Talk:Russian phonology/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Letter "щ"

Щ, щ is pronounced as /ɕɕ/ and this is current and standard, common both for the media and the public. It seems there are still non-native users who can't agree on this.

Here's the section in the Russian Wikipedia.

[ɕː] (/щ или ш̅’/) — орфографически щ, сч, шч, зщ, сщ, жд: расщепить [rəɕːɪ'pʲitʲ], счастье ['ɕːasʲtʲjɪ]. В речи некоторых носителей соответствует двухфонемному сочетанию [ɕʨ], однако такое произношение считается устаревшим.

[ɕː] is just another way of rendering /ɕɕ/. The boldface section says that [ɕʨ] is also used by some speakers but is is considered obsolete. I would add that some Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish speakers may also pronounce щ as [ɕʨ] (like Polish "szcz"). --Atitarev (talk) 12:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The older sources list both [ɕtɕ] and [ɕɕ] as possible pronunciations in Standard Russian. Even if in the last forty years [ɕtɕ] has now become deprecated, it's important to remember that this simplification occurred for all instances of [ɕtɕ], including when they were spelled differently (здч, сч, зч, etc). — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's still worth mentioning because currently it sounds obsolete. Not sure if it's 40 years of more, I watched pre-war movies, haven't heard such peculiar accent. A lot of Russian learners fall into this trap using old references assuming [ɕtɕ] is the current pronunciation of "щ", also finding proof by using other Slavic languages. --Atitarev (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

/ɕɕ/ and /ʑʑ/ are also marginal phonemes

This statement is wrong. /ɕɕ/ is not marginal, /ʑʑ/ is. I haven't read the source but this statement means that /ɕɕ/ is not the standard pronunciation of "щ" (shcha). --Atitarev (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That's not quite the meaning. There's no question that [ɕ] and [ʑ] occur in Russian (though the latter is not as universal). The question is whether they're phonemes or conditional allophones. How should we reword it to make it clearer? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That's the impression I got when I read the paragraph. I don't quite understand "phonemes or conditional allophones". Could you explain what you mean. I think /ɕɕ/ is a complete phoneme if rendered with letter "щ". Occasionally the combination "сч", "шч", "зщ", "сщ" (счастье, считать) is also pronounced as /ɕɕ/.

/ʑʑ/ in дожди or приезжать may be conditional (regional or personal preference). I use this accent (/ʑʑ/). Not sure about rewording yet as I don't understand your comment. --Atitarev (talk) 12:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

A conditional allophone is a sound that appears in a certain context but is not contrastive with another sound. For example, [ʉ] is an allophone of /u/ when it is in the context of being stressed and between soft consonants. It's not always that clearcut, though. In English, [ɾ] is an allophone of both /t/ and /d/. With Russian, because [ɕtɕ] is a potential, though older pronunciation, it's possible that [ɕɕ] is the result of allophonic processes.

For example, it could be that any sibilant directly preceding the affricate [tɕ] assimilates to its place of articulation (alveolo-palatal) as well as the voicing and then the affricate de-affricates, making [ɕɕ]. Another possibility is that [ɕ] is the allophone of [ʂ] when it's geminated. Or it could be that there's a phoneme /ɕ/ that always occurs geminated.

The spelling should have no bearing on whether the sound is a phoneme or not. The change of [ɕtɕ] to [ɕɕ] is a historical process that applied to all spellings. What might have bearing is if there is variation in a given word between two different pronunciations. For example, there's чай ('tea') and с чаем ('with tea') is the latter pronounced [ɕɕaɪm]? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:36, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I see, thanks for clarifying. The spelling does make a difference, since letter "щ" is always [ɕɕ] - it's unconditional. "с" + "ч" may not always produce [ɕɕ], especially in your example "с чаем", it's /s/ + /t͡ɕ/.

With Russian, because [ɕtɕ] is a potential, though older pronunciation, it's possible that [ɕɕ] is the result of allophonic processes.

Even if it's a historical process, in my opinion, it doesn't matter any more. As, at least in the last century, [ɕɕ] is a phoneme, not a conditional allophone. --Atitarev (talk) 22:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting about с чаем. I was under the impression that e.g. сч was pronounced identically to щ. We might be able to find sources that, if anything, expand on the debate between various pronunciations. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Combination "сч" IS pronounced identically to "щ" but separate words ending in "с", "з", even prepositions, somehow don't merge together with words starting with "ч". [ɕɕaɪm] would sound weird, I wouldn't understand the meaning. Inside words (when spelled together) "сч", "шч", "зщ", "сщ", as I said before, are normally pronounced [ɕɕ], this includes prefixes, suffixes. --Atitarev (talk) 18:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Transcription for "с чаем", it's not correct. It's not identically to "щ". If it's two words, it's always different. And [ɕɕ] it's a phoneme not allophone. [ɕtɕ] - it's 1930-1940. It's absoletely obsolete. Sorry for my english. --Grenadine (talk) 01:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That's what I meant, "с чаем" is pronounced /stɕaɪm/. Aeusoes1 hasn't replied, so he must have agreed. I would put "щ" as [ɕɕ] at least to early 20th century, even judging by oldest Russian movies with sound. [ɕtɕ] is the modern Russian pronunciation but has been around for a significant period of time. Anatoli (talk) 01:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, was I supposed to respond? According to Halle (1959), dental stridents become palatal before palatal consonants but this doesn't occur across word boundaries, not even with enclitics like с so that вёз жи/ˈvʲoz ʐi/ ('but he drove') differs from вёж жи /ˈroʐ ʐi/ ('but it is rye') [I'm guessing at the cyrillic here since my notes only have the IPA] in careful speech. Similarly, if there's no prefix or preposition boundary between the sequences /ʂtɕ/ and /ʐʐ/, then both sequences are palatalized and the /tɕ/ becomes a continuant. Halle says that this second process is an older style and not mandatory though this certainly could have changed since 1959. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But note that считать /ˈɕɕitatʲ/ "to count" differs phonetically from считать /ˈsɕitatʲ/ "to read off" -iopq (talk) 15:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but it's the same for phoneme /ʑʑ/. I think it's not a marginal phoneme. Besides, i think it was completely standard for 1950-1960, especially for words like "жужжит". But i'm not sure... --Grenadine (talk) 02:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think, it was like that in 1950-1960: "жужжит" /ʐʊ.'ʑʑit/, and now is "жужжит" /ʐʊ.'ʐʐit/. But, it's a supposition... --Grenadine (talk) 02:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

A small correction, you must have meant: вёз жи-> вёз же ('he drove, you know'); вёж жи -> рожь же ('rye, you know'). A better and a more consistent example of /ʑʑ/ is "дрожжи" (yeast). It must be marginal, since it's disappearing in "дожди" (rains). Anatoli (talk) 02:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC).

I'm not sure if i understand, but it's not marginal, it's obsolete, and if it's disapearing in дожди, i consider it's prove it. No? --Grenadine (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Obsolete and marginal don't conflict with each other. If tt's seldom used and only in some cases - marginal, if it's considered old-fashioned, out-of-use - obsolete. /ʑʑ/ is still in use but seldom, so, "marginal" would be appropriate. Anatoli (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I hope i understud. It's obsolete litteraly and not marginal. It was a standard pronocitaion of Moscou in words like жужжать, брюзжать, дрожжи, позже etc. And now it's changing or changed. So, i think this obsolete. That prove some orthoepic dictonaries of different time. The changing of standard. --Grenadine (talk) 03:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my Cyrillic. The examples I used were from the source and illustrate how the process operates or doesn't operate across certain boundaries. Because [ʑʑ] appears only as a result of geminating /ʐ/ and may even be disappearing in favor of [ʐʐ] it seems as though there never was a phoneme /ʑʑ/. [ɕɕ] on the other hand appears to have phonemic status though it may also appear as a result of a preceding /s/ assimilating to the postalveolar place of articulation. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If it is/was standard, there were only a small number of words, plus the expected pronunciation was still acceptable (/ʐʐ/, not /ʑʑ/), that's why "marginal" is OK. For "obsolete", it might be a bit too early to bury the sound because I still use it. --Anatoli (talk) 03:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Watch out. You may be an obsolete person. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

He-he :), BTW, I am not old, not from Moscow but from the south, with strong links to eastern Ukraine, where this feature is even less common. Seriously, if we take a Kharkovite and a Muscovite, they will have a different opinion about these sounds, and would frown upon each others' minor differences in accent, nonetheless, the sound is quite alive and /ʑʑ/ sounds more educated, in my opinion. Anatoli (talk) 03:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not a question of Moscovite or Kharovite pronounciation. I said in Moscow for explain the fact of standard pronunciation. It's the same for French. The standard pronunciation was based on Paris pronunciation. жужжать - for example. And the dictionary is edited in 1930. And that fact it's not educated by minor part of linguist, it's a recongized fact described and explained in any handbook of russian phonology. --Grenadine (talk) 07:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

