the language in beginner texts.

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## Marcus

> I'm not arguing the toss one way or the other, I was just pointing out the justification for glossing over that aspect of the language in beginner texts.

 Entirely wrong expalanations cannot be justified, because they do not help but make big harm to a language learner. I explained why. It is difficult to understand for a native English speaker that replacing a soft consonant with a consonant (usually hard) is not an approximation, that's just a replacement of one sound with two different. Like w is v and oo pronounced simulteniously, lets approximate w like voo. Or English th in think is f and s pronounced simulteniously, lets say fs instead of th - fsink.

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## zedeeyen

> Entirely wrong expalanations cannot be justified, because they do not help but make big harm to a language learner. I explained why. It is difficult to understand for a native English speaker that replacing a soft consonant with a consonant (usually hard) is not an approximation, that's just a replacement of one sound with two different. Like w is v and oo pronounced simulteniously, lets approximate w like voo. Or English th in think is f and s pronounced simulteniously, lets say fs instead of th - fsink.

 Don't forget that English in Russia is a widespread academic subject which most learners begin in school, so beginner English texts in Russia are introductory-level academic works. In contrast, academic Russian is virtually unheard-of in anglo countries and the overwhelming majority of Russian-learners are teaching themselves in their own time, and so beginner Russian texts are more like hobby or self-help books than academic textbooks.  
There is a world of difference between learning a language as an academic subject and learning a language to "get by" conversationally. Different motivations, different market, different approach.

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## rebmaboss

> Don't forget that English in Russia is a widespread academic subject which most learners begin in school, so beginner English texts in Russia are introductory-level academic works. In contrast, academic Russian is virtually unheard-of in anglo countries and the overwhelming majority of Russian-learners are teaching themselves in their own time, and so beginner Russian texts are more like hobby or self-help books than academic textbooks.  
> There is a world of difference between learning a language as an academic subject and learning a language to "get by" conversationally. Different motivations, different market, different approach.

 I couldn't have said it better myself.  I'm hoping to be in Russia long-term, which is why I wanted to know precisely how to pronounce things.  But some people just want to take a short trip to Russia, so they want to learn just enough to communicate.  If they speak slowly, Russians will understand them based on context, just like we in America still understand people who speak poor English.

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## Marcus

> Don't forget that English in Russia is a widespread academic subject which most learners begin in school, so beginner English texts in Russia are introductory-level academic works. In contrast, academic Russian is virtually unheard-of in anglo countries and the overwhelming majority of Russian-learners are teaching themselves in their own time, and so beginner Russian texts are more like hobby or self-help books than academic textbooks.  
> There is a world of difference between learning a language as an academic subject and learning a language to "get by" conversationally. Different motivations, different market, different approach.

 Russian with English sounds is practically incomprehensible, and you have to understand native speakers as well. Just think of a Russian saying vafe instead of wave, debt instead of dad, вёрт instead of word, will he be always understood?
These books do not help, they only make harm. you have seen yourself: Боб Уайтман's table helped a learner more than many textbooks, and Bob managed to write it even not being a professional Russian as a second language teacher, as far as I understand. 
It is for a learner to decide what is important for him and what is not, textbooks must say correct things. Why should be the pronunciation fully negected and the grammar be studied if Russian is a living language? 
And it is still difficult to pronounce Russian words in this way. For example there is no "ly" in English, so it is not easy to pronounce such a combination of sounds especially after consonants. What for should they make effort to get wrong pronunciation if they can make effort to get the correct one? Russian soft L is very close (close enough for practical purposes) to the French or the German L. Does anyone hear the German or French L as ly?

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## Seraph

I'd much rather learn it right the first time, and not 'un-learn' improper pronunciation.  The books I've been using stressed the points Marcus has been making from the beginning, with exercises parallel to what Боб Уайтман has shown, with audio to drive it home.  But then I've been using books written by Russians.  Shop around.

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## gRomoZeka

> I'd much rather learn it right the first time, and not 'un-learn' improper pronunciation.

 I agree. Unless a person aims to learn a few phrases in Russian to impress his or her friends, it's better to be aware of correct pronunciation from the start. 
I believe, that the fact *zedeeyen* has mentioned is not directly connected to one language being learned academically, while another is not. Most Russian textbooks are very thorough about pronunciation, regardless of the language taught. It's just an example of different approaches, with western textbooks aiming mostly for quick results and instant communication, and Russian traditional textbooks aiming for "learning the language" (a global and almost never achievable goal).

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## zedeeyen

> Russian with English sounds is practically incomprehensible, and you have to understand native speakers as well. Just think of a Russian saying vafe instead of wave, debt instead of dad, вёрт instead of word, will he be always understood?

 No one is suggesting speaking "Russian with English sounds", merely that the distinction between hard and soft consonants is rarely (if ever) a real-world impediment to understanding on its own, especially for beginners who are struggling with so much more already. I was using Russian _for years_ before I really understood the difference between hard and soft consonants, let alone became able to pronounce them myself. In all that time this inability hindered me *not one iota*. What impeded communication was gaps in my vocabulary and grammar and mistakes with declensions and conjugations. There are literally no real-world situations where pronouncing *ся* as *sa* or *s-ya* will confuse a listener.    

