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[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

Hello here. I have a question 'bout classification of Russian letters.

Should we treat Й as a vowel or as a consonant?

Comments

[mooose.livejournal.com]

As lunaqueen mentioned, /j/ is a semi-vowel, or more generally a 'glide'.

However, what it comes down to, is how speakers of a language want to classify their letters. The question asked was about orthography, not phonetics. So as irkin said, if school books say й a consonant, it's a consonant.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

I agree - if you know what is meant it doesn't matter what you say.

And if you call a tiger a mouse it still remains a fierce striped flesh-eator ;)

[noser.livejournal.com]

What is a "semi-vowel"? I mean, in Russian Й behaves like a consonant in all respects there are, as both a letter and a sound, so calling it a "semi-vowel" means what?

[mooose.livejournal.com]

First of all, read what I wrote. I said /j/ is a semi-vowel. Й is a consonant.

A semi-vowel is a phonetic term describing a "vowel-like sound with consonant properties". This idea is separate from the alphabet of a language, where every letter is either a consonant or a vowel (or a soft/hard sign).

For example, the sound that corresponds to the Russian Й (and I assume all the time, unlike in English with our crazy orthogrpahy) is designated by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol /j/. It is articulated with the tongue body on the palate, it is voiced (your vocal chords vibrate as you say it). It is a glide (the air is not fricated enough to give you the sound of a German "ch"). And like vowels it had high sonority.

This is not Й. Й is a letter written down and placed within a word to guide pronunciation. And yes, it is pronounced like /j/. And yes, the pronunciaton of Й doesn't change like that of the English Y. But a letter represents a sound. It cannot behave like a sound.

Take that chart and flush it down the toilet. Й has always been a consonant and never had the dualism of the English Y.

Well there is no dualism of the English Y. The letter itself a consonant because we call it a consonant. What happens when it occurs in a word and we read that word does not affect its status as a consonant.

And on a side note, if you're thinking that Russian is a 'phonetic' language. Think again. You've got all these learners who know that the placement of stress in a word (which is only written in textbooks) changes the pronunciation of the vowels across the word.

And maybe yes, unlike English, the consonants in the alphabet seem to correspond to only one sound. But the letters by themselves don't tell you whether the sounds they correspond to are soft or hard, you need to look at the vowel following them to know. Ironically, Й is one of those few sure letters that always corresponds to a soft sound.

[mooose.livejournal.com]

argh... IPA = International Phonetic Association.

why can't we edit these things???
sigh.

IPA

[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

it's both Association and Alphabet, so there's no need to edit :)

[noser.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Talking about sounds is always confusing, though. The original question was about the letter Й, rather than the sound.

[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

> a letter represents a sound. It cannot behave like a sound

Yeah, we should have started with that. Generally we cannot say whether a letter is a vowel or consonant, this division is only about sounds.

I have read in some book (i don't remember exactly the book) that Й and so called 'jotted' vowels had a real /j/ sound only when placed in the word's beginning. But being placed after a vowel the /j/ sound converted into a неслоговая (i.e. 'not producing a syllable') vowel (in IPA: undotted i, as in /mein/ being the reading of the word 'main'). And /j/ was considered a consonant sound, and /i/ (undotted) was a semi-vowel.