From ISВN 5-12-000148-3 p. 166: У ростово-суздальських говорах оформилась вимова м'яких довгих шиплячих на місці складних шиплячих, що втратили змичний елемент (ж'ж' ш'ш') [Хабургаев 1979 : 39]. (In Rostov-Suzdal dialects pronuncication of geminate postalveolars in place of composite postalveolars that lost plosive component (ɕɕ ʑʑ) was formed) It seems author references Хабургаев Г. А. Этнонимия «Повести временных лет» в связи с задачами реконструкции восточнославянского глоттогенеза.— М. : Изд-во МГУ, 1979.— 231 с. So I guess both were fricative+affricate cluster some time ago. Also it's not uncommon for Russian speakers to drop such plosive component while speaking other languages like Polish and Ukrainian where a whole variety of fricative+affricate postalveolar clusters exist. As for «с чаем» I don't know if native speaker will even notice if it's pronounced [ɕɕaɪm] or [s t͡ɕaɪm], however I know that in Ukrainian in such case prepositions do assimilate with following words, unlike other word boundaries, so I would guess such assimilation is possible at least in Southern dialects of Russian language. --Drundia (talk) 03:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Letter е

Actually, the word 'воробей' and the word 'ответ' have the same vowel sound [e]. So it's interesting for me, as Russian, why the transcription of these words are correspondingly [və.rɐˈbʲej] and [ɐˈtvʲɛt]. These should be [və.rɐˈbʲej] and [ɐˈtvʲet]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.175.12.116 (talk • contribs)

It's more like [və.rɐˈbʲej] and [ɐˈtvʲɛ̝t]. A stylistic choice that we've made in the article is to represent [ɛ̝] without the diacritic. The allophonic environment is explained in the article. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:07, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

second, slower audio file for alphabet

Please add the audio file on Russian alphabet. It may be good to have two examples, because neither is slow enough, but this one is at least a little better.--Espoo (talk) 10:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Soft vs hard

Per Padgett (2003), since the contrast is not always between palatalized and plain, it's better if we tend to use "soft" and "hard." I've gone ahead and changed the article accordingly. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I think this a influence of russian word, but litteraly it's mean palatalized and plain. I must be said, it's not the phonetics terms. It's traditional for russian linguists, but i think it's confused for foreign linguists. --Grenadine (talk) 02:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry i read the introduction more attentivly. I think this enough. --Grenadine (talk) 02:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Five vowels?

Isn't Russian supposed to have 6 vowels instead of the 5 vowels in this article? "а э и о у ы" ? That's at least what all russians are taught in school :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by SianLiao (talk • contribs) 22:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

In most of the literature I've seen, the letter ы represents /i/ after a hard consonant, which triggers a retraction for the vowel, though some scholar see it as representing a different vowel since native speakers perceive the phonetic difference. The article touches on this a bit, though there certainly could be an expansion on the differing models. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

In order that the questioner appreciate some of the extensive arguments regarding this topic which have been squirreled away into the archives, I am temporarily setting out some of the relevant material, in two parts. I have added a new comment to the second part, thus, according to Wiki-regulations, I must present it here, not in the archive. As for the unchanged first part, after the questioner (that's not you, Aeusoes1|Æµ§œš¹) feels clear about the gist of the arguments, he/she may delete it since it is already in the archive. Since the second part contains new material, I assume it's fate will be slightly different.Jakob37 (talk) 10:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[removed, don't worry, they're still in the archives]

funny that Ukrainian have a distinct 6th phenome for it. I'm not a linguist so my opinion might be lame. Yet, speaking both russian and ukrainian (and considering them both as my native languages) plus having been living for long in both countries, I would argue that ukrainian "и" is so much different from russian "ы". As well as belarussian "ы" is not different from ukrainian "и" as in words "сшытак" - bel. and "зошит" - ukr., both meaning notebook. "ы" and "и" in rus. "крыса" or ukr. "криса" are the same. Not to be rude, but an attempt to get "ы" extinct seems fishy to me. Anyway as I wrote before, russian school has always been teaching russian as having 6 vowels. And I suspect, unless strongly proven otherwise, it must remain this way in wikipedia IMHO (SianLiao (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC))

Ukrainian "и" is a bit softer than Russian "ы" but they are very similar and is not considered a mistake pronouncing Ukrainian "килими" as "кылымы" (Russian transliteration) but getting it right in Ukrainian will make your Ukrainian more authentic. Try pronouncing "в Києві" a bit softer than Russian "в Кыеви". Belarusian "ы" is identical to Russian, so is Polish "y". Note that Russian/Ukrainian sources without IPA may not answer this query as the description using Cyrillic letters approximate, not 100%. The devil is in the details. SianLiao, this was a surprise to me as well at some stage, I was convinced otherwise after some investigation. (I am native Russian too, born in Ukraine and exposed heavily to Ukrainian but not fluent). Anatoli (talk) 02:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

From what I've heard, the "exotic geographical names" that start with Ы are pronounced as if they start with И by most Russian speakers. The russian speakers pronounce with "Ы". I think that theoretically it's not phoneme, but practically it's a phoneme. --Grenadine (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, see my talk in Talk:Yery, I say Ыгыатта, Ыллымах, etc. with an [ɨ], not [i]. If someone said [i], I would think they have an accent or they don't know these names properly. It's not hard to utter, only the words sound very non-Russian. I am not excluding someone russifying the names a bit if they think they are tongue-twisters. This includes "ы" after "к", "г" or "х" but we say "кыш" to a cat to shoo it away. It's one of the reasons why "Кыргызстан" is russified back to "Киргизия" - it sounds awkward. Anatoli (talk) 05:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

And what about the names of the letters И and Ы? Every Russian can pronounce these letters in isolated positions very well. You mean to tell me that the name of the letter Ы does not belong to the Russian language? Hellerick (talk) 14:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes? I don't know how five-vowel analyses account for that. wasn't ы called "yery" originally? When did this name change? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea — when we were taught to read/write we were told that these letter are called /i/ and /ɨ/. I did not know about the name "Yery" until we started to study the old Cyrillic script (in the 6th grade I guess), so for me this name belongs to the same category as "Az", "Buki", "Vedi" and other archaic names.

There is a famous Soviet comedy movie "Операция «Ы» и другие приключения Шурика". During one of the episodes, the character of Yuriy Nikulin suggests to call their covert operation "Ы" ("So that nobody would guess why!"), and all the audience understands what he means.

Russians don't like the name "Кыргызстан", but it still exists, and it's always pronounced with /ɨ/ sounds. Russians avoid "Ы" in "improper" positions, but treat it as a separate phoneme. Hellerick (talk) 02:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Given that the point of view which considers "Ы" as a distinct vowel is quite widespread, I feel the article's statement "Russian possesses five vowel phonemes which are subject to considerable allophony. A number of linguists[1] consider [ɨ] to be a separate phoneme" is not very informative or fair for the general reader: the "other" point of view is not presented with its main features, but simply relegated to an obscure footnote which most readers would have difficulty tracking down. It's as if the article purposely wants to discourage readers from considering a viewpoint that is certainly not minor or excentric.Jakob37 (talk) 14:58, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

This is the dominant viewpoint that I've seen in my research for this article. There is an acknowledgement the article is basically taking one point of view over another but that's necessary with phonemic representations because any well-studied language will have a few linguists who disagree.

Although it may not make sense, if there is a disagreement between a group of native speakers of a certain language and linguists studying that language, we give more authority to the linguists. Native speakers can simply be wrong (though rarely about the number of phonemes in their language) and linguists can contextualize information better.

This isn't the first time that the five-vowel system has been questioned and so far no one has stepped up to the plate to give a stronger presentation of the scholarly debate regarding Russian vowels. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:00, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

For those who consider the article to be their "baby", it would then be more responsible for them to address, at least in a few words, the issue of WHY the views of "the people" and the views of "the experts" are at odds. And remember, it's not just SOME native speakers (why not admit that it's probably about 99%?), it's also the long-standing native orthography. Furthermore, the statement "if there is a disagreement between a group of native speakers of a certain language and linguists studying that language, we give more authority to the linguists" seems pretty controversial; certainly circumstances are different in many cases--such a blanket statement is vulnerable: what is the educational level of the native speakers? How long have the linguists been studying the language? It's not unknown for some "experts" to suddenly change their mind after decades.Jakob37 (talk) 04:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

If you're trying to pick a fight, I'm not really interested. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:38, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realise my tone was that belligerent!Jakob37 (talk) 15:02, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

According to the Russian article about the matter the phonological school of Moscow considers и and ы allophones, and the one of St. Petersburg considers them separate phonemes (it also mentions some pro-separation arguments, and that the speakers themselves consider the sounds separate). I see no indications that one of the view points is dominant. Indeed, considering и and ы allophones makes the description of the Russian language easier, and that's probably why this point of view is widespread in foreign publications. But strictly speaking, it is not correct any more. Hellerick (talk) 07:12, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Phoneme has its roles in language phonological system. Speakers considering two sounds as different has little to do with such roles. I saw a source explaining notable differences between these two phonological schools and and example of phonemic transcriptions of words вода and вод. For Moscow school it's /voda/ and /vod/, for SPb one it's /vada/ and /vot/. So the former explains pronuncication changes with varous phonological effects, while latter uses phonemic alterations for that purpose, mind that in some dialects they don't reduce unstressed /o/ to /a/-like sound. Moscow POV is indeed easier for general explanation, which is also more consistent with orthography. The issue of [i]-[ɨ] is also about a handful of alterations, including across word boundaries. An example from article "к Ивану" is good one as it's commonly pronounced as [к ывану], not [к' ивану] or [к ивану], for native words orthography follows pronuncication changes: играть-сыграть, for loanwords it doesn't: информация-дезинформация, though latter is commonly pronounced де[zɨ]нформация. Meaning that preceding hard consonant quite consistently retracts /i/ to [ɨ], it's not uncommon for languages to have [i] after almost hard consonants, I'd say English, Polish and Ukrainian all have such clusters occasionally (mainly across word boundaries), Russian doesn't allow for such clusters even across word boundaries. Phonemes also differentiate words, making an extra sixth phoneme will differentiate on phonemic levels words "и" and "ы", though latter one is only used as name of letter. Also always hard consonants can only be followed by [ɨ], and always soft consonants can only be followed by [i], if consonant is differentiated as hard-soft it can be followed by both, but again hard is followed by [i], and soft is followed by [ɨ]. A few loanwords don't count because that's more about them not being assimilated and again, there is no differentiation. Ыллымах isn't contrasted with Иллымах, it's just minor phonetic detail of a foreign word that isn't assimilated, even if it would be contrasted it isn't assimilated to count. --Drundia (talk) 22:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to revive this discussion -- getting a passable "ы" sound is one of the bigger phonetic difficulties for speakers of Russian as a second language. When talking to a non-native speaker, their "ы" almost inevitably gives them away. To lump it as just a variant of [i] category belies the distinctness of the sound. It may make for a neater systematization of the language, but the distinction between и and ы is much stronger than the other allophonies of Russian.

That difficulty in producing it is a marker for native speakers to identify non-native speakers is not evidence for its status as a phoneme. Native English speakers notice when non-native speakers overaspirate their plosives, or when they fail to flap an intervocalic /t/ or /d/. Similarly, Spanish speakers notice when non-native speakers fail to spirantize voiced stops.

I'm not sure what the point in bringing this up again without sources. I know there are sources that argue for a 6-vowel analysis of Russian and it would increase this article's NPOV if we presented the arguments on the 5-vowel and 6-vowel sides. However, this should be done with sourcing. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The point I made with the head post is that the classical Russian education distinctively teaches us about the language having 6 vowels sounds. If you speak or can read and understand Russian, a brief google search for "гласные звуки русского языка" will give you lots of links to readings, where in every single document it's written that Russian has 6 vowel sounds. In addition you will get links to "логопедия" i. e. that are those, who teach kids to pronounce things correctly. "Логопеды" with no any doubt "know" that the language they teach kids to speak properly has 6 vowel sounds :P Just my 2cc (SianLiao (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

small addition: take a look at the page at the site of the Philological Department of the Moscow State University: http://www.philol.msu.ru/~fonetica/nn/n24.htm (SianLiao (talk) 02:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

We have even this: http://www.philol.msu.ru/~fonetica/nn/n35.htm 80.64.85.117 (talk) 08:46, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The article says that 5-phoneme interpretation is assumed in it. A proper solution woud be not to put a single POV, bud describe both posisions in full. While there is a considerable gray area and shifts between ы/и, they do deliver considerable "meaningful contrasts between utterances" and radically change word meaning: бит - быт , пил - пыл, нить - ныть . Ulad (talk) 19:02, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Hopefully your tag will prompt editors to find the sources that I have been unable to read. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment

Transcription for твёрдый [ˈtvʲo.rdɨj] and шофёр [ʂɐˈfʲor], i suppose it's should be an allophone for "o", after palatalizes consonants: твёрдый [ˈtvʲɵ.rdɨj] and шофёр [ʂɐˈfʲɵr], like in тётя [ˈtʲɵ.tʲə], and i'm not sure for syllabes in "твёрдый", i would say [ˈtvʲɵr.dɨj]. But it's a point of view of native speakers, not a linguiste. I suppose the russian phonology has a rules for that. But, i don't know theirs. --Grenadine (talk) 02:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree, I am Russian too. It's [ˈtvʲo.rdɨj], not [ˈtvʲɵ.rdɨj]. The consonant is affected, not the following vowel. Try to prolong the vowel. Anatoli (talk) 02:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you right if i prolong the vowel it's sound like o, but that funny, if i prolong the vowel in тётя, i think it's the same effect, no? --Grenadine (talk) 02:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps one just needs a reliable source which may say something like "back vowels are somewhat fronted when preceded, and especially when surrounded by soft consonants", and I believe one was already found and used. The fact that common Cyrillic transcription never marks such change in vowel pronuncication doesn't really mean it doesn't exist. And since when Wikipedian's ears are a reliable source? Reliable sources say it should be centralized, so it should be centralized. Mind that some people may be able to prolong it without it being retracted to its "after hard" position. Most Russians may be unable to pronounce [ɵ] in isolated environment (like not after soft consonant), but that may have more to do with the fact that they were never told that it's different. --Drundia (talk) 02:21, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Jones & Ward (1969) discuss this aspect of back vowels, though they say that [ɵ] occurs between soft consonants and Crosswhite (2000) says it's just following one. I don't know if this is an "especially" kind of situation or if the language has changed in 40 years. Someone on this talk page a while ago said that he's heard [æ] between a soft consonant and a pause (though, I know, this is OR). — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be just after soft consonant, though maybe it changes a tiny bit further if followed as well. Same goes for [æ], it's likely pronounced that way regardless of following consonant. Though probably a reliable source saying that is needed first. --Drundia (talk) 17:38, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

For me it's just logical, if it's occur after soft consonant, it's should occur after all consonants. Phonologically speaking. No? --Grenadine (talk) 23:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

There's no question that it occurs between soft consonants, but sources sort of contradict each other as to whether it occurs between a soft and hard consonant as well. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:28, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I'm mean if it occurs in тётя, why not in other words in the same conditions, твёрдый, шофёр etc... ? --Grenadine (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Those aren't the same conditions. тётя has /o/ between soft consonants and твёрдый has it between a soft and hard consonant. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, i see!!! :) It's my mistake. Thank you for this explanation! So for this scientist, [ɵ] occurs only between two soft consonants and in other words it's only [o] ? --Grenadine (talk) 01:11, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, so Russian article on matter links Русская грамматика (АН СССР, 1980), sounds reliable to me. It discusses positional changes of all vowels, luckily not just with symbols some of which are kind of not correctly read after scan, but with nice descriptions. So here is that description for stressed vowels:

Word-initial not before soft consonant: all [i ɨ e a o u] occur without changes.
Between hard consonants, or after hard consonant not before consonant: [a o u] are unchanged, [i] is absent, [ɨ] exists, /e/ is retracted (mid central).
Word initial before soft consonant, or between soft consonants: /i e/ are raised.
/e/ after hard consonants (in loanwords, and after always hard ц ш ж) is retracted (mid central), if followed by soft consonant it is somewhat advanced in final articulation phase.
Non-front vowels /a o u/ before soft consonant are raised and advanced in final articulation phase, after soft consonant they are raised and advanced in initial articulation phase, between soft consonants they are raised and advanced during whole articulation.
[ɨ] is also advanced and raised during final articulation phase before soft consonants.

That's like diphthongization. Though they never say which phase is longer, I'd say initial one is longer and for that reason more important.

