russian

[zabbysmom.livejournal.com]

ive learned the alphabet. i'm pretty secure with pronunciations. but is there a trick to learning all the vowel sounds? thats a bit confusing to me...

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

Try to memorize some simple rhyme, both in writing and reading, it should help.

[zabbysmom.livejournal.com]

is there one you know of before i think of one myself?
is it spasiba or spasibo?
either way...thank you!

[drmastermind.livejournal.com]

its spelled spasibo, but pronounced spasiba, stress on the i.

I learned that most of the vowels come in pairs

а - я
ah - yah

о - ё
oh - yo (as in yo-yo)

у - ю
oo - you

э - е
eh- yeh

и - ы
ee - uh-ee (sorta like the sound of being punched in the stomach)

One rule with o (and a related one with yoh): Russian words only have at most 1 'oh' sound, the 'o' that is stressed. For example, in спасибо, the accent is on the и, so the о turns into an a. (all unstressed Os are As in general). (хорошо is prounounced HaRaShow)

Related is ё (yo): it always has the stress in a word, so you'll always hear it as as Yo.

I could be wrong, please don't jump down my throat if I am guys.

[amigone.livejournal.com]

Handy!

[ivan-groznii.livejournal.com]

>о turns into an a

This is technically true and the way that it's explained in all of the text books that I've seen. However, since о almost always sounds like a, it might be more straight-forward to explain it the other way around: o always sounds like a unless the o is specifically stressed, in which case it sounds like an o.

[zabbysmom.livejournal.com]

spasiba! i am still confused with the stresses too. guess it will come to me in time.

[psevd0nim.livejournal.com]

unfortunetelly there are no rules about stresses in russian. one can remember it only :(

[captainfisto.livejournal.com]

there are some rules about when an "a" turns into a "я" and the other vowel pairs as well. unfortunately i don't know it well enough to expalain it, but it revolves around the sounds that precede the vowel needed a "buffer". the vowel я is й + а and is used because you can't put an a in front of some sounds without adding the й sound. there is a similar rule for the soft sign.

as far as stresses go, brute memorization is the only way to go. definitely work on remembering the sound of the word not the visual location of the stress. after time you will be able to feel how a word should be pronouced.