> These books do not help, they only make harm.

 Don't be silly. If communication is your motivation, then of course they help. If your motivation is learning the language for academic purposes, or to _perfect_ it, or to pass as a native, or even to avoiding offending the delicate sensibilities of native speakers who are overly precious about their language, then you might have to pay more attention to it.   

> you have seen yourself: Боб Уайтман's table helped a learner more than many textbooks, and Bob managed to write it even not being a professional Russian as a second language teacher, as far as I understand.

 No it doesn't. Боб Уайтман's table only explains the orthography of soft and hard vowels and how they relate to preceding consonants. It doesn't explain the actual distinction between soft and hard consonants _at all_. To learn that you have to hear it, and to be able to hear it you need an understanding of the basics.   

> It is for a learner to decide what is important for him and what is not, textbooks must say correct things. Why should be the pronunciation fully negected and the grammar be studied if Russian is a living language?

 Who has said that pronunciation should be "fully neglected", or even anything like that? You asked why beginner texts tend to ignore the subtleties of soft and hard sounds, and I attempted to explain it for you. It's not about _neglecting_ anything, it's about *prioritising* that which makes a big difference over that which makes less of a difference. A beginner text can only contain so much information. Of course an author could include an in-depth explanation on softness (not that it's really possible to explain the difference between a soft and hard sound using only text anyway), but they'd have to lose something else to make space for it. What would you suggest should make way for this explanation? The chapter on verbal adverbs? Numbers? Reflexive verbs?

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## gRomoZeka

> No one is suggesting speaking "Russian with English sounds", merely that the distinction between hard and soft consonants is rarely (if ever) a real-world impediment to understanding on its own, especially for beginners who are struggling with so much more already.

  It's a somewhat harmful point of view in a way that it gives a learner an impression that hard and soft consonants are _less important_ than other aspects of pronunciation. It's the same as telling a Japanese ESL learner that he should not bother learning to distinguish between R and L, because the difference is hard to explain and people would understand him anyway (from the context, if anything).
 And they would. But does he really wants to speak with a cartoonish accent after putting so much effort into learning grammar and vocabulary??? Or people having to decipher his every word and constantly asking him to repeat yourself? 
My personal point of view that there's no reason to postpone mastering correct pronunciation. Relearning it could be hell. And if you won't be able to pronounce some sounds from the start (maybe even for months), it's one more reason to start early. 
An additional bonus of decent pronunciation is that it makes your language seem better than it is! It's a fact (really).

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## zedeeyen

> It's a somewhat harmful point of view in a way that it gives a learner an impression that hard and soft consonants are _less important_ than other aspects of pronunciation.

 They are less important. They're not completely unimportant, but comparatively they are less important.   

> It's the same as telling a Japanese ESL learner that he should not bother learning to distinguish between R and L, because the difference is hard to explain and people would understand him anyway (from the context, if anything).

 No, it's not the same, because there are plenty of circumstances in English where mixing up R and L could lead to ambiguity or confusion.    

> But does he really wants to speak with a cartoonish accent after putting so much effort into learning grammar and vocabulary???

 Personally, I only ever cared about being able to communicate, and all else being equal I'd rather be able to say what I want even in a funny accent than have perfect pronunciation but not be able to express myself. Of course that's an exaggerated distinction and learning is not as zero-sum as that, but in the initial stages of a beginner text it's not far off.   

> Or people having to decipher his every word and constantly asking him to repeat yourself?

 You're exaggerating the distinction. Pronouncing *ся* as *sa* or *s-ya* does not cause listeners any problems, and in the context of all the other mistakes and hesitations a beginner will be making it's not even going to be noticeable. It might give you a slightly funny accent, but on its own it's not going to turn you into Равшан from Наша Russia.    

> My personal point of view that there's no reason to postpone mastering correct pronunciation. Relearning it could be hell.

 Don't be silly. There's nothing to "relearn" by skipping over this initially, you just pick it up later when you're ready, either by progressing to more advanced texts or simply through familiarity with the language as spoken by natives.   

> And if you won't be able to pronounce some sounds from the start (maybe even for months), it's one more reason to start early.

 I really don't understand the insistence that all aspects of pronunciation must come right at the start. There are countless aspects to learning a language and we generally only tackle them one at a time, so we have to prioritise. We learn basic verbs before we learn reflexive verbs, and the simple present tense before the past tense. We learn declarative sentence structure before we learn interrogative sentences, we learn nominative nouns before we tackle the instrumental case. We learn standard adjectives before we learn short form adjectives. First the basics, then fill in the gaps, and then refinement. What is so special about pronunciation that it can't be prioritised in this way and must be presented to the learner in its totality before they are even equipped to understand some of what they're being taught?   

