Learn Russian

Yay! I'm getting the hang of this palatalization thing.

From:

irkin.livejournal.com

I would tell you if I knew those signs =)

From:

I guess whether your pronunciation is correct depends on whether you're pronouncing those [ʎ]s correctly. :), But assuming you are, that looks right to me.

About palitalisation: ya should nay assume that you'll find a symbol on the IPA chart for each soft sound. L is a bit of an exception. Most of the other Russian sounds would probably just be written with a superscript 'j' or something like that.

Also bear in mind that a lot of the flavour of the sounds of a language is not represented by the IPA, or at least the style of IPA you're using right now. If you make extreme use of all the various "supersegmentals" on the IPA chart, you can get somewhere close to an accuratish representation of spoken speech, though. Remember that the exact sounds that come out of your mouth are heavily influenced by the surrounding phonetic environment, in subtle ways, and Russian softness is what happens when the surrounding environment changes but the subtle changes remain :). So it's not easily describable (except roughly) by any one formula like "make the sound and let the blade of the tongue contact a bit more than usual" (though that's a good starting point). You've really got to listen, listen, listen to Russian and internalise the sounds, and if you're of an analytical bent thinking about how to write it in the IPA will help, but you need to listen too :)

Hmm... must be in a writin' mood. :)

From:

I guess whether your pronunciation is correct depends on whether you're pronouncing those [ʎ]s correctly.

The symbol didn't show up so I'm putting it here just so I can see what it says when I read my response: ʎ.

From:

That is a hard sound for me to produce, but I think I can at least get close to it.

I'm aware of some of the problems with IPA. I wish I were more familiar with it and that I knew some of the different subtlties. I'm not sure what you mean about the superscripted /j/. Should I have written it as

jɑ l^jubl^ju b^jɔrk ?

From:

That is a hard sound for me to produce, but I think I can at least get close to it

To me, it feels just like pronouncing an 'l', but instead of my tongue pointing it lies against, at least for the length of the 'blade' of the tongue.

(Pointing to/lying against what? I didn't want to specify in case it made it sound too complicated, but the answer is the alveolar ridge)

Try the trick of pronouncing l+y (like in an exagerated el-yucidate if you say it that way, for example) and trying to cram the 'y' sound in as part of the consonant 'l' before you move on to the (now y-less) vowel following it. In the palatal l-sound, there is no distinct 'y' sound pronounced, but the sound does seem like it has one 'pronounced simultaneiously with it). Hope that makes some kind of sense :)

From:

It makes some sense; I'm not really to concerned with pronouncing it 100% correctly at this point, to be honest.

From:

Hmm... I'm a bit of a perfectionist, as you can see :).

ACtually, not really a perfectionist, more of a what's-the-completest-answer-I-can-find-ist. Hence my occasional giagantic tracts in response to a simple question :)

From:

Hmm... perhaps you're viewing my response via the Reply to your comment... email from LJ. It looks fine to me.

The symbol I was referring to was the lambda-like symbol you were using for the palatalised-L sound :)

From:

You probably have a browser that recognizes IPA glyphs and automatically changes the font to one that recongizes it; Opera, perhaps? However most browsers do not have this capability so to aid more users in seeing IPA characters properly try this code:

<span style="font-family: arial unicode ms, code2000, lucida sans unicode>Instert IPA here</span>

From:

Ah, I see. I'm using mozilla. It knows to use a unicode font when it's displaying a unicode page. Sensible, that ;)

From:

BTW, b should be soft there too :)

From:

How would I mark that in IPA? Doesn't /bj/ do the trick or should it be /b^j/?

From:

I don't know. We used to write soft consonants like b' v' g' etc.

From:

That works for regular transcription, like writing Нью-Йорк as N'ju-Jork or Фильм as Fil'm but in IPA ' marks the stress on a word, thus погнбать would be written as [pogn'bat^j] if I'm not mistaken.

From:

Yes. Just checked IPA and you are right, they say it should be j superscripted.
(погибать [рʌ g^ji 'bʌt^j])

From:

Wow, I didn't even know that [ʌ] existed in Russian. Thanks for sharing.

From:

I'm not sure either. I remember that the dictionary with transcriptions I had, used only one 'a' and that was that cap. I may be wrong although. Anyway, the Russian a's are not as numerous as English ones :)

PS. Hey, look what I've found -- http://masterrussian.com/aa032301a.cfm

From:

Cool, thanks for the link!

From:

ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

Bah, just another amateurish site, it looks like a collection of common mistakes. Awful explanation of the "soft vowels", they suggest "plyonka" and "plyoos". Плъёнка and плъюс, eh? :-) I wonder if they had their own consonants section, they'd describe "щ" as "шч", fresh cheese, huh :-)

From:

ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

It really exists. If "а" or "о" are stressed, they're pronounced as "alpha" and "open o", respectively (sorry, no IPA). But when unstressed, both letters usually have the same phonetic meaning - in the last pre-stress and the first post-stress syllables it's the "turned v", in other syllables, it's the "schwa". This rule is valid for normative speech, however, this may vary for some loanwords, where "a" and "o" aren't supposed to be reduced (but this is rare, usually "a" and "o" in loanwords are reduced as decribed above).
Also, in some dialects "o" isn't reduced at all, in some others, reduction results in unstressed "alpha" instead of "turned v" or "schwa". But, again, such pronunciation is quite improper.
P.S. But in English, "turned v" is usually stressed while in Russian this sound occurs in unstressed position only, that's the main difference.

From:

ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com

Thus, "o" in "погибать" is really "turned v", while "a" is "alpha".

From:

costumier.livejournal.com

hey...

i'm sorry...i know this is a VERY old post, but i was wondering if you could explain how exactly a palatanized [b] becomes the "byo" sound in "björk"... i know this is hard without being able give a verbal example, but it just seems easier to write "Бёрк"...

pardon my ignorance... :-(

From:

Awhile ago I asked for the name of the singer Björk in Russian. I guessed it would be something like Бёрк or Бйорк but I was told that it's actually written as Бьорк in Russian and that -ьо is [almost?] always pronounced as ё/йо in Russian.

From: