Pronunciation...

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone. Yet again, it's me, with a pronunciation question.

From reading Omniglot's table on Cyrillic, as well as listening to some of the material I bought, I came to a realization... well, a conclusion. If it's correct, it's a realization.

I had thought that е, ё, ю, and я were pronounced as йе, йо, йу, and йа after a consonant... but it looks like they're pronounced as those at the beginning of a word or after another vowel or a ъ. From what I understand, they're pronounced as e, o, and у after a -soft- consonant (я not occurring in these places), or, after a normal consonant, as ьe, ьo, ьу, and ьa... is this right?

For example... one of the first words I tried to pronounce, бояться, would be pronounced бо-йать-сьа?

Большое cпасибо.

Comments

[squodge.livejournal.com]

The pronunciation of vowels in Russian actually depends a lot on whether it's in a stressed syllable or not. For example, the word for language is 'yazik' (sorry, I can't type in Cyrillic here), but it's actually pronounced 'yizik', even though the word begins with the backwards-R.

~ squodge ~

[klerka.livejournal.com]

"бояться" would be sound like "бояцца", never "бо-йать-сьа"
:)

[vladon.livejournal.com]

"бо-йац-ца"

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

So, ть is pronounced like ц?

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

To make things clear, -ся is written in reflexive verbs for some historical reasons, while actually there's a, not я. So, бояться is [bʌ'jatsə].

[vladon.livejournal.com]

no! only in verbs, ending on "-ться". here "ться" pronounced "цца" (or "ца", there's no special difference).

[aveleen.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are right. Most of the syllables like ле, тя, ню are really ль+э, ть+а, нь+у - the combination of a soft consonant and a vowel changes the vowel in writing.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

What about pю, like at the end of говорю?

[aveleen.livejournal.com]

Same. рь+у - because it's "у" which is the personal ending of verbs in 1st person sg form, not "ю".

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Yes, but how do you pronounce "рь?" Is it like the English R?

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It's a palatalized "r", not like the English "r" at all - think of the rolled "r"s in languages like Swedish and Spanish, then imagine that you're pronouncing "y" at the same time. It will sound a lot like "guh-vuhr-YOO"; however, the "ry" part of it is only one consonant, not "r" followed by "y".

The soft "r" is one of the hardest sounds in Russian to pronounce - apparently, it's also one of the last sounds that Russian children learn. I still can't do it consistently, and I'm on my third year of studying.

[dphq.livejournal.com]

yes, you are right.
it is rile of russian language.

in any case, u need a school-book "Русский язык, 5-9 классы"
there u can find |discribed simply and clearly| almost ALL rules of russian language.