> An additional bonus of decent pronunciation is that it makes your language seem better than it is! It's a fact (really).

 Absolutely, I just think getting to a point where you can communicate effectively before worrying about the subtleties is a better strategy than wasting time on perfecting something that won't really help you at the stage you're at. It's like learning elaborate cursive handwriting without even learning how to recognise and print the basic letters first. And of course it's not really possible to convey pronunciation properly in text anyway, the learner is always going to have to use additional resources for that, so why bother wasting the page space on more than a summary?

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## Marcus

> No, it's not the same, because there are plenty of circumstances in English where mixing up R and L could lead to ambiguity or confusion.

 how many? Anyway less than lack of distinction between all the Russian hard and soft consonants. 

> Pronouncing ся as sa or s-ya does not cause listeners any problems, and in the context of all the other mistakes and hesitations a beginner will be making it's not even going to be noticeable.

 An unfair example. Both pronunciations with the hard and the soft s exist in Russian. But what for should Englishmen replace a soft consonant with a hard consonant and a "y", if it doesn't make a sound closer to the Russian one, but makes the pronunciation more difficult?  

> Don't be silly. There's nothing to "relearn" by skipping over this initially, you just pick it up later when you're ready, either by progressing to more advanced texts or simply through familiarity with the language as spoken by natives.

 Wrong pronunciation is a bad habbit which is hard to correct.
If you learn it at the beginning, it will become natural and you will learn everything in the correct pronunciation.
Why do you think that conjugations and declensions are important? Я жить Москва is perfectly understandable. Should Russians train to pronounce  voiced consonants in the word-final positions? Can't it be understood from the context that dick is dig?

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## Marcus

> No it doesn't. Боб Уайтман's table only explains the orthography of soft and hard vowels and how they relate to preceding consonants. It doesn't explain the actual distinction between soft and hard consonants _at all_. To learn that you have to hear it, and to be able to hear it you need an understanding of the basics.

 But even that simple thing is not explained in textbooks, it does not take neither much place nor much time, but gives a possibility for a learner to understand what is what in the written form. That's like understanding how to pronounce ce, ca, que, za in Spanish.   

> You asked why beginner texts tend to ignore the subtleties of soft and hard sounds

 These are not subtleties, but very basic things. Descriptions help much especially with consonants. Something correct still can be written in a textbook. At least you will know what you pronounce wrong. For example a Russian learner of English might not hear or reproduce the difference between w and v, but at least he is told by the transcription that they are two different sounds. A learner who pronounces lya instaed of ля might not even think he makes something wrong.

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## Marcus

Conjugations mean practically nothing in Russian because personal pronouns are usually used with a verb. Cases are rarely important for the sense.

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## zedeeyen

> But what for should Englishmen replace a soft consonant with a hard consonant and a "y", if it doesn't make a sound closer to the Russian one, but makes the pronunciation more difficult?

 It does make the sound closer though. It doesn't make it _correct_, but it is closer. Ask any English speaker to say "nyet" and what you hear will be a lot closer to "нет" than if you'd asked him to say "net". You can stamp your feet and insist that it's _wrong_ all you like, but for most people it's good enough to be going on with, until such times as they've heard how the locals pronounce it.   

> Wrong pronunciation is a bad habbit which is hard to correct.
> If you learn it at the beginning, it will become natural and you will learn everything in the correct pronunciation.

 That's just a bald assertion. It doesn't match my own experience at all, but more importantly it clearly doesn't match the professional experience of the people who write beginner Russian books for English speakers (which is what we're discussing here), else they'd put more emphasis on pronunciation and we wouldn't be having this conversation.   

> Why do you think that conjugations and declensions are important? Я жить Москва is perfectly understandable.

 In that example and many others it's not important, but in most cases it is. That's simply not the case for softness. There are no examples, or vanishingly few, where a slight mispronunciation of the softness of a consonant in an otherwise correct sentence can lead to ambiguity or confusion.   

> Should Russians train to pronounce  voiced consonants in the word-final positions? Can't it be understood from the context that dick is dig?

 Not always, obviously, because "dick" and "dig" are different words and are distinguishable _only_ by the final consonant. That's precisely the point. Which pairs of words in Russian are distinguishable only by the softness of a consonant?

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## gRomoZeka

> You're exaggerating the distinction. Pronouncing ся as sa or s-ya does not cause listeners any problems

 But it's not about "sa"/"sya", it's about soft and hard consonants in general, and they exist in every single word.   

> I really don't understand the insistence that all aspects of pronunciation must come right at the start. [...] First the basics, then fill in the gaps, and then refinement.

 I think it's the crux of the matter. Most Russians consider proper (or close to it) pronunciation a basic, not an advanced skill. That's simply how we are taught. When we started learning English at school as first graders, one of the very first things we had to learn was IPA, so we could understand proper transcriptions. Not once Russian alphabet was used to explain English pronunciation.

