{"id":3413,"date":"2012-07-25T08:07:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T08:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/?p=3413"},"modified":"2014-07-17T18:37:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T18:37:45","slug":"speak-russian-%d0%b1%d0%b5%d0%b7-%d0%b0%d0%ba%d1%86%d0%b5%d0%bd%d1%82%d0%b0-in-just-one-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/speak-russian-%d0%b1%d0%b5%d0%b7-%d0%b0%d0%ba%d1%86%d0%b5%d0%bd%d1%82%d0%b0-in-just-one-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Speak Russian \u0431\u0435\u0437 \u0430\u043a\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0442\u0430 in just one month!!(?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, maybe it&#8217;s not actually possible for a student of Russian to speak <strong>\u00ab\u0431\u0435\u0437 \u0430\u043a\u0446<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0435<\/span>\u043d\u0442\u0430\u00bb<\/strong> (&#8220;without a foreign accent&#8221;) in just a month &#8212; heck, I started studying the language in 1989 and I still haven&#8217;t completely gotten rid of my US-English <span style=\"background-color: yellow;\" title=\"NB: in English, a native speaker can have a ''regional accent'' from Texas or Brooklyn or London's East End, but \u00ab\u0430\u043a\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0442\u00bb always means ''foreign; non-native''\"><strong>\u0430\u043a\u0446<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0435<\/span>\u043d\u0442<\/strong><\/span>! But with the caveat that my Russian pronunciation is far from native, I can certainly offer some &#8220;accent reduction&#8221; tips that I&#8217;ve found to be helpful.<\/p>\n<p>First, just so people have a rough idea of what kind of accent I have in Russian, I&#8217;ve prepared a 30-second audio clip of me reading the opening sentences from a <strong>\u0447\u0435\u0447<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0435<\/span>\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0441\u043a<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0430<\/span>\u0437\u043a\u0430 \u0432 \u0440<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0443<\/span>\u0441\u0441\u043a\u043e\u043c \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0432<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u043e<\/span>\u0434\u0435<\/strong> (&#8220;a Chechen fairytale in Russian translation&#8221;) that I found in an old college textbook. In fact, I particularly like this story because long before I read it in college, I had read the same story (in English) as a little boy in Turkey, where the character &#8220;Nesart&#8221; is known as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nasreddin\">Nasreddin<\/a> Hodja.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Apart from the word <strong>\u0445\u0430\u0440\u0447<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0435<\/span>\u0432\u043d\u044f<\/strong> (&#8220;rustic, old-fashioned tavern&#8221;), the vocabulary should be accessible for intermediate learners, and I&#8217;ve added Russian and English <strong>\u0441\u0443\u0431\u0442<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0438<\/span>\u0442\u0440\u044b<\/strong> (&#8220;onscreen titles&#8221;) to the audio so you can read along.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Smell of Shish-Kebab (\u0417\u0430\u043f\u0430\u0445 \u0448\u0430\u0448\u043b\u044b\u043a\u0430)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kuX8weOmog0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I recorded this in two takes (what you hear is &#8220;take two&#8221;), with no prior <strong>\u0440\u0435\u043f\u0435\u0442<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0438<\/span>\u0446\u0438\u0438<\/strong> (&#8220;rehearsals&#8221;) &#8212; I probably could&#8217;ve improved my pronunciation of some sounds by rehearsing a little more, but I wanted to give you a fair idea of what my &#8220;natural accent&#8221; in Russian sounds like!<\/p>\n<p>So, now that you&#8217;re fairly warned, let&#8217;s get to some &#8220;practical tips.