It also has information on syllable division. If there is one consonant between vowels it belongs to next syllable, if there are several and all are obstruents they belong to next syllable, if it's sequence of sonorants and obstruents syllable break is before first obstruent, if it's sequence of sonorants syllable break may be either before or after first one, always after if first one is /j/. --Drundia (talk) 02:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Intervocal j in unstressed syllables

The articles mentions умыкание [ʊmɨˈkanʲɪɛ] and полногласие [pəlnɐˈɡlasʲɪjə]. So should we use j in such cases or not? What about words like известия? Hellerick (talk) 03:12, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

[j] is deleted before [i] and [ɪ]. I'm not sure why those words have ɛ in an unstressed syllable or ə as an unstressed /e/, it could be an error. I'm not 100% sure about final unstressed /a/ after soft consonants (я), but if it's [ɪ] then the [j] is deleted and if it's [ə] then it's not deleted. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

умыкание [ʊmɨˈkanʲɪɛ] - i think it's a little bit wrong, in modern russian speech, we don't have a word without [j] between this group of sound [ɪɛ] or [ɪe]. --Grenadine (talk) 23:51, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think in modern russian, it's more frequent the words where [j] occurs anytime. воскресение --> воскресенье (orthographically it may be the same word), and it's for almost all words with ие. For [ɛ], i think it's occur in unstressed position without [j] only in "foreign" words like алоэ [əɫ'oɛ] --Grenadine (talk) 00:05, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Palatalization - wrong words

As native speaker, I found some wrong words:

доме can't using without preposition, therefore it will be more right use "в доме" or "о доме". Without preposition is extremely difficult to understand which word is it.
I never heard form of word жена such as женин (There just no such form in russian). It's exist in dictionary, but marked as informal word, thus mean - this word shouldn't using. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vorval 0 (talk • contribs) 18:06, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it's okay to use доме without в or о. The gloss clarifies it sufficiently. The thing about that list of alternations is that they feature different types of alternations, so if we can't find an accurate parallel with жена, it's probably best to just remove that example. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:04, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a word женин in Russian, and is in use, too. "Informal" is just as valid word for lingusts as "formal". So good to see it not deleted. Anyway, if someone really wants it, then женить or женил will do. Ulad (talk) 18:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Can one say that the palatalized and plain (non-palatalized) "variants" of consonants in Russian are allophones of their respective phonemes? RokasT (talk) 11:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

As the article says, that depends on interpretation. I believe the most common analysis is that the palatalized and plain consonants are their own phonemes. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:24, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Labiodental voiced fricative

Hearing from audio samples, I got impression that Russians pronounce this phoneme, /v/, much softer; perhaps in a more bilabial fashion than labiodental. Am I right? Wisapi (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's bilabial, the soft pronunciation is more akin to [ʋ], a labiodental approximant. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's not bilabial, but somehow softer. Bilabial was an unfortunate way of describing it. I would agree with [ʋ]. But is that an allophone, a phoneme or the actual phone for <В,в>? Wisapi (talk) 22:06, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure. It might be the case that the sound represented by <в> in Russian is in Free variation between fricative and approximant pronunciation. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:36, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The curious case of световой and звезда

To quote from the article:

световой [sʲvʲɪtɐˈvoj] ('luminous')
звезда [zʲvʲɪˈzda] ('star')

The correct transcriptions would rather be [svʲɪ.tɐ.ˈvʷoj] and [zvʲɪz.ˈda], as the pronunciations given previously are A) Dialectal (in Standard Russian, in consonant clusters of only the consonant immediately preceding a soft vowel is palatalized) and B) (especially in the case of звезда) improperly separated into syllables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.156.220.234 (talk) 08:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

According to Halle (1959), paired dental consonants are palatalized before soft labials. However, he also says that in literary pronunciation this isn't the case if there is a prefix or preposition boundary between them. That's fifty years ago, so I don't know how the language has changed but I haven't seen anything as detailed as this source. It's nondistinctive either way. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

This is an old thread, but... As far as I remember, standard Russian does not feature "carried over palatalization" (is there a "real" linguistic term for this? Is there an article about this?). This is the fearure of Western dialects. I guess a 1959 book by a foreigner cannot take precedence. It is fully developed to the west of Russia: in Lithuanian (there are some peculiarities; e.g., in 'piRKTi' 't' and 'r' are palatalized but 'k' is not) and in Belarusian (in fact, tarashkevitsa insists on reflecting this in orthography: be-x-old:Палесьсе vs. be:Палессе). I vaguely remember this in Slovak, but not sure. "Palatalization" page does not describe this process. Again, what would be a good term: suprasegmental palatalization? (btw, suprasegmental is a redirect and not much written elsewhere about it as well) palatalization in consonant clusters/consonant custer palatalization? Ulad (talk) 17:38, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

It's an old thread but the issue has been brought up more recently on my talk page. I believe we can refer to the term as "assimilation" of palatalization but it really depends on the consonants that are pronounced together. I've created a table (based on Halle 1959) that details the distribution of soft and hard consonants in Russian consonant clusters. In addition to the problem of accuracy that native speakers sometimes bring up, there are a few question marked spots. Deductive reasoning would tell me to expect hard consonants in those spots that haven't been filled but there are a few cells that seem to show contrastiveness if orthography is to be trusted. My knowledge of Russian is limited, so if native speakers could comment on the table, particularly on the questionable cells, it would be helpful. Finding sources that discuss this sort of thing would also be helpful. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:43, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

In many cases two versions of pronunciation coexist, like [ˈlʲesnʲɪtsə] and [ˈlʲesʲnʲɪtsə], and most Russians don't notice that such words can be pronounced in different way. I can't tell which version is more popular. But the consonand [v] is a special one, it's a "palatalization breaker", and the consonant preceding it don't share its "softening". Therefore the pronunciations [sʲvʲɪtɐˈvoj] and [zʲvʲɪˈzda] are nonstandard and would be perceived by native speakers as strange (something like rural speech). Hellerick (talk) 02:18, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Assimilation of palatalization: Thanks for the term. I think I've found an answer to the issue with Halle: some authors state that Russian is in the process of the loss of palatalization assimilation. Same here. The latter ref is quite detailed about the issue, and I especially enjoyed the paragraph about "коммунизьм" :-) Ulad (talk) 05:14, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Quite an excellent find, Ulad. I'll incorporate that information in this article when I have some time. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Sha

Please synchronize the articles Russian phonology, Sha, Voiceless postalveolar fricative, and Voiceless retroflex fricative. I noticed and fixed some internal discrepancy when editing sha, but now I noticed that it goes wider and deeper. I am not a linguist to fix this problem with authority and consistency.

I suspect that the same goes with many other articles relate to Russian phonetics. Ulad (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Another issue with Russian phonology is that there is no good phonological cross-references with Russian dialects. In particular, I wanted to find someting about the Odessite "шя", "Шюра". Ulad (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, information at Wikipedia in regards to dialectal variation of Russian is very scarce. I don't know of any good sources to look at for details of such variation.

I'm confused as to what the discrepancies are. The four articles say that ш is a retroflex fricative in Russian. What's the problem? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:17, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess it is not as bad as itseemed to me yesterday. Still, some nitpicking.

Partially is is my "fault": I fixed a bit. But it still mentions both /ʃ/ or /ʂ/ and does not say what is in what language.
Further, Voiceless postalveolar fricative says: "The sound in Russian denoted by <ш> is commonly transcribed as a postalveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative". (The latter term is piped to Voiceless retroflex fricative, which is bad. I would have written laminal retroflex fricative.) But the legend to the table in Voiceless retroflex fricative says: "to distinguish between apical [ʂ̺] and laminal [ʂ̻]" while the Russian example writes "[ʂut̪]", without tongue contact. Also Russian phonology says nothing about laminal.
(side note) Russian phonology does not have examples for some consonants. It particular, it took me hard time to figure out where /ʑʑ/ comes from. I guess it is like in "доЖДик".
(side note) "Consonant clusters" says "can have as many as four segments." Form my childhood I remember various challenges to produce a word with some extremal properties, like three 'e' in a row (dlinnosheee, zmeeed). For consonant clusters I remember one with 6 segments, взбзднуть; a rather "non-mainstream" word I must say. However there are more common words with 5 segments, and I challenge you to find one :-)
"Sha" is unreferenced for quite some time now.
Most of the first paragraph in 'sha' does not really belong there. All these language comparisons must go into Fricative page or in some other commom place.
AFAIK, "sha" is also described as fricative. I don't remember this mentioned in the pages I initially listed. So it is voiceless laminal sibilant retroflex fricative in standard Russian. Did I miss something else? Is the adjective order correct? Is there a Russian counterpart to professor Higgins? :-)

Ulad (talk) 17:14, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

[d͡z] and [d͡ʑ]

Is it really necessary to include these in the consonant chart? It seems they're just largely predictable positional allophones of /t͡s/ and /t͡ɕ/. One sound that might be marginally phonemic though is [d͡ʐ], which shows up in loanwords like <джем> "jam". AlexanderKaras (talk) 09:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

[d͡ʑ] doesn't appear in джем (it's pronounced [dʐɛm]). It doesn't seem like we need them, though how do we justify the presence of nonphonemic palatalized velars? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I said it's pronounced with [dʐ]. But anyway, from what I understand palatalized velars are just obligatory allophones before front vowels. /kʲ/* might be marginally phonemic, but that's it. I'm not sure if voiced allophones of affricates are obligatory but long story short, non-phonemic distinctions belong in the article and not in the chart.AlexanderKaras (talk) 21:38, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't read that right. It's possible that [dʐɛm] features a stop+fricative consonant cluster (something that Russian makes a marginal contrast with), but let's look at the forest instead of the trees. From my perspective, the soft allophones of the velars are fairly notable while the voiced allophones of some voiceless consonants are less-so. But I can't really point to anything that backs this up. Could we justify having the soft velars but not the voiced affricates? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:07, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I think so. The palatalized velars are obligatory; I'm not sure if the voiced affricates ever are.AlexanderKaras (talk) 02:52, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

/ɡʲ/, /xʲ/

“/kʲ/ might be considered a marginal phoneme, although its occurrence before non-front vowels is mostly in words of foreign origin.”