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## zedeeyen

Exactly, it's about how you're taught, and your motivations for learning in the first place. Beginner Russian texts for English speakers are not aimed at the same sort of market or trying to achieve the same thing as beginner English texts for Russian speakers.

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## Marcus

> Not always, obviously, because "dick" and "dig" are different words and are distinguishable only by the final consonant. That's precisely the point. Which pairs of words in Russian are distinguishable only by the softness of a consonant?

 There are plenty of words and word forms like that. стал - сталь, был - быль, лёд - лот. лыко - лика, стол -столь. школы - школе, лак -ляг, говорит -говорить, мат - мать, перетряхивать - перетрахивать, врёт - в рот. There are even examples where this "y" sound after a consonant is the only thing which distinguishes the words лёд - льёт. Лъя is by no means ля. I can say that french or German la will be really close. Why does no one pronounce french la as lya? Russians can hardly hear the difference between French L and Russian soft L. This as close as fs is close to th in English. Once again, there is a PHONEMIC distinction between a soft vowel and a vowel and a "y" in Russian. They are as different as v and w are for native English speakers, despite the fact that there are very few words which differ only by v and w.

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## zedeeyen

> There are plenty of words and word forms like that. стал - сталь, был - быль, лёд - лот. лыко - лика, стол -столь. школы - школе, лак -ляг, говорит -говорить, мат - мать, перетряхивать - перетрахивать, врёт - в рот. There are even examples where this "y" sound after a consonant is the only thing which distinguishes the words лёд - льёт. Лъя is by no means ля. I can say that french or German la will be really close. Why does no one pronounce french la as lya? Russians can hardly hear the difference between French L and Russian soft L. This as close as fs is close to th in English. Once again, there is a PHONEMIC distinction between a soft vowel and a vowel and a "y" in Russian. They are as different as v and w are for native English speakers, despite the fact that there are very few words which differ only by v and w.

 Yes, all this is true, but we're not discussing whether there _is_ a distinction, we're discussing _whether that distinction is important enough to warrant being explained at great length in a crash-course beginner text_.

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## Marcus

> Yes, all this is true, but we're not discussing whether there is a distinction, we're discussing whether that distinction is important enough to warrant being explained at great length in a crash-course beginner text.

 Not at length, but at least somehow correctly. At least the very basic things. How they are pronounced in general (with the middle of the toungue raised towards the roof of the mouth) and Russian graphics.

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## Marcus

Should a v-w distinction be mentioned in a textbook of English or not?
Why do you care so much about the conjugation. Искаю is perfectly understandable as well as Я жить. Are there many situations in Russian when the correct conjugation is important?

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## zedeeyen

> Not at length, but at least somehow correctly. At least the very basic things. How they are pronounced in general (with the middle of the toungue raised towards the roof of the mouth) and Russian graphics.

 Right, so you're now agreeing with precisely what I've been saying in the thread all along.

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## zedeeyen

> Should a v-w distinction be mentioned in a textbook of English or not?

 That depends. Is it a textbook for academic study, say year 1 in a series that's supposed to last you throughout school, or is it a book for people who are visiting England in a month's time and don't know any English at all? 
If it's the former, then yes, of course it should. If it's the latter then possibly not.   

> Why do you care so much about the conjugation

 I don't care about it. I've just found that getting grammar wrong is far more likely to result in blank stares or misunderstandings than having a funny accent, so I give more thought to the former than the latter.

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## Marcus

> Right, so you're now agreeing with precisely what I've been saying in the thread all along.

 No. Because the very basic understanding includes the ability to write phonemic transcriptions and understanding that ля is ль+а, and лья is ль+й+а, and that saying лъя or лья instead of ля is a mistake. And also there are much fewer combinations as лья in Russian than like ля. 
How do you think: is п-б distinction important in Russian? The difference between л, ль is more important than п-б, because there are no weak positions for л – ль and there are plenty for п – б.
How can you prove that L – R distinction in English is more important than л – ль or т –ть in Russian?

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## zedeeyen

> No. Because the very basic understanding includes the ability to write phonemic transcriptions and understanding that ля is ль+а, and лья is ль+й+а, and that saying лъя or лья instead of ля is a mistake.

 But these orthographic distinctions are *meaningless* to anyone who does not understand the concept of palatalization in the first place! You have to understand the difference between ль and л before you can even start to understand the distinction between ля and лъя and лья. 
And do you know what will happen if you include an in-depth explanation of palatalization in your beginner textbook? No one will buy it, they'll buy the one that teaches them how to stumble successfully through a simple conversation, because that's all they want to be able to do!

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## Marcus

> But these orthographic distinctions are *meaningless* to anyone who does not understand the concept of palatalization in the first place! You have to understand the difference between ль and л before you can even start to understand the distinction between ля and лъя and лья. 
> And do you know what will happen if you include an in-depth explanation of palatalization in your beginner textbook? No one will buy it, they'll buy the one that teaches them how to stumble successfully through a simple conversation, because that's all they want to be able to do!

