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[je-me-forcis.livejournal.com]

i'm new at russian so forgive my lack of knowledge, but why is ничего pronounced as if it were spelled ничево?

Comments

[philena.livejournal.com]

All of the его/ого masculine and neuter genitive endings (which is what ничего is--the genitive of ничто) are pronounced as if they were spelled ево/ово. I don't know why it happened. In Old Church Slavonic (which is to Slavic languages as Latin is to Romance languages) those endings are pronounced as they are spelled (which made reading aloud very tricky in my OCS class!) but somewhere in the evolution of modern Russian they switched.

There are a few other words where the его/ого is pronounced ево/ово internally. The best example I can think of is сегодня. However, it is actually from a historical сего (genitive of I believe сей, an old word for "this"), and дня (genitive of день, "day"), so the pronunciation makes sense, since the -его is historically the same genitive ending that you're asking about.

[noser.livejournal.com]

Pronunciation vs spelling peculiarity. There are relatively few of those in Russian. (relatively to English, of course :)

[msk01.livejournal.com]

It's funny, but both words pronounce the same way.
It's the same word actually.
The second one is incorrect form of the first, written not orthographically, but every letter as it actually pronouced.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, right as if English wasn't full of the words whose spelling and pronunciation don't match:
cas*t*le, sa*l*mon, in*ter*net, file*t*, com*b*...
and it gets worse if you consider the different pronunciations of combinations of letters or just irregular pronunciations:
ea: meat, great, weapon, caveat
ei: receive, height
eo: people, George
o: society (it really often sounds to me more like seeciety)
oe: toe, shoe
ou: court, doubt, route (like root & like doubt), you
omb: comb, tomb
ough: ought, dough
u: busy
ui: juice, suit, suite
ue: queue
uay: quay
And there's a bunch of words in very frequent use yet their pronunciation is against the rules and similarities: move, lose, (to) live, give, have (vs behave), some, come, gone, done, recipe (vs decide?), bull, pull, full, push, bush, pussy, and plate, template, contemplate.
And then again, do you always pronounce v as v in "have" or f as f in "of"? Do you always pronounce s as s and not z (e.g. "a*s* you know")? What do you pronounce as tt in "butter"?

I guess neither language is perfect for historical and practical reasons. Neither English nor Russian. Sometimes irregularities are pretty regular and fall into some well defined categories or patterns. Those can be either explained or have to be memorized if no clear explanation/rule exist or that's a rarity. Explanations like "г is pronounced as в to make it easier to speak" don't always work as there'd be some counter-examples, words with similar structure for which the pronunciation doesn't undergo the same change, кого/его vs когорта/коготь, which would definitely raise a question about legitimacy of that made-up and too simple rule.

Just making the point. And btw, the more questions like that you ask and the more oddities you find, the better you'll learn the language. Of course, the practice is always the key, but it needs to rest on some basic knowledge.

[kegarawashii.livejournal.com]

well, a phonetic system of any language evolves in accordance with necessities of its speakers.
it seems to me that at some point our ancestors found it was uncomfortable to pronounce -его and it gradually changed into what was easier to articulate - -ево (it does take less effort in fast speech).
the reason being the same for o/e reducing to а/и, i suppose, - it's just more comfortable.)

[nymphatacita.livejournal.com]

what's weird about internet?

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

t may also be silent. Surely, there're some variations even within one country.

[nymphatacita.livejournal.com]

I've never heard anyone say it without the T. I'm surrounded by people from the pacific northwest (of various ethnicities, which result in various accents) and the north east, talk to people from CA, often visit my family on the east coast, regularly talk to someone from the midwest... interesting.

[nymphatacita.livejournal.com]

"innernet" also doesn't show up as an acceptable pronunciation in any of the dictionaries I can find, unlike the evo/ovo thing.




English never claimed to be phonetic. Every Russian instructor I've ever had claimed Russian was phonetic... that's why irregularities surprised me so much when I was beginning. I've gotten so I can usually write the word correctly even if it doesn't sound like it's spelled. You learn with practice.

[padruka1988.livejournal.com]

Innernet sounds like something a hick would say. :-P But I've never heard of seeciety!

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I think the confusing thing about Russian is that we expect this in English, but Russian is largely phonetic.

[freedomcry.livejournal.com]

(which is to Slavic languages as Latin is to Romance languages)

Not quite, as Slavic languages didn't descend from OCS. It's more like Sanskrit in relation to present-day Indian languages (both Sanskrit and OCS were somewhat artificially designed for religious purposes).

But OCS does have the same majestic ring to a Russian ear as Latin in Europe.

[freedomcry.livejournal.com]

As philena said, it's to do with Old Church Slavonic, which influenced Russian spelling conventions. [g] became [v] through phonetic change, but the conventional spelling remains.

[vargtimmen.livejournal.com]

It's not. The T is barely audible in most people's speech, especially when "internet" is an adjective. "Internet", "In(t)ernet chatrooms". Very subtle. Compare to (С)пасибо! or Йизык, мичом instead of Язык, мячом.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

It's not silent. "t" in the middle of English word is an alveolar flap, not a stop. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_tap)

You hear this same sound in "butter" - the middle sound is not a "t" or a "d." It just sounds different in "internet" because the "n" is right before it, and the nasalization muffles the sound a bit.

[vargtimmen.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I knew there was a name for it.