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

[999999.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'll stay out of most of it (volumes could be/have been written) but would just like to note that the ш in пишу was only historically palatalized; now the tongue body is not raised toward the palate. It's сь (same as c before a front vowel) that forms a minimal pair with с (followed by a back vowel or none at all) for palatalization. Unlike the Polish palatalized/Irish slender s, сь is a palatalized dental-alveolar sound, which is to say it's articulated behind the upper teeth but to the front of the hard gum ridge behind them.

(щ is closer to 'sh' but [I think] articulated more to the front)

Apologies to the original poster that I am not offering any palatalization advice, but it's really best to learn strange coronals (сь and other sounds articulated around the same place) by hearing (and, ideally, watching) a native speaker: places of articulation form a continuum, but our terms for them don't. On the other hand, if the question was only about the contexts of palatalisation, I have only this to add to what the other posters have written: The thing you get in Нью (and wherever there's a ь between a consonant and a front vowel) is an i-glide 'y', which in some languages is required after a palatalized 'n' not followed by an 'i' (Spanish doña, Polish nie); in Russian this glide is not required and is absent in ню.

Also, ataltane, if I may raise an issue with your presentation of your intuition of relative y+vowel frequencies: you write that и is a "y+ы"; but, in fact, и does not start with a glide. It's the 'y' (й = "и краткое" = the Russian for "short i") that's an и in its consonantal form (i-glide).

Btw, it seems that it's linguaphiles that accumulates those well-versed in phonetics and/or historical linguistics (relevant to Russian palatalization).

- Linguaphobe (Russian-born, U.S.-raised computational linguist with little phonetics in my life)

P.S. Sorry about using so many words, and thanks for being into Russian, y'all :)

Re: Part 1

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Very helpufl, thank you.

Re: Part 1

[999999.livejournal.com]

No prob.

----What I wrote below sounds like too much even to the author... If you feel the same, please ignore everything that has to do with meaning and worry about the pronunciation part only-----

This (http://www.svoboda.org/programs/pe/2002/pe.092102.asp) might be useful for pronunciation help now or later:

http://www.svoboda.org/programs/pe/2002/pe.092102.asp

It's a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty story which you can read and listen to. The text is quite difficult, but at least it helps one figure out how things (e.g., palatalized, or soft, sounds) are pronounced. Once you're on that page, you'll have to click on the audio icon above the transcript.

In the first sentence spoken by a man's voice (the first sentence in the first paragraph of the transcript), the soft sounds are the following:

сь in открылась
the last н in накануне
ф in катастрофического
the last н & the glide part of я in наводнения
2nd н in нанесло
т, й (not ж, which is never soft in the standard dialect) in тяжелый
щ (always soft) in ущерб
ч, й in чешской
л (not ц, which is never soft in the standard dialect) in столице

The sentence itself is and means as follows:

Выставка "Франц Кафка и Прага" открылась накануне катастрофического наводнения, которое
exhibition "Franz Kafka and Prague" opened on-the-eve of-catastrophic (of-)flood , which

нанесло тяжелый ущерб чешской столице.
inflicted heavy damage on-Czech (on-)capital.

(The Russian for 'Czech capital' is actually in the dative.)

And, yeah, this is about an exhibition about Kafka and Prague in the Jewish Museum in New York, and the vocabulary is impressive, so I'm not trying to tell you to listen to the whole thing (I sometimes play anywhere from 3 sec to a minute of foreign radio over and over, and that really helps me internatlize the pronunciation). Links to other read-along programs are here (http://www.svoboda.org/realaudio/) - click on a link and you'll get a list of shows, all of which will have a speaker icon next to them while some will also have a clickable show title - those are the read-along ones. Warning: they seem like vocab guzzlers (though this shouldn't matter if you use them to see how things are pronounced).

Good luck!

Re: Part 1

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Wow! Thank you! I'll have a listen and see what I can hear.

Re: Part 1

[ataltane.livejournal.com]

So... are you saying that пишу is pronounced like it had a сь ?

But now that I read it again, I think what you're saying is that the sound change in that verb (and others like it) is a part of the historical (diachronic) grammar, and is just a 'fact' in the synchronic grammar (the grammar viewed as it is at present, with no reference to its development), distinct from the current hard/soft ('palatalisation') issue? Am I anywhere near the mark?? :)

you write that и is a "y+ы"; but, in fact, и does not start with a glide.

Absolutely, I understand that. But I was trying to leave out the exceptions to get the big point across :). I think I hinted about it when I asked about Ukrainian.

It's the 'y' (й = "и краткое" = the Russian for "short i") that's an и in its consonantal form (i-glide).

Ah ha! Interesting... I never thought of itthat way before :)

P.S. Sorry about using so many words

Ha! The kettle calling the pot black :)

Re: Part 1

[999999.livejournal.com]

oh oops, yeah, tried to beat fixed word order but failed, sorry for the confusion

'ш' and 'сь' contrast for palatalization ,and you can hear the minimal pair ш/щ (щ is palatalized) here (the web page is the Russian alphabet, pronounced) (http://www.masterrussian.com/blalphabet.cfm) if you click on Ш (the sound clip is the name of the letter, "ша") and then on Щ (they'll say "ща", same as before but palatalized). This is the only minimal pair for palatalization among Russian letter names!

You know all this, though, as I gather from your Irish-in-Cyrillic project. (Surprisingly pretty in Cyrillic too, but I would miss the [remaining] digraphs)