 But they will understand what they don't understand and will make a choice: whether to find other resourses which explain the most important Russsian phonological feature or not. And they won't even understand that they are wrong if the explanations are wrong. Because it is meaningless for a native Russian speaker that ля is lya ль is л. if anyway palatalization is mentioned regarding soft sign, why not say about palatalization before vowels, without this "y"? Or you suggest to call soft sign a meaningless letter?

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## zedeeyen

> But they will understand what they don't understand and will make a choice: whether to find other resourses which explain the most important Russsian phonological feature or not. And they won't even understand that they are wrong if the explanations are wrong. Because it is meaningless for a native Russian speaker that ля is lya ль is л. if anyway palatalization is mentioned regarding soft sign, why not say about palatalization before vowels, without this "y"? Or you suggest to call soft sign a meaningless letter?

 Sorry mate, I don't even understand what you're trying to say here, and this is getting tiresome and circular anyway, so I'm going to leave it. 
You originally asked "I wonder why many textbooks fail to explain that", and I tried to explain why. If you don't like my explanation then that's fine, feel free to invent your own one.

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## Lampada

> Sorry mate, I don't even understand what you're trying to say here, and this is getting tiresome and circular anyway, so I'm going to leave it. 
> You originally asked "I wonder why many textbooks fail to explain that", and I tried to explain why. If you don't like my explanation then that's fine, feel free to invent your own one.

 Ха! Я думала, что только я там ничего не понимала.

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## Seraph

> ...And do you know what will happen if you include an in-depth explanation of palatalization in your beginner textbook? No one will buy it, they'll buy the one that teaches them how to stumble successfully through a simple conversation, because that's all they want to be able to do!

 I disagree with this because: it is very easy in two pages with accompanying audio, to give a very good introduction to hard/soft consonant pairs with appropriate vowels.  The student simply listens and reads the pairs.  Then they are introduced to the topic right away, and even though it isn't going to fix all the problems that show up, they will have a simple early set of examples to refer back to.  Even the textbook by the American Lipson does this on pages seven and eight of his introductory text ( the student has just learned Cyrillic letters) to make sure student knows that palatalization/soft consonants must be attended to.  The audio is by a native Russian speaker, so no mistakes.  He also includes the distinctions of the four possibilities as mentioned in the table by Боб Уайтман with various consonants.  This is just the first intro to hard soft pairs, but it is still in the first few pages.  Just a few pages later, are soft consonants at ends of words.  
The concept is easy to package in small introductory first lessons. But must have audio.

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## gRomoZeka

> Ха! Я думала, что только я там ничего не понимала.

 Я лично поняла, и думаю, что Маркус совершенно прав.  ::  
А гипотеза о стремлении производителей учебников максимально упростить материал скорее всего верна, но такой подход ведет к оболваниванию учащихся. И я, честно говоря, не верю, что человек не купит книгу, если там окажется (при прочих равных условиях) на пару страниц больше объяснений. Нонсенс.

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## Боб Уайтман

> And do you know what will happen if you include an in-depth explanation of palatalization in your beginner textbook? No one will buy it, they'll buy the one that teaches them how to stumble successfully through a simple conversation, because that's all they want to be able to do!

 Here we can see that language learning traditions in Western countries and in Russia are really different.
I learned several foreign languages. And the first thing I checked when selecting a book in a store to learn a new language was how well the pronunciation was explained. If it was limited by a table of approximation by Russian sounds, without any articulation description, and no IPA was provided, I put that book immediately back to its shelf.

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## Боб Уайтман

However, we have to admit that the English pronunciation is not always perfectly taught to Russians.
I do not mean university courses and specialized schools. I mean the ordinary school education and some of the so-called "self-teaching books". 
During my school education, I was never told that, for example, [ɪ] and [i:] (as in "fit" and "feet") are different vowels! As well as [ʊ] and [u:] ("pull" and "pool"). We were only taught that they were distinguished by their lengths. Everyone believed that you get "feet" if you drawl "fit" long. And it surprized me a lot when I learned that later. 
And some textbooks I saw also explain that "fit" has a short "и" sound and "feet" has a long "и" sound, "pot" has a short "o" sound and "port" has a long "о" sound, "cut" has a short "a" sound and "cart" has a long "a" sound. 
Many people I know who learned their English in school still believe in that "length-only" distinction.

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## Marcus

Russian и is English [i:], Russians cannot pronounce fit correctly without special training. I agree with Боб about those long and short vowels.

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## Marcus

The main problem with wrong pronunciation is not that different words can merdge, but that the phonetic image of words and phrases changes significantly and cannot be effortkessly recognized by native speakers.

