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Right, I know that, but how do the o and the a next to one another get pronounced?

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malaya-zemlya.livejournal.com

You pronounce it as as a long "a" or as two "a"'s.
It's pretty as if it was spelled "фотааппарат"

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so, it could be either “фота-аппарат” or “фотаппарат”?

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Definitely not "фотаппарат", unless you are in a hurry and your speech is a little slurred :-)

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No, the proper way is to pronounce two schwa's.

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Right … I couldn’t think of how to write it properly. фото-аппарат would have a glottal stop (to my eyes), whereas фотоаппарат would just be a long а sound.

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I don't know what is a glottal stop :-)
But I think there is a very slight, almost nonexistent -h- between the two a's.

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I don't think they are shwas, for me there are two clear "a" sounds. Depends on where you are from, maybe.

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a glottal stop separates two vowels distinctly. In English, it occurs in words like “uh-uh” (meaning “no”)

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With my accent, I tend to pronounce any unstressed vowel as a schwa, so I’m sort of trying to train myself out of that. :)

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I see. Well, maybe there is a hint to a glottal stop, then.

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Let's hope some professional linguist will come by to sort this one out. I kind of wonder if Russian unstressed "а" is exactly a schwa myself. :)

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malaya-zemlya.livejournal.com

Not quite as extreme, usually it'd be something in between.
Basically, you can let the vowels fuse as much as you want as long as you have 5 syllables going on.

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In my opinion, that's what genuine Moscow accent is all about (pronoucing any unstressed vowel as a schwa)! Except у and ю, of course.

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On second thought, there are nuances, e.g. in a pre-tonic position (the syllable immediately before the stress) the reduction to schwa is not complete.

There is a great article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonetics

That ] vowel sounds pretty darn close to a schwa, btw.

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ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

Nope! Standard Russian does not have clear neither clear [a] nor clear [o] in unstressed positions, with few rare exceptions like «боа». In fact, «..оа..» in «фотоаппарат» is two schwas, while penultimate «a» is [ʌ] (like "u" in "cut").

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ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

In my opinion, that's what genuine Moscow accent is all about (pronoucing any unstressed vowel as a schwa)! Except у and ю, of course.

In fact, it's not true. Overreducing to schwa is a typical feature of some Russian dialects, e.g. Middle Urals dialect (Yekaterinburg, Perm), while standard pronunciation (including Moscow dialect) requires two-stage reduction of «а» and «o» ([ʌ] in pretonic and some other positions and [ə] otherwise).

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ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

Since that's a foreign word, the normal rules don't apply.

No, in Russian the same rulies apply to both native and borrowed words (with few exceptions which are quite rare). The only special thing about this word is its compound stem.

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wire-shock.livejournal.com

I pronounce оа in фотоаппарат as two reduced sounds but they're different from each other. So it's almost like [oa] anyway.

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temcat.livejournal.com

Yeah, and I just can't get used to this schwa-ing when I hear it! Well, we (in St. Petersburg) do pronounce schwa too in those places, but in the "Middle Urals dialect" as you call it (I don't know the proper names for dialects anyway) even this schwa almost disappears! So "Я кому сказала!" sounds like "Я кму скзала!". I hear something similar from people from Arkhangelsk, which is in the North, but it's not as painful to me :-)

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temcat.livejournal.com

Hmmm, "Я кму скзала" as such is wrong. Just add a little stop on к, and then it will be right. Which is, of course, just a short schwa anyway :-/

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as in "змееед" (snake-eater)

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