I need vowel help...

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Okay. So, as I've gotten, the vowels change with stress... correct me if I'm wrong on these:

Stress is denoted by bold...
a -- cat;
a -- father;
e -- green;
e -- yet;
ё -- yore;
и -- pit
и -- green;
о -- hot;
о -- wrote;
у/у -- book;
э/э -- set;
ю/ю -- you;
я -- yaw;
я -- yet.

Am I right on all of this? Because if so, I've been pronouncing things VERY wrong.

Comments

[poluzhivago.livejournal.com]

It's close but not the same. I'm not sure you can illustrate Russian vowels reduction accurately by English examples.

[noser.livejournal.com]

Looks weird. It's like teaching yourself to swim without the pool. Why don't you listen to live Russian speech?

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Reminds me more of trying to learn to ride a bike by reading a book about it.

[remi-jakovlevic.livejournal.com]

Please, mind that the word VOWEL means two or three quite different things:

i) letters (and you have forgotten ы , and maybe ь ъ й /opinions are divergent here/. Russian writes very well with latine letters!

ii) sounds - and perhaps (iii) so-called "phonemes".

Now, the result of the vocalic (sound) reduction in unstressed syllables depends on the nature of the consonants (I'm still speaking of sounds!) before it - roughly speaking "palatal" or "velar" - and you won't understand those words untill you've not heard that, as noser puts it.

At this point, the conclusion is: you can't hope understanding anything if you just consider letters, and not soudns pronounced in words!

[zloizloi.livejournal.com]

Pronunciation of vovels e, ю, ё & я also vary if they are appear in the beginning of a word / open syllable, or in a closed syllable / ending of a word.
For example: ясная (погода, fair weather) = yas-na-ya (open syllables), мясо = m'a-so (soft a, closed syllable)

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

No, you're rather far off. So -

When unstressed, a and o are virtually indistinguishable; they sound like a schwa -- kind of like a mushy "uh".

a -- when stressed, like father
o -- when stressed, like note

(In some accents, the pre-tonic vowel -- that is, the vowel that comes right before the stressed syllable -- will sound closer to "ah" than "uh", whether it's written with an a or an o . But this is, as far as I know, not something you want to emulate.)

The other reduced vowels, like я and и and у, are a bit more complicated to explain and I don't think I'm quite up to it.

What you really, really need to do is get your hands on Russian recordings, preferably something that you can get in written form as well. If you never hear the sounds, you'll NEVER get them right. Ever.

e -- when stressed, like get, when unstressed, like get. NOT like и
у -- when stressed, like food, NOT book
я -- when stressed, "yah" (the same as a but with a "y" sound), NOT "yaw"; there's no rhyming with yee-haw here

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

In some accents, the pre-tonic vowel -- that is, the vowel that comes right before the stressed syllable -- will sound closer to "ah" than "uh", whether it's written with an a or an o . But this is, as far as I know, not something you want to emulate.

In standard Moscow pronunciation, the last pre-tonic "a"/"o" vowel must sound like "u" in "cut" (but not like "ah").

[remi-jakovlevic.livejournal.com]

ok, people, if you go on mixing letters and sounds, let me put it in a more straightforward way. Take the RUSSIAN LETTER "A"; here are SOME of the sounds it may stand for:

[ah] (as in "fAther") in МАЛ "small"
[a] (as in "cAt") in ЧАСТЬ "part"
[u] (as in "dUck", "cUt" in standard eng. pronounciation) in МАЛЫ "small (plural)"
[i] (as in "pIt") in ЧАСОВОЙ adj. of час, ЧАСЫ "watch"
[e] (as in "mothEr") in the 2 first syllables of КАРАНДАШАМИ

more? ;)