Hard and soft.

[golddustdreams.livejournal.com]

It seems that universally, the difference between a hard a soft consonant is somewhat similar to the difference between n and ñ in Spanish.

Is this a good way to think of it?

Comments

[geish-a.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is a good way to think about it.

[aciel.livejournal.com]

The hardest thing to get the hang of is that a word can end with one of these sounds. Try saying enseña without the a. =)

[golddustdreams.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm doing it, I just don't know if its native quality. Probably not.

Every language seems to have one particular pronunciation thing that is weirdly unique and takes getting used to. For Icelandic, it's the "ll" phenome. Check out some of these sentences, and notice the "ll":

sólin skein allan daginn (http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/bragi/hljod/gof/gof_skina.mp3)

hún tróð öllum fötunum inn í skáp (http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/bragi/hljod/gof/gof_troda.mp3)

helltu í bollann minn! (http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/bragi/hljod/gof/gof_bolli.mp3)

The "ll" can sometimes sound like a "d(t)l," be completely palatalized like in helltu, or sound like a normal l.

God... I love Icelandic, hehe.

[wire-shock.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and when Björk sings this song from "Dancer in the Dark", sleepy something, she actually sings it like "stleepy" :-)

[golddustdreams.livejournal.com]

That song is "Scatterheart" and it's my favorite song on that soundtrack. And yes, it's VERY apparent in a lot of her songs when she has the "sl-" combinations.

I think it's fun to do!

[yms.livejournal.com]

I believe, if you say Champagne in French, you will get the same sound in the end of the word...

[unique-clone.livejournal.com]

If you say Champagne in French, it's pronounced like "Shamm pann yeh", I think what you're trying to say, is say the French word Champagne like Americans do...

[yms.livejournal.com]

OK, if it's an exception, take another French word ending in "gne", like gagne, etc.

[madrumos.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure exactly, and I don't have any reference material at hand, but I would say that linguistically, soft-n and the spanish ñ are different, but for your purposes, it's a good distinction to make, and fairly accurate. As far as I know, the Russian soft-n is very palatalized, something that few non-Slavic languages do to such a degree. This is different from how I see the Spanish ñ, where it's more of a 'diphthong' (though not in a literal sense) of n and a y sound. This would explain why it's not really pronounced without a following vowel -- when there's a vowel, nya is easy to pronounce, but otherwise the y sound has to kinda become syllabic.

I think to learn the Russian soft n you just have to hear it a lot and practice, but have native speakers or whatever around is very handy.

[viric.livejournal.com]

I'm Catalan, so I know the spanish phonetics quite good. In Catalan they're similar related to ñ, and also 'll'; simply we have a very strong palatalized 'l' (written "ll"; also spaniards should pronounce it as in standard Spanish afaik, but they use to pronounce as an "y").

In Catalan there's also the sound of Spanish ñ, although written as 'ny'. Even more, it's often for us to have it at the end of a word. For instance: any, seny, bony...
And, more than that, we also have 'll' at the end of words: all, bell, vell, toll. But as I've experienced, the catalan 'll' is really really palatalized and strong, compared to the russian.

At the end, I think that the Spanish ñ is a very good approximation (if not the same; I really cannot distinguish) to the Russian нь. It's absolutely not a diphthong of 'n' and 'y', and it's very palatalized.