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Some Problematic Letters<\/h3>\n<p>One of the biggest issues with Russian pronunciation is the hard\/soft consonant distinction, since most Russian consonant letters actually occur in two distinct sound-variants. But <em>before<\/em> we get to that, let&#8217;s talk about a few letters in Russian that tend to be &#8220;inherently difficult&#8221; for many English speakers:<\/p>\n<h3>Rolling the hard <strong>[\u0440]<\/strong> as in <strong>\u0440<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u044b<\/span>\u0431\u0430<\/strong> (&#8220;fish&#8221;)<\/h3>\n<p>For the first two decades of my life, I was totally unable to &#8220;roll my R&#8217;s&#8221; &#8212; in fact, some of my friends (and my younger sister) would sometimes tease me about this: <em>&#8220;R-r-r-r-obert, r-r-r-repeat: &#8216;<span style=\"background-color: yellow;\" title=\"This was a slogan from an '80s TV ad for potato chips\">R-r-r-ruffles have r-r-r-ridges<\/span>&#8216;!&#8221;<\/em> I finally learned to do it in my third year of college, following some practical advice that a girl in my karate club had learned from her <span style=\"background-color: yellow;\" title=\"Apparently, being able to ''tap'' the tongue correctly against the reed is important in clarinet playing\">clarinet<\/span> instructor: just keep saying <em>Teddy, Eddy, Freddy<\/em> or <i>Daddy dreaded the dreidel<\/i> over and over! The idea is that the repeated &#8220;D&#8221; sounds will &#8220;trick your tongue&#8221; into rolling the &#8220;R&#8221;. It took a couple months of practice, but eventually it worked, and <em>Fr-r-r-r-r-r-reddy<\/em> came rolling gloriously out!<\/p>\n<h3>Saying the <strong>[\u0445]<\/strong> in <strong>\u0445\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0448<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u043e<\/span><\/strong> without choking<\/h3>\n<p>The letter <strong>\u0445<\/strong> is often transliterated as &#8220;kh&#8221; in English (e.g., <strong>\u0425\u0440\u0443\u0449\u0451\u0432<\/strong> &#8211;&gt; &#8220;Khrushchev&#8221;), and perhaps for this reason, English speakers often &#8220;overdo&#8221; the k-sound while trying to say <strong>\u0445<\/strong>, so that it sounds unpleasantly like they&#8217;re trying to &#8220;hawk up&#8221; a wad of phlegm. In fact, the <strong>\u0445<\/strong> is quite &#8220;dry&#8221; sounding, and my general recommendation is that you try to do an impression of Darth Vader&#8217;s respirator! Alternatively, if you&#8217;ve ever studied Spanish, the Russian <strong>\u0445<\/strong> is fairly close to the <em>j<\/em> in <em>jalape\u00f1o<\/em> or <em>Jos\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h3>That strange vowel <strong>[\u044b]<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Early in my Russian career, I would almost invariably pronounce <strong>\u0442\u044b<\/strong> (for example) as something like English <em>toy<\/em>, or sometimes like <em>tee<\/em> &#8212; I really had trouble getting that <strong>\u044b<\/strong> vowel right, or even &#8220;close enough for government work&#8221;! If you have this trouble, here&#8217;s my suggestion. You may know that the English &#8220;long A&#8221; as in <em>fate&#8221;<\/em> can be represented with <strong>\u044d\u0439<\/strong>, that the &#8220;long I&#8221; as in <em>sigh<\/em> can be spelled <strong>\u0430\u0439<\/strong>, and that &#8220;oy&#8221; as in <em>coin<\/em> can be spelled <strong>\u043e\u0439<\/strong>. Following this pattern, it may help you to think of <strong>\u044b<\/strong> as sorta\/kinda a &#8220;diphthong&#8221; of <strong><span style=\"font-size: larger;\">\u0259<\/span>\u0439<\/strong> &#8212; in other words, the &#8220;schwa&#8221; vowel like the &#8220;o&#8221; in <em>w<strong>o<\/strong>men<\/em>, followed by <strong>\u0439<\/strong>. (Strictly speaking, <strong>\u044b<\/strong> is a &#8220;pure&#8221; vowel, not a diphthong at all, but pretending that it&#8217;s equal to <strong><span style=\"font-size: larger;\">\u0259<\/span>\u0439<\/strong> may help you learn the sound.)<\/p>\n<h3>Don&#8217;t &#8220;explode&#8221; too much!