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## Throbert McGee

> Don't forget that English in Russia is a widespread academic subject which most learners begin in school, so beginner English texts in Russia are introductory-level academic works. In contrast, *academic Russian is virtually unheard-of in anglo countries*

 That's a bit of an exaggeration. I think it's much closer to the truth to say that academic Russian at *"pre-college" ages* is virtually unheard of, at least in the States. I mean, the vast majority of public high-schools in the US offer only Spanish and perhaps French as a foreign-language, and Spanish is the only language that is likely to be taught (at a very basic level) in public elementary schools. So very very very few Americans entering a first-year college Russian course would have had ANY previous exposure to the language. 
At the university level (in my own experience), Russian is taught in a highly structured and formalized way, utterly unlike the Pimsleur/Rosetta approach.  
In my first-year course, the concepts of "hard" and "soft" consonants were introduced extremely early, at the same time as students are learning the alphabet, and about аканье, and about voiced/voiceless consonant pairs, etc. In other words, it was all presented as part of a systematic introduction to Cyrillic orthography. 
Still, I didn't start to really "internalize" the principles of Russian pronunciation (in a non-abstract way) until my third year, partly because the focus for the first two years was overwhelmingly on written Russian and its grammar. (It was also partly because I was too lazy/busy to spend hours listening to audiotapes in the university "language lab" -- we weren't required to attend the lab; our course grades for the first two years were based almost entirely on written examinations, not oral ones; and I was double-majoring in Biology, so I had lots of other work to fill my time!) 
I should add that some of the students in my first-year Russian class had no previous foreign-language study at all, and many had only studied Spanish or French, with their inflections that are overall much simpler than in Russian. (I had an advantage because in high school I'd studied Latin, which is even more heavily inflected than Russian --  so I was already _painfully_ familiar with the concept of case-declension, for example.) 
P.S. Even if I'd spent more time with the audiotapes, learning to pronounce the hard/soft consonants correctly would have still been an uphill climb for me, for the reason already pointed out by many people: these sounds aren't phonemically distinct in English, and the whole concept is a bit alien for us. But I might have learned it a little sooner.

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## Throbert McGee

> I didn't start to really "internalize" the principles of Russian pronunciation (in a non-abstract way) until my third year

 I mean, my brain understood the pronunciation rules, but my ears and tongue were still clueless!

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## Throbert McGee

By the way, during my entire formal education, we were never taught the IPA -- our Russian textbooks, for example, used variants of the United Nations / Library of Congress standards for Latinizing Cyrillic. As far as I know, the IPA is mainly taught in "general linguistics" courses, so that students can _compare_ the sounds of _different_ languages, but when you're focusing on ONE foreign language, using the IPA doesn't seem like a great advantage. 
I mean, for example, *ы* will inevitably be a difficult sound for English speakers beginning in Russian, and it doesn't make the slightest difference whether you transliterate it as *ɨ* (IPA) or *y* (Library of Congress).

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## Marcus

> I should add that some of the students in my first-year Russian class had no previous foreign-language study at all, and many had only studied Spanish or French, with their inflections that are overall much simpler than in Russian. (I had an advantage because in high school I'd studied Latin, which is even more heavily inflected than Russian -- so I was already painfully familiar with the concept of case-declension, for example.)

 I'm not sure that French and Spanish have fewer inflections than Russian. how many forms does a spanish verb have? Don't forget that obligatory, inseperable unstressed pronouns are a part of the verb, in fact.
Latin verbs have more forms have more forms, but the noun declension is much more regular than in Russian.

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## Marcus

> It does make the sound closer though. It doesn't make it _correct_, but it is closer. Ask any English speaker to say "nyet" and what you hear will be a lot closer to "нет" than if you'd asked him to say "net". You can stamp your feet and insist that it's _wrong_ all you like, but for most people it's good enough to be going on with, until such times as they've heard how the locals pronounce it.

 It is as close to the real Russian pronunciation as Russian хё(р) to English "her". (That's how this and many other words are pronounced by Russians).  

> There are no examples, or vanishingly few, where a *slight* mispronunciation of the softness of a consonant in an otherwise correct sentence can lead to ambiguity or confusion.

 The key word here is "slight". What you suggest is not a slight but a total mispronunciation of Russian soft consonants.

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## Throbert McGee

> I'm not sure that French and Spanish have fewer inflections than Russian. how many forms does a spanish verb have? Don't forget that obligatory, inseperable unstressed pronouns are a part of the verb, in fact.
> Latin verbs have more forms have more forms, but the noun declension is much more regular than in Russian.

 That's a good point, Marcus -- French and Spanish have simpler noun inflection than Russian, but a more complex system of verb conjugation than either Russian or English.  
As to Latin, I'm not sure what you mean by saying that its noun declension is "more regular" than in Russian. Overall I would say that Latin and Russian nouns are roughly similar in their complexity, from the perspective of a native English speaker, while Latin verbs have much more complicated inflections than Russian.

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## Marcus

> That's a good point, Marcus -- French and Spanish have simpler noun inflection than Russian, but a more complex system of verb conjugation than either Russian or English.  
> As to Latin, I'm not sure what you mean by saying that its noun declension is "more regular" than in Russian. Overall I would say that Latin and Russian nouns are roughly similar in their complexity, from the perspective of a native English speaker, while Latin verbs have much more complicated inflections than Russian.