I think the same is true for /ɡʲ/ and /xʲ/. There are words (of foreign origin) in Russian in which [ɡ], [x] appear before /i/, /e/ and [ɡʲ], [xʲ] appear before /a/, /o/, /u/.

E. g.: гэльский [ˈɡɛlʲskʲɪj], хэш [xɛʂ], гюрза [ɡʲʊrˈza], Хю etc.

The table of consonant phonemes in Russian Wikipedia does contain /ɡ/ and /ɡʲ/, /x/ and /xʲ/ as distinct phonemes. Why are they absent in this article? — Formicant (talk) 12:13, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the example words. We recently took the other soft velars out, but I've just put them back in. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The difference is that [kʲ] is the only one that occurs before non-front vowel in native word in standard language (that's ткёт). --Drundia (talk) 14:33, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

What about the example words that Formicant gives of [x] and [g] in front of non-front vowels? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

They are loanwords. --Drundia (talk) 14:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

So are the words with [kʲ] before non-front vowels (I'm not familiar with the word мкём. Do you have other examples?). Why do we make a native/non-native distinction like that? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The word is ткёт (3rd pers. sg. of ткать ‘to weave’), not мкём :) Another native example is кыш ‘shoo!’. I believe that the origin of the words is not important for the synchronic phonology. Russian speakers do not have problems with distinguishing between /ku/ and /kʲu/, /ɡo/ and /ɡʲo/ etc so /kʲ/, /ɡʲ/, and /xʲ/ are marginal phonemes. Formicant (talk) 07:30, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

"/ɡ/, in addition becoming voiceless, also lenites to [x]."

This seems to crop up a lot in Wikipedia articles, but do we have a source on this? I thought <г> was only realized as [x] in a few words in the standard dialect. It might differ in dialects where /ɡ/ is [ɣ] instead (as in Belarusian). AlexanderKaras (talk) 05:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Paul Boersma in "Sound change in functional phonology":

"things like the Russian rendering of the earlier masculine genitive ending /-ego/ as /-evo/ and, most conspicuously, the fact that final devoicing causes Russian /g/ to become /x/, not /k/, suggest that even the northern Russian “g” was a fricative at the time Russian dropped its final overshort vowels (jers)."

I'm not sure how to cite this article, though. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 12:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't necessarily mean 'g' was fricative in Northern dialects. Russians have sporadical lenition in many other words, say, [b] in что-нибудь becomes sporadically a bilabial approximant [β] (then dissapearing at all). Would the author of that quote now argue that [b] was initially fricative in Northern dialects? No, it's bull*it. -ого is a very frequent morpheme and I don't see why -g- can't be lenited intervocally ad-hoc as much as the very frequent будет becomes [buɪt] losing its [d] in colloquial speech (while простудит never renders as *[pra'stuɪt] due to much lower frequency) Then -v- was inserted to compensate the hiatus. As for final devoicing to [x], it happens mostly in a handful of words of bookish (Church) Slavonic origin, which historically retained its original Kievan pronunciation (such as 'God'). Standard Russian is a mix of different dialects, sociolects and styles, of course it got some South Russian/Kievan influence. But assuming that Northern dialects had [ɣ] all the time just because some people sporadically tried to sound educated pronuncing some words in the 'high' Kievan way (with [ɣ]; PROTIP: there was bilingualism) is so short-sighted. Gosh. 77.40.71.229 (talk) 02:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Boersma had some other evidence on the matter, but I can't remember any of it. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 02:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

There is some sporadical evidence in some written material where they omit the 'g' sound in between vowels, or write it as х [x], as if implying its soft, lenited nature, but most of it can be explained either with simple typos, or with a particular writer's desire to imitate the bookish Kievan pronounciation or Church Slavonic (I remember cases like the lithurgical ангел 'angel' was once somewhere written down as анхел etc.) I guess Boersma bases his opinion on these sparse data. Third guess is the writer immigrated from the south. I don't remember birch marks (which reflect real colloquial northern pronounciation) having some of these issues (a big percent of slavs migrated to Novgorod from today's Poland, and Polish dialects all retain /g/). Meanwhile, I found myself recently pronouncing /kuda/ as [kua] in some circumstances :) 77.40.23.185 (talk) 13:26, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, interestingly enough, -/ovo/ being spelt as -ого is one of those rare exceptions to the otherwise phonemic writing system, which can be an indication of a recent innovation (if not influence from Church Slavonic), i.e. the orthography didn't have enough time to change, like it was with English, and he's talking here about a 1000 year old timeline. 77.40.23.185 (talk) 13:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the -ого is shown as evidence of a fricative pronunciation because the Old English voiced velar fricative became various sounds, including a labiodental fricative, depending on context. That's why rough is pronounced with /f/. But every language is different. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

TOTAL REVISION

Hello, wikipedians!

I am here to help you!

At the beginning, a small disclaimer:

1. I am an adult Russian living in Moscow, coming from an educated family, so you can assume my knowledge of the language is very good.

2. I know two foreign languages pretty good, so you can assume I am familiar with analysis and parsing of sounds.

3. I won't use any links to books written 60 plus years ago by foreigners as you do, because it does not make any sense, I assume that I am the most reliable source here.

4. I strongly advise you do the same way.

5. I am only intended to help you create a correct article about Russian, please take no abuse, but when I imagine a person talking to me the way it is proposed in the article I laugh my ass off, seriously!

6. I will answer your questions with great pleasure. I will not argue unless you prove to be a native speaker of Russian. I have spent a lot of my time writing this with only one goal – to improve this article, not to argue with the foreign linguists of the 19th century.

7. If you want a real sound, I may record a sample for any text given, so that you can listen to it, compare to other sources (news videoreports, for instance) and make sure that I am right.

                        --- Here are my remarks as the article goes on. ---

1. To begin with, there are six - may I repeat - six vowels! Every native speaker, be he totally crippled and crooked, can pronounce the isolated sounds ‘ы’ [ɨ] and ‘и’ [i] clearly and distinguish them. By the way, ‘и’ when unstressed becomes [ɪ], when stressed it is [i] or [ɨ] if preceded by letters ‘ж’, ’ш’ or ’ц’ (ever hard ones).

2. The proper transcription for a stressed ‘я’ (as in мягкий or пять) is either [ɐ] or [ʌ]. Sic! See 5.

3. Russian has got six vowels. These are ‘а’ ‘о’ ‘у’ ‘и’ ‘ы’ ‘э’. This is being taught at school. This is evident to any native speaker. This is obvious! Those not agreeing with it should be killed with fire! Why would you accept the point of view of a polish linguist and a linguist, who lived 100 years ago and was born and educated in Kiev (according to the references in an article)? That’s ridiculous!

4. The vowel in ‘жест’ and ‘цель’ are absolutely equal, namely [ɛ]. When stressed ‘е’ is pronounced like [ɛ] after 'ж', 'ш' and 'ц' (the ever hard consonants) and [e] in other cases, including [j]. And yes, ‘ответ’ is [ɐtvʲet], exactly the same vowel as in ‘ответить’!

5. Between soft consonants, ‘a’ never becomes [æ]. It is either [ɐ] or [ʌ]. Otherwise пять (five) would sound like a distorted pronunciation of петь (to sing). The reference to the 50 year old work of foreign linguists is so cute.

6. Unstressed ‘е’ becomes [ɪ], unless it is the last syllable in a word, where it becomes [ə]. For example Russians distinguish ‘заморим’ [zɐ’morʲɪm] ({we} will have exhausted {somebody}) and ‘за морем’ [zɐ’morʲəm] or bookish [‘zamɐrʲəm] (overseas, literally “behind the sea”).