<\/h3>\n<p>Certain English consonants &#8212; particularly P, B, T, and D, but also hard-G and K &#8212; are known to linguists as &#8220;plosives,&#8221; and are also heavily &#8220;aspirated.&#8221; Basically, this means that English speakers push out quite a lot of air when we say these sounds. The corresponding Russian consonants, however, are quite &#8220;non-aspirated&#8221;, meaning that you should release as little air as possible. A time-honored practice method is to hold a lit candle in front of your mouth while saying the Russian consonants, and trying not to disturb the flame. If the flame moves a lot when you say the first letter in <strong>\u043f\u043e\u0451\u0442<\/strong> (&#8220;he\/she sings&#8221;), then your pronunciation of the <strong>\u043f<\/strong> is probably &#8220;too English.&#8221; <em>[Thanks to sharp-eyed commenters Chris and Ryan for pointing out that I had originally confused &#8220;plosive&#8221; and &#8220;aspirated&#8221; in the above paragraph, which has now been corrected! -RM]<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Weird Letter Combinations<\/h3>\n<p>Words like <strong>\u0432\u0437\u0433\u043b\u044f\u0434<\/strong> (&#8220;glance; gaze; viewpoint&#8221;) and <strong>\u043c\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0442\u044c<\/strong> (&#8220;to avenge; to take revenge&#8221;) can be intimidating for English speakers, because our native language doesn&#8217;t have any words beginning with the strings <em>vzgl-<\/em> or <em>mst-<\/em>. But if you stop to think about it, the <em>-mst-<\/em> sequence occurs in the middle of a common word that every child knows: hamster (<strong>\u0445\u043e\u043c<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u044f<\/span>\u043a<\/strong>). And <em>-mst-<\/em> is also heard in phrases like &#8220;I was tired from standing so long.&#8221; Similarly, it&#8217;s not that hard to think of English phrases with a <em>-vzgl-<\/em> sound sequence: for example, &#8220;The sequined glo<strong>ves gl<\/strong>ittered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>And Finally, Those Damned Soft Consonants!<\/h3>\n<p>Having shared all those simple practical &#8220;tricks,&#8221; let me say this about the bigger issue of hard and soft consonants: It ain&#8217;t easy, and will give you headaches for a long time. Still, there are two observations I can make.<\/p>\n<p>I really didn&#8217;t &#8220;get&#8221; soft consonants at all during my first two years of college Russian, even after listening to lots of audiotapes (and getting straight A&#8217;s in my grammar classes). And most of my classmates had the same problem. But in 3rd-year Russian, a native speaker named Svetlana was determined to fix our problem. She would drill us with <strong>\u043b\u0430-\u043b\u0430-\u043b\u0430<\/strong> (hard) and <strong>\u043b\u044f-\u043b\u044f-\u043b\u044f<\/strong> (soft), followed by <strong>\u043c\u043e-\u043c\u043e-\u043c\u043e<\/strong>, <strong>\u043c\u0451-\u043c\u0451-\u043c\u0451<\/strong>, and <strong>\u0442\u0443-\u0442\u0443-\u0442\u0443<\/strong>, <strong>\u0442\u044e-\u0442\u044e-\u0442\u044e<\/strong>, etc.<\/p>\n<p>And that repeated drilling while poor Svetlana patiently indicated the numbered mouth positions actually &#8220;turned the light on&#8221; for me, and in less than a month I did make huge progress towards speaking <b>\u0431\u0435\u0437 \u0430\u043a\u0446<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u0435<\/span>\u043d\u0442\u0430<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, I still had an accent, but it was <i>much more<\/i> progress than I&#8217;d made in the previous two years! And the key was understanding that English consonants like L, D, T, N, and others tend to be &#8220;alveolar,&#8221; meaning the tip of the tongue hits between <strong>4<\/strong> and <strong>5<\/strong> in the diagram above. But their Russian equivalents are &#8212; when hard &#8212; much more &#8220;dental&#8221;, hitting the teeth between <strong>3<\/strong> and <strong>4<\/strong>. However, the soft versions of these consonants are very &#8220;palatalized&#8221; &#8212; the tongue hits somewhere between <strong>6<\/strong> and <strong>7<\/strong>, <i>behind<\/i> the point of contact in English.