Palatilaziation - Ь and Ъ

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Can someone help me with ь (soft sign) and ъ (hard sign) [or do I have them reversed?]. My first question is, how do you know when a letter is going to be hard or soft? It seems like in English we only use the soft sounds, because borrowed words almost always take a soft sound. In other words, the Russian tendency is to make hard sound and the English tendency is to make a soft sound (thus film → фильм* ; New → Нью). I'm sure this is completely off base, it's just a trend that I've noticed.

I once read—perhaps on in this community—that the sound is very different to Russian ears, but the subtle difference sounds the same to English ears. It was compared to the final sound in the words bed and bet vs the words угил and угиль. Russians cannot distinguish between "bed" and "bet" but I find that very hard to believe... Would a Russian pronounce бэд and бэт the same way?

Anyway, if someone could explain this process of palatilazation to me I would be very greatful.

*Film may have come from French, but the same principle applies.

Comments

Re: Part 1

[yers.livejournal.com]

do you know why this is? were they a pair and one drifted? or did Russian used to have a 'yi', like Ukrainian, which was lost, letting an unpaired ы pair up with и?])....
It's a question that every Russian speaker or learner has once asked themself. I was eight or nine when we were explained those paired vowels at school, and I wondered if "и" had once been "йы".

No, "и" and "ы" never were a pair. "ы" was more to do, historically, with "у" than with "и". Consider these pairs of historically related words in Russian and English:

сидеть - to sit
вино - wine
vs.
тысяча - thousand
мышь - mouse

There's a bit more to that, including the 'yi' question, and I think I'm going to write a post about ы.

Re: Part 1

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

That would be a good idea for a post.

Re: Part 1

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

Actually, "ы" in stems etymologically refers to Proto-Indo-European long "u". But in the word endings "ы" is a modified "и".

Re: Part 1

[ataltane.livejournal.com]

Excellent. I look forward to reading it! I've been wondering about it for quite a while. Thanks as usual :)