7. “Both /o/ and /a/ merge with /i/ after soft consonants and /j/ (/o/ is written as ‹e› in these positions). This occurs for /o/ after retroflex consonants as well.[17] Examples: жена [ʐɨ̞’na] ('wife'), язык [jɪ’zɨk] ('tongue')” – What the hell of a crap is that?! And again there is a reference to a 50 year old work of foreign linguists. This is hilarious! First of all [o] is written like ‘e’ only when ‘е’ represents the letter ‘ё’, because some Russians (actually many of them) are too lazy to put dots above the letter or to press a key on a keyboard that corresponds ‘~’ on qwerty). In ‘жена’ it is not the case, it is ‘e’ that becomes ‘i’. Moreover, impossible as it may seem, the letter ‘ё’ [jo], which sometimes is represented by ‘e’, is always stressed! Considering merger of ‘е’ (not ‘o’, as you say) and ‘a’ with ‘i’ in unstressed position after soft consonants, the latter is true while the former is quite wrong, see 6, ‘язык’ is therefore [jɪ’zɨk]. I would propose the formulation: “The letter ‘я’ when unstressed is pronounced as [ɪ], unless it is the last vowel in a word, where it is pronounced as [ɐ] or as [jə], if preceded by a vowel”. Simple as that!

8. “In certain suffixes, after soft consonants and /j/, /a/ and /o/ (which is written as ‹e›) can be distinguished…” – Please, kill this phrase: “/o/ (which is written as ‹e›)”, kill it! For thou shalt not lie to peoples! Indeed! See 7. And again ‘пóле’ is with [ə] in the end, while ‘пóля’ is with [ɐ] in the end. See 6. and 7. In the example ‘под морем’ again the last vowel is [ə] or [ɛ̠], if articulated intensively, and not [ɪ].

9. “In weakly stressed positions, vowels may become voiceless between two voiceless consonants” should be expanded with that they also may become voiceless in the ending position, thus ‘потому что’ frequently reduces to [p̥tɐ’mu ʂt]. Though the whole phenomenon of such devoicing appears only in colloquial speech.

10. “The soft/hard distinction for velar consonants is typically allophonic; they might be considered marginal phonemes.” – Though they may be called allophonic (which I hardly agree with), this doesn’t mean they are marginal. They are not.

11. The phoneme [ɕɕ] is by no means a marginal one. Just so. And I would prefer using indication [ɕ:], because it is in a better accordance with the real sound (there is one long sound, not two consecutive ones). The sound [ʑ:] is not an independant phoneme, it is an allophone of [ʐ:] (those that you mark as [ʑʑ] and [ʐʐ]). You can say 'заезжай' (drive in!) either like [zɐɪ’ʑ:aj] or like [zɐɪ’ʐ:aj], both will be equally correct.

12. Russian ‘т’, ‘д’, ‘н’ and ‘л’ (t, d, n and l,) are only dental, never apical (which implies they are never alveolar). The apical pronunciation is the first sign, that tells Russians that you come from Western Europe. The hard sound [r] is postalveolar, while the soft one [rʲ] can be either alveolar or postalveolar (less common). Soft [tʲ], [dʲ], [nʲ] and [lʲ] are alveolar laminals.

13. Considering the Moscow pronunciation, which is adopted as a standard one, while devoicing in the end of the word, ‘г’ lenitates to [х] only in 1 word: бог (god). It also lenitates when followed by ‘к’, as in мягкий, лёгкий. Another special case is in a set phrase '(О,) Господи' (oh, good Lord ), which can be pronounced as [(o)'gospədʲɪ] or [(o)'ɣospədʲɪ], the second pronunciation would make the exclamation more emotional. There are no other cases of use of this sound for ‘g’ in a standars pronunciation.

14. Firstly, the sequence, that unites the end of one word and the beginning of another one, is either voiced or not, if the first word in a set is a noun or a verb, regardless of the origin of the word or the letter f. More colloquial and speedy speech (more common) will result in voicing, while smooth and articulated (as that of announcers) will result in absence of voicing. Thus Адольф Гитлер (Adolf Hitler) in the first case becomes [ɐ’dolʲv’ɡʲitlʲər], while in the second one бес дремлет (the demon sleeps) becomes [‘bʲes’drʲemlʲət]. So ‘граф болеет’ can be either voiced or not depending on the way you speak. If adverbs, prepositions and shortened adjectives are considered, they are always voiced: здесь грязно [‘zdʲezʲ’grʲaznə] (it is dirty here), к дому [‘gdomu] (towards the house). Mind that in the middle of a word voicing or devoicing always takes place. As far as the phenomenon of “transparency of v towards voicing” is concerned, it is interesting that in case a preposition ending with a consonant is followed by ‘v’ plus consonant, it changes in order to facilitate the pronunciation in such cases, which is reflected in spelling: ‘к’ becomes ‘ко’, thus resulting in ко вдове [kəvdɐ’vʲɛ]. The same happens with preposition ‘с’ [s] (with), ‘в’ [v] (in), ‘об’ [op] (about), ‘без’ [bʲes] (without), ‘под’ [pot] (under), ‘из’ [is] (from, out of) and so on, which change in such cases into ‘со’, ‘во’, ‘обо’, ‘безо’, ‘подо’, ‘изо’ and so on. The examples are: ‘без причин’ [bʲɪsprʲɪ’tɕin] (without reasons), but ‘безо всяких причин’ [bʲɪzɐ’fsʲakɪxprʲɪ’tɕin] (without any reasons).

15. Proposing [sʲ] for initial ‘с’ and [zʲ] for initial ‘з’ in words ‘световой’ and ‘звезда’ respectively is just awesome! These are only inhabitants of extremely suburban godforsaken areas, who pronounce it this way. In standard Russian only the last consonant in a sequence becomes soft, others stay hard. This applies to звезда, световой, светлый, свинья [svʲɪ~], скрестить [skrʲɪ~], расстрелять [rəs:trʲɪ~] and so on. The only exceptions being ст~ and ~ст~, ~сн~ preceded by a vowel that may result in chain softening [sʲtʲ~] and [~sʲtʲ~], [~sʲnʲ~] and some other cases, though this is not a strict rule. Thus ‘стена’ (the wall) or ‘постель’ (the bed) can be pronounced either with [sʲ] or with [s], so is in the word ‘мстить’ (to take revenge), which is pronounced with either soft or hard ‘с’, but strictly with a hard ‘м’.

16. “Before /j/, paired consonants are normally soft as in пью [pʲju] ('I drink') and пьеса [‘pʲjesə] ('theatrical play'). съездить [‘sjezʲdʲɪtʲ] ('to go/ travel') is an exception to this for many speakers.” – Who told you this was an exception?! Can’t you tell the letters ‘ь’ and ‘ъ’ apart? If to speak in simple terms, the first one is a totally reduced voiceless analogue of ‘и’ and the second one is a totally reduced voiceless analogue of ‘ы’. Simple as that! Now if you pronounce ‘пью’ like ‘пию’, which is [pʲɪ’ju], and gradually reduce the length of the sound [ɪ] to naught… Wunderbar! You pronounce [pʲju] as it should be in ‘пью’. Now if you pronounce съездить as сыездить, which is [sɨ’jezʲdʲɪtʲ], and then gradually reduce the length of the sound [ɨ] to naught… Wunderbar! You pronounce [sjezʲdʲɪtʲ] as it schould be in ‘съездить’ with a hard initial s. Wild applause! Thanks. And there is no way ‘съездить’ is an exception to many speakers, unless these speakers live in Zimbabwe. For instance, there are съехать, въехать, подъехать, подъезд, съязвить, изъявить, изъясняться (изъяснение, изъясняющий, изъяснить), изъявлять (изъявление, изъявляющий), объяснять (объяснение, объясняющий, объяснить), объявлять (объявление, объявляющий, объявить) and many more. Seems like this is way too typical to be ”the only exception”.

17. In ‘аист’ there should be no sound [j] at all, it is not omitted, unlike in the example ‘делает’ [‘dʲɛləɪt], where it really is. In fact in ‘ае’, ‘ие’, ‘ое’, ‘уе’, ‘оя’ if the last letter is unstressed, [j] is omitted. In other cases and combinations [j] remains.

18. “e.g. кура [‘kurə] 'chicken' vs. [kʊ’ra] 'blizzard')” – The first meaning is very oldfashioned, while the second one is not known to science so far. Actually no other meaning of this word is known. ‘Blizzard’ is either ‘бýря’ or ‘пургá’.

19. Concerning your talks in discussion, the letter ‘щ’ represents the sound [ɕ:], and never – you see – never the sound [ɕtɕ]. Just so. No matter what you imagine, what you read in those stupid books, what weird thing you would kile it to be – never it sounds like [ɕtɕ] in standard pronunciation. Sometimes it is reduced to [ɕ]. Neither I, nor my parents, nor my grand parents have ever pronounced it like [ɕtɕ]. This combination may appear as free variation of ‘с чаем’ (with tea), ‘с чистой советью’ (with a clear conscience): either [stɕ~] or more commonly [ɕtɕ~]; whereas ‘считать’ (to count) is [ɕ:~]. The ending ‘ое’ as in ‘красное’ is [‘krasnɐə] (red, neutr. sing.), considering what I have written earlier in 18. ‘Красная’ would be [‘krasnɐjə] (red, fem., sing). In ‘известия’ the sound [j] between last two vowels stays, while in ‘воскресение’ it is omitted [~nʲɪə]. See 18. In ‘воскресенье’ the sound [ɪ] is changed to [j] thus resulting in [~nʲjə]. The letter ‘в’ represents the sound [ʋ], [v] is much less common.