<\/p>\n<p>Got that? To say the hard <strong>[\u043b]<\/strong> in <strong>\u043b\u0430-\u043b\u0430-\u043b\u0430<\/strong>, the tip of your tongue should be more or less against the back of your upper teeth (3-4 in the diagram), but for the soft <strong>[\u043b]<\/strong> in <strong>\u043b\u044f-\u043b\u044f-\u043b\u044f<\/strong>, the tip of your tongue is touching in the 6-7 position. But English &#8220;L&#8221; is nearer to 4-5.<\/p>\n<p>And if you&#8217;re <b>still<\/b> confused about soft\/hard consonants, let me direct you to this YouTube video &#8212; it&#8217;s Carol Channing singing &#8220;Jazz Baby&#8221; from <em>Thoroughly Modern Millie<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jazz Baby - Carol Channing\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V-UrGp4Wbk4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Channing is beloved by comedians because it&#8217;s so easy to do a bad-but-recognizable impression of her. And one of the things that makes her voice so distinctive and easy to imitate is that <i>Ms. Channing &#8220;softens up her consonants&#8221; all over the freakin&#8217; place<\/i>. Sometimes she even softens consonants that a Russian wouldn&#8217;t soften &#8212; like, she&#8217;ll say &#8220;got&#8221; as something close to <b>\u0433\u044f\u0442<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>CAUTION: I do not claim that learning to do a perfect Carol Channing impression will automatically reduce your accent in Russian (although you may be able to hire yourself out for wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs) &#8212; after all, Channing isn&#8217;t Russian, but for some strange reason she happens to articulate certain consonant sounds in a soft, palatalized, &#8220;Russian-y&#8221; way. (Maybe that&#8217;s how they talk on her home planet, somewhere in the Tau Ceti system&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>But, seriously, if you&#8217;re having trouble with the &#8220;general concept&#8221; of soft consonant sounds, there&#8217;s no harm in going to YouTube and listening for a few minutes as Channing spoofs her legendary <i>Hello Dolly<\/i> role with a Muppet snake named &#8220;Sammy&#8221; (voiced here by Jim Henson himself):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carol Channing on Sesame Street\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0-UMlJhgQbY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;softened&#8221; way she sings the &#8220;so&#8221; in &#8220;you&#8217;re <b>so<\/b> clammy&#8221; really reminds me of the <b>-\u0441\u0451-<\/b> in <b>\u043d\u0435\u0441\u0451\u0442<\/b>, just to point out one example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"200\" height=\"250\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2012\/07\/200px-Places_of_articulation.svg_.png\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p>Okay, maybe it&#8217;s not actually possible for a student of Russian to speak \u00ab\u0431\u0435\u0437 \u0430\u043a\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0442\u0430\u00bb (&#8220;without a foreign accent&#8221;) in just a month &#8212; heck, I started studying the language in 1989 and I still haven&#8217;t completely gotten rid of my US-English \u0430\u043a\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0442! But with the caveat that my Russian pronunciation is far from native&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/speak-russian-%d0%b1%d0%b5%d0%b7-%d0%b0%d0%ba%d1%86%d0%b5%d0%bd%d1%82%d0%b0-in-just-one-month\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":3435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[8,7828],"tags":[165042,165044,165043,385640,1261,165045],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language","category-russian-for-beginners","tag-accent-reduction","tag-hard-consonants","tag-pronouncing-russian-letters","tag-russian-for-beginners","tag-russian-phonetics","tag-soft-consonants"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6482,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions\/6482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}