 It is more regular because it is fully predictable from the nom and gen sing. There are very few exceptions. While Russian nouns are declined in unpredictable ways especially if we regard the stress. 
For example, first declension end stressed nouns can have a stress shift in acc. sing.
водА - вОду
but
грозА - грозУ
in nom. pl. the stress usually falls on the stem
травА - трАвы
but there are several exceptions
мечтА - мечтЫ
the stress in other cases can be both on the stem and on the ending
травА - трАвы - трАвам
головА - гОловы - головАм
And that's just the top of the iceberg.

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## Anixx

I being a Russian speaker completely agree with Marcus except that I think that inserting the "y" as advised in English textbooks is even more detrimental than he asserts. 
My advise to English speakers: if you do not know how to pronounce the soft consonants, just ignore them, but do NOT insert that weird "y". 
This is especially related to cases when the consosnant is followed with "е". It is very disappointing to me to occasionally see Russian words transliterated into English as " Byelorussia" instead of "Belorussia", "Lyudmila" instead of "Ludmila" so on. If you pronounce these words with hard consonant, it is nothing more than a minor accent difference. If you insert the "y", you get other words. With vowels "я" and "ё" the situation is more difficult though and just ignoring the softness is much worse here.  
But if we recall the historic development we will see that they derived from "ea->я", "eo->ё", "еу->ю". For example the Russian name Фёдор is derived from Greek "Theodor". Thus is is much natural and better reflects the pronunciation to transliterate is as "Feodor" rather than "Fyodor". Think about these vowels as of short forms of the diphthongs.  Pronounce "я" as "еа", "ё" as "ео", "ю" as "еу". Note that it is closer to German to English transliteration rules as well. 
Take for example the surname of a Russian writer Беляев. I occasionaly see it transliterated as "Belyaev". This makes me funny because such change makes the family to look like it was derived from Russian word "бельё" ("belyo") which means "underwear". The surname then sounds like "Underwear-man". Similarly the Moscow metro station "Беляево" when transliterated as "Belyayevo" looks like an "Underwear-station". I suggest to better transliterate and pronounce the name as "Beleaev" or "Beleayev".

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## Anixx

> In my first-year course, the concepts of "hard" and "soft" consonants were introduced extremely early, at the same time as students are learning the alphabet, and about аканье, and about voiced/voiceless consonant pairs, etc. In other words, it was all presented as part of a systematic introduction to Cyrillic orthography.

 This is definitely not comparable. Soft/hard consonants are MUCH more important than the "аканье". It is pity that they are taught as if they were of the same level of importance. If you do not distinguish between soft and hard consonants you simply do not speak correct Russian. Note a Russian that when talking over a bad phone line when trying to speak a word distinguishably will pronounce it with exact  vowels, without the "akanie".

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## Lampada

> ...

 Anixx!  Welcome to our forum!

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## Fester

So... for those of us who really want to learn how to pronounce these soft consonants as they should be pronounced, what is the best way to train that? I've been on many russian learning sites, but no one goes in depth on the pronounciation it seems.. As you've said here in this thread, they usually just say "add "Y" after the consonant". Just repeating a native doesnt work for me, I need to know exactly how to move the tongue (I don't even know what "the palate" is :P  
If anyone knows about any good site for pronounciation, feel free to post it here

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## Anixx

I think they say to add "y" because "y" is always soft in English (like is in Russian, but not in some other languages), and consonants which follow each other usually (if no special effort made) both soft or both hard (the first consonant gets softened by the second one). The other always-soft English sound is "ch", it is also always soft in Russian. 
There are English words that transliterated to Russian with soft consonants. Although I cannot comment how are they close to Russian pronunciation, I recommend to take a look at the them. 
girl is always transliterated as гёл or гёрл, here the British speaker says "гёл" while the American says "горл" http://lingvopro.abbyyonline.com/ru/...ate/en-ru/girl 
meeting is tranliterated митинг and this pronounciation of both British and American speakers confirms that the first m is soft here in English. 
In the word "please" here the British speaker pronounces soft "l", "плиз" while the ameriсan speaker says "плыз" as I hear it. 
business is transliterated бизнес (pronounced with soft б) and this is confirmed by both British and American speakers 
In the case of "limit" the British speaker says "лимит" (both "l" and "m" soft, very close to Russian, only the "t" somewhat different) while the American one says "лымэт" here