20. Sounds [gʲ], [kʲ] and [xʲ] do appear in native russian words, as in ‘гибель’ [‘gʲibʲəlʲ] (ruin, death) ‘кем’ [kʲem] (by whom), ‘хитрый’ [xʲitrɨj] (sly). The only last one [xʲ] is rather rare in native words. Others are not.

21. Make sure you distinguish russian letter 'м' (m) from italic variant of russian letter 'т' (t), which looks like ' т ', while the italic variant of 'м' looks like ' м '.

That's how it is. Schütze (talk) 11:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to take your points by number.

1. 1, 3 There are two competing analyses about the vowels of Russian. It is perhaps the case that the 6-vowel analysis is more common in Russia itself, but so far nobody has really brought up much sourcing to address this scholarly disagreement. Lev Shcherba and Jerzy Rubach, who you cast doubt on (though being Polish or from the early 20th century needn't disqualify a scholar), actually agree with your position. The ability for Russians to pronounce ы in isolation is something I've observed personally, though I don't know how widespread it is.

2. 2, 5 The [æ] allophone is something that I've observed personally. I believe it may be the case that there's no confusion with /e/ in that context because /e/ is a near-close [e] in that context.

3. 4, 6, 9, 15 That is something I'd like to see sourcing on.

4. 7, 8 The sentences you cite are arguing that there are morphemes that are pronounced with [o] (and spelled ё) when stressed, and pronounced with [ɪ] (and spelled е) when unstressed. I good example of this is the word чёрный (with an [o]), which has the same root morpheme as чернила (with [ɪ]), yet the stress is different. Under this analysis, the alternations are phonological ones. It's important to make a distinction between orthography and phonology, which is why I don't think your proposed wording is very strong.

5. 10, 11 "Marginal" simply means that it may not indicate a simple phonemic contrast. Thus, if the soft/hard contrast is largely allophonic (i.e. not phonemic) for velars, the smattering of phonemic contrast present from loanwords is a primary form of marginality. Similarly, I've seen analyses (which I dislike) of [ɕɕ] and [ʑʑ] as underlyingly hard consonants that soften upon gemination. It's not doubtful that these phones occur in the language, only that they are phonemes in their own right.

6. 12 Dental laminal strikes me as odd. But if you can present a source for this, that would be ideal.

7. 13, 19 That's something that was brought up at Wikipedia talk:IPA for Russian. I guess we never fixed it here.

8. 16 I understand that ъ indicates that a preceding consonant is hard when it would otherwise be soft, but it is my impression that such words are quite rare; even when ъ is present, the consonant may still be soft, thus making the distinction between ъ and ь moot. I believe this information comes from Sounds of the World's Languages by Peter Ladefoged.

9. 17 The idea behind и is that it represents /ji/ or /ʲi/ but the /j/ is dropped quite frequently. To illustrate this, perhaps it would be helpful to ask you to think of a word that has a stressed и after a vowel, which I'm pretty sure represents /ji/. Of course, an alternative analysis could be that the [j] is epenthetically inserted (as is the case with Ukrainian).

10. 18 Can you come up with a better example?

11. 21 Is there an instance where we've done that here?

— Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 22:08, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, I have divided your post into sections to facilitate commenting on it.

1. I don’t know where these competing analyses exist; I know, what I have been told at school: there are six vowels. No controversy about it. I don’t know where you live, but where I live, namely in Russia, everybody can pronounce the isolated sounds [i] and [ɨ] clearly. Compare: 'пил' [pʲil] ({I/you/he} drank) and 'пыл' [pɨl] (zeal), 'был' [bɨl] ({I/you/he} was) and [bʲil] ({I/you/he} struck).

2. It is wrong. If you have observed it, this must have been either a non-native speaker, or minor dialect speaker. It is either [ɐ] (as in 'пять'), if stressed, or [ɪ] if unstressed (as in 'пятёрка').

3. The source is Russian pronounciation. I am not familiar with special literature on the topic, so it will take me too much time to find sources. Furthermore, you must understand, that Russian sources (which are surely the most reliable ones) use Russian transcription (with cyrillic symbols) in our orthoepical dictionaries, which is rather poor and unsystematic. Thus, you have to trust me. I must point out, that I am ready to make an audio sample of any Russian text at you choice, if you are interested in it.

4. What do you mean by “phonological alterations”? What about the word ‘чернь’ having the same root (morpheme) stressed and being pronounced with [e]? Next, I argue this part of the phrase: “(/o/ is written as ‹e› in these positions). This occurs for /o/ after retroflex consonants as well. Examples: жена [ʐɨ̞’na] ('wife'), язык [jɪ’zɨk] ('tongue')”. Now tell me where the hell is [o] in жена?!

5. I repeat, [ɕ:] is not marginal: ‘щуп’ [ɕ:up] (a probing rob) and ‘шуб’ [ʂup] ({colour of} fur coats) are the different words, their pronounciation never interferes! The phoneme [ɕ:] is pretty frequent in Russian. Simple as that. As for [ʑ:], this is an allphone, not a phoneme.

6. Let’s put it like this: they are dental. (But generally dental laminals exist in other languages). You wrote that they may be apical and this may confuse a reader, that they are alveolar.

7. All right. I just pointed out the mistake.

8. A consonant preceding ‘ъ’ is never soft. No way. I have given you a bunch of examples with ‘ъ’ and you still insist on your “съездить [‘sjezʲdʲɪtʲ] ('to go/ travel') is an exception to this for many speakers.” What the hell?! The ‘ъ’ and ’ь’ have got different functions, they represent different sounds, they are totally different, don’t ever mix them up.

9. Don’t mix the Ukrainian and Russian languages. In Russian 'и' never represents [ji], as in the Ukrainian the letter 'ï' does. There are very many examples of words, in which a stressed 'и' is preceded by a vowel: поить, доить, поискать, переиграть, воинственный, выискивать. No sound [j] occures between the vowels. It sounds like the english word 'reestablish'. The best example is the word Украина (the Ukraine), which Russians pronounce like [ukrɐ’inɐ] and the Ukrainians say [ukrɐ’jina] (Украïна is how it is spelled in the Ukrainian).

10. Better examples: кóли (if so) and коли ({imperative} chop), мáло (a little of) and малó ({the dress is} too small), пáрит ({he/she/it} steams) and парит ({he/she/it} soars), вáжнo ({this is} important) and важнó ({it is} important), пéчи (the ovens) and печи ({colour of} the oven), дóма (at home) and домá (the houses/homes), пáром ({by} stream) and парóм (the steamboat), пóтом ({by} sweat; as in 'потом и кровью – by one’s sweat and blood') and потóм (afterwards), and the most ambiguous one, which constantly confuses all russian readers (some editors even put a stress mark to make it clear): бóльшая (the most/major {part}) and большáя (the big {part}), and many more.

11. You have spelled the word ткёт аs мкём in this section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russian_phonology#.2F.C9.A1.CA.B2.2F.2C_.2Fx.CA.B2.2F

I honestly don’t understand the point. It’s obvious, that you know Russian poorly (at least mixing up italic ‘т’ and ‘м’ proves it). You use the outdated texts of foreign linguists. I know Russian relatively utterly splendidly indeed. Just ask me if you want to clarify something, don’t argue with me, it’s ridiculous. Take no offence please! I just want the readers of Wikipedia to be able to learn the true phonetics of Russian, as I do when I try learning foreign languages. I don’t consult with doubtful works of non-native linguists. I listen (!) to the natives. Peace. Schütze (talk) 19:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as these are largely issues of detailed phonetics, being a native speaker or appealing to people's ears isn't going to work. It's also apparent that, although you "come from an educated family" that you don't have a background in studying linguistics. Thus, your lack of familiarity of the scholarly dispute about the number of vowel phonemes in Russian does not mean that there is "no controversy about it." It means that you haven't done the necessary homework. The minimal pairs you offer don't indicate that those are separate vowel phonemes as e.g. [bɨl] can easily be analyzed (and is by the sources I've found) as an allophone of /i/ when it follows a hard consonant. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Listen, as far as Russian phonology is concerned, I am the last one here to do the necessary homework. :) What do you mean by “being a native speaker or appealing to ears won’t work”? What does work then?! If you pronounce and I (native speaker) say “correct” – that’s the only one way to define what the true transcription is. All right, let’s leave the lyrics and get back to the discussion.

You claim, that [bɨl] can easily be analyzed as an allophone of /i/. But how can I explain to you, that if you pronounce it as [bil] or [bɪl] (as engl. bill) it sounds like a corrupt variant of [bʲil] and not like [bɨl]? You don’t know Russian good enough, so it is useless. You can either believe it or be wrong. After all, whether you consider it anallophone or not, it won’t influence your pronounciation. So this one is a minor point actually.

As far as you have made no other comments, I assume that all other points are clear, aren’t they? Schütze (talk) 23:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems that you don't understand some of the basics of phonology. An allophone is a contextual variant of a phoneme. For example, in English, [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ between a stressed vowel and an unstressed one. If someone pronounced a word like writer with [tʰ] (which is how /t/ is pronounced at the beginning of a word), native speakers would definitely notice, but that doesn't make [ɾ] a separate phoneme. Going back to Russian, the five-vowel analysis would have был be underlyingly /bil/, because /i/ is regularly retracted to [ɨ] after hard consonants, it is pronounced [bɨl]. In effect, what is necessary is a minimal pair of words that contrast in only one feature. With был and бил there are two elements contrasting (the vowel, and the palatalization of the first consonant).

I haven't made further comments on what you've said because I still believe we need sources to implement changes to the article. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

1. This issue is a major point of disagreement between Moscow and St.Petersburg linguistic schools, you just defend the latter.

2. No, it's not, there is clear [æ] between two soft consonants: it's just very inconvenient to produce a non-retracted vowel between palatalized consonants.

9. You're right as of today. However, standard speech began to lose prothetic [j]'s in front of word-initial and post-vowel /i/'s as late as in the second half of the 19th century only. Nevertheless, many rural dialects still retain it (and by the way it eliminates the need for the initial "н" in oblique cases of pronouns such as "них".)95.25.165.254 (talk) 19:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Are we talking about the same [æ]? If it is the one that occurs in english 'cat', then this is defenitely not the case. One can pronounce this way, but it would sound weird, as if you try to say 'пять' and 'петь' at the same time. Another good example is the word 'опять'. Tell me frankly, have you ever heard of an exclamation 'Опять?' as [o'pʲætʲ]?! Haha, honestly, try pronouncing it this way, it is so dumb, only Chechens say like this [o'pʲætʲ 'sʲlʲuɕij dæ ʋæzmu'tʲitʲilʲnæ]. ;) No inconvenience in pronouncing it with [ɐ].

The Pronunciation of Russian by L. Canepari (University of Venice)

Prof. Canepari explained everything in a clear, demystifying way: http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_08_Russian.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.136.209.169 (talk) 13:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Never use this crap as a guide to Russian phonology. It is extremely embarrassing due to the excess of different types of transcription and redundant sound specification. Moreover, we never pronounce the ending ~ый as [~ɪi], as proposed in the article. It must be [~ɨj] with a palatal approximant in the end, otherwise it will be interpreted as a distorted pronunciation of the ending ~ые [~ɨə]. Schütze (talk) 17:06, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

What part of the article transcribes a word inding in -ый with [~ɪi]? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, it is [~ɨi] in the article, but still it is wrong due to the syllable coda. It happens everywhere throughout the article, beginning with 8.0.3 6th line the word лавровый, and ending with 8.3.4 the second word северный. Moreover, there are very many other drawbacks, like confusing usage of 'j' in transcriptions as in 8.2.5.2. By the way, who told them so well, that the 'ё' is used only in dictionaries and textbooks, that this was obvious (!) for them in 8.2.5.2 in the third line. Uhaha! Hahaha! Hahahaha! ... ... ...

Teach me Russian, demystifying Mr. L. Canepari: Ё-usage on a regular web page in different aspects.

Huhuh! What the miserable amateurs... The authors of the article, of course. Смех.

READ "TOTAL REVISION". Schütze (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Um... I'm not sure what you're talking about. The article doesn't transcribe any words that way and doesn't even have the words you've listed. I don't get what e.g. "8.2.5.2." is supposed to mean, and the statement about dictionaries that you're responding to isn't present in this article. It's like you're looking somewhere else. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

LOL! You must be joking. It is much more likely that you are looking somewhere else. How come don't you get what 8.2.5.2 means?! It's a number of a paragraph, which begins on page 293. What do you mean by "it doesn't transcribe any words that way"? Have you read the article?! Look onto the fourth to the last line in the end of the page 285 (the word 'лавровый') or the third line on the page 286 (the word 'твёрдый'), and never tell me you haven't seen it. Schütze (talk) 16:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Ohh, you're talking about the source. I thought you were talking about the Wikipedia article. My bad. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:01, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"/ɡ/, in addition becoming voiceless, also lenites to [x]", again

I added a "citation needed" tag to the statement, because it is still not cited in the article. I was going to delete this on the grounds that have been expressed before, about how it only applies to a handful of words in standard Russian, but then I recalled something my high school Russian teacher told me. She said that her grandmother, who was born and raised either in Moscow or in Saint Petersburg (cannot recall which) before the revolution, did lenite her g's in words like at the ends of words. For example she would say "четверх", but also "по четвергам". I also remember seeing many period films set in the 18th century where people would pronounce "Sankt Petersburg" with a [x] at the end, although I always assumed that they were merely copying the Dutch, from whose language the city's name allegedly comes from. So Paul Boersma does seem to be on to something, at least as far as historical Russian phonology is concerned. When did he write the work that was quoted above?

Anyway, I would love to explore this some more, to find out when and how this feature went extinct in the standard language, but right not I am not in Russia. I don't think there are that many resources on Russian phonology here in Norway, so I will probably have to wait until I go back to Russia in December. But if anyone has any good sources available right now, please feel free to add what you can find out. VonPeterhof (talk) 09:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Бо[х], мя[х]кий, лё[х]кий. -- 192.19.218.100 (talk) 03:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant by "a handful of words in standard Russian". It certainly doesn't happen in all words nowadays, so there is no "четвер[х]" and "Петербур[х]" any more. VonPeterhof (talk) 09:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Soft ц

In the same way that foreign words starting with ы aren't sufficient evidence for how Russians pronounce words, I think foreign words with ц followed by a softening letter is not sufficient evidence that there is a soft /tsʲ/. So I've put a citation request — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 02:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think, the most common (however not yet shown in dictionaries) example of morphologically Russian /tsʲ/ is a deminutive фрицёнок (pl. фрицята) from фриц 'a German'. The word occures several times in Russian prose about WW2 period:

...Фрицёнок рыженький у бабы на руках -- и Симочкина жертва, оскорбляющая ваше чувство... (Н. Погодин)

...Я гляжу на него: плюгавый, даже не фриц -- фрицёнок, дурак, трус, который, когда его привели, визжал, как поросёнок... (И. Эренбург)

...Фрицёнок говорит, там всего два станковых пулемета... (В. Некрасов)

...Для фрицят война еще интересная авантюра... (Д. Ортенберг)

...Не догляди, так фрицят наваляете... (М. Смирнова)

The only way to pronounce it requires soft /tsʲ/.

Yes, a traditional way to build such a deminutive would be *фричонок (pl. *фричата) using ц/ч alteration, but it is avoided to keep the root unchanged and recognizable. -- 69.111.166.5 (talk) 15:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Nice job beefing up the sources. I don't have a way to check them, but I can leave the issue at rest.

By the way, do you think you could add parenthetical glosses for the example words in the glottal stop paragraph? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. -- 69.111.166.5 (talk) 18:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.

Per this edit, maybe you can help out with the issue laid out at Wikipedia talk:IPA for Russian#Cluster palatalization. Essentially, my understanding of how palatalization spreads in consonant clusters is based on Sound Pattern of Russian, a book written several decades ago. Several native speakers have put forth that some of this is wrong or outdated but I'm not aware of a more recent recent scholarly source that gets into the issue. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

There are two Russian pronunciation dictionaries in front of me, printed in 1983 (compiled by Borunova, Vorontsova & Yes'kova, rules section written by Avanesov) and in 1993 (Ageenko & Zarva). Both have long subsections devoted to this topic, differently (and not very algorithmically) structured; phonetic notation also differs. There are some mismatches in recommendations. It is relatively simple job to find answers for a particular case, but to deal with the entire picture is very difficult... Maybe later, as it will require hours... And just one short general note: spreading palatalization in consonant clusters was very popular in older Moscow pronunciation, but today's general trend is limiting its domain more and more. -- 69.111.166.5 (talk) 23:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

What is "хуацяо" - does anyone has an idea? 174.67.193.103 (talk) 04:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Russian spelling of 華僑 or 华侨 (huáqiáo), overseas Chinese. -- 69.111.166.5 (talk) 08:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)