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## Shady_arc

Strangely enough, I would suggest that you start here: Russian phonology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .If something doesn't feel right when you try speaking Russian, just consult the page to learn which sounds are different from English, and HOW they are different. For example, hard t/d/n in Russian are not alveolar but dental (the tip of the tongue is close to your teeth). "Ж" and "Ш" are different from sounds in "pleaSure" and "SHame" in that they have you slightly curve the tip of your tongue BACKWARDS (like in American English "R", only - in real speech - not that much). And that's exactly why it is easy to differentiate between Ш and Щ. You will also learn that the vowel in Russian word "мять" (to caress) is the same as in English "cat" or "map", and such a simple sound as Russian "A" doesn't have an exact correspondence with any English sound - well, at least not in most popular and "standard" dialects. 
Palate is, basically, the roof of your mouth. Quite an important thing to have, or else you nose would open right into your mouth (wouldn't want that when having a cold). In Russian it is "нёбо" (don't confuse this with "небо", which means sky). Hard palate is in the front part, and it has a bone. Soft palate (deeper into the mouth) doesn't, hence "soft". Your tongue touches soft palate each time you say "k". 
Palatalization means that a consonant gets a variation in it realisation: you raise the middle part of your tongue towards the palate. Which is at the top, anyway, so "raise it higher" is all you need to know. That's why some more in-depth guides suggest that you pronounce a consonant and Y "simultaneously". You see, the vowels differ in their "openness" (and also "frontness"). When you say "Aaah", there's much open space left inside your mouth. By contrast, when you say "ee" as in "meet", your tongue is raised so much that it occupies much space inside your mouth. So, in effect, raising you tongue for palatalization is moving your tongue to a position as if you were going to pronounce "ee". Or at least, something similar. 
By the way, I tried watching how I pronounce sounds... When I do soft "K", the tongue is moved up enough to touch completely different part of your mouth. Try to touch an area behind your alveolar ridge with.. well, maybe a spot which is an inch (or a little less) away from the tip of your tongue. And then try saying "keeee..". I usually don't do it that close to the front. But the way I described, it would be practically impossible for you to make normal, "hard: K. Sounds awkward. Either you do it right, or it just doesn't sound well. at all  ::

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## Fester

Thank you so much Shady! You explained it very well, I also now understood the difference between  Ш and Щ, wich I havent before :P Everything became so clear now

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## Medved

I just felt like I wanted to make a brief rundown of the story with hard and soft consonants. 
The first thing to start off is that the English language does not have soft consonants. Which means that even when an anglophone says an "ee" sound (as in leap), they don't soften the first L. So the vowel does not affect the consonant that is running ahead of it. However, In Russian, it does. The so called soft vowels (яеиёю) and the soft sign turn the preceding consonant to its palatalized analog. So they kind of, run together, in pairs -- soft consonant + soft vowel and hard consonant + hard vowel.  
When a word starts in a soft vowel without a consonant running in front of it, we have to lift the tongue in the palatalized position in order to get the vowel sound right. It's very similar to pronouncing an Й sound, or a Y as in You (technically it's a *j* according to the IPA), but most of the people project this principle onto the cases where there is a consonant in front of the vowel, and just sneak in this j sound inbetween the consonant and the vowel, without softening the consonant, which is a mistake.  
In this case, the whole thing sounds like MjASO (мясо - meat), which is not right. The M should not stay hard. It should go palatalized and turn into a M', and then you just don't need this *j* subsound as your tongue is already in the correct position to go with the vowel. 
This kind of thing sticks out like a sore thumb and is being easily recognized by native speakers of Russian, revealing the fact that they are talking to a foreigner, and sometimes causing confusion and misunderstanding.

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## Medved

Another thing to add here is that we have very strange spelling rules. It sounds very funny when people try to enunciate the *И* in "ЖИТЬ". I take pity on those people when I hear that. I imagine myself saying it this way and I'm afraid that I'm going to break my tongue before I get it sound right. 
The trick here is about the spelling rules of Russian. At school we're taught that "жи/ши" are written with an "И", not with an "Ы", as well as ЧУ and ЩУ are spelled with an У. But Ж & Ш are *always hard**, they can't go along with soft vowels in speech, while Ч and Щ are *always soft*, they can't be friends with hard vowels. That's so weird! 
I think it's absolutely physically impossible to say ЧАЩА. It's Ч*Я*Щ*Я*!
I think it's absolutely physically impossible to say ШИШКА. It's Ш*Ы*ШКА! 
If we take the word "широкий" for instance, it's pronounced ш*ы*рокий. I don't know who invented this stupid rule to spell the ШЫ like that. Don't break your tongue by saying a Ш and then a soft vowel like an И or a Е. It's just absolutely inconvenient for native speakers of Russian. 
Although I'm aware that it's ok to pronounce things like that for native speakers of English, because their vowels and consonants are not bound in pairs. But the natural way to say these things - is to pronunce ШИ as ШЫ (шип), ШЕ as ШЭ (шея), ЖИ as ЖЫ (жизнь), etc. The soft counterpart of Ш is Щ and it perfectly goes along with soft vowels, like щека (щека or щика), but it can't be followed by a hard vowel: щука (щ*ю*ка -- take notice, the spelled У transforms into spoken Ю), and the Ч behaves in absolutely the same way, e.g. ч*у*до should sound like ч*ю*до. 
So the thing to remember: don't not buy those ЧУ/ЩУ- and ЖИ/ШИ- things, keeping in mind that their spelling is quite illogical. 
---------------
*actually Ж can be soft, but I'm not used to the soft way of pronouncing the Ж sound, although I've heard it a lot.

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