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From: Pkmayer@Indirect.com
Subject: Re: Russian vowel  bI
Message-ID: <D5xC4o.3ou@indirect.com>
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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 02:55:36 GMT
References: <3kcq7c$167k@news.ccit.arizona.edu> <3kpp90$phs@news.ycc.yale.edu>
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>It is indeed transliterated as "y", and, like all other vowels in Russian 
>or in any other language I know, its precise pronunciation varies 
>depending on the phonetic environment.  It's a high back unrounded vowel, 
>but I don't know what the IPA symbol is.  Actually, from a phonological
>standpoint, the "y" is not a full-fledged phoneme but the variant after 
>hard consonants of the vocalic phoneme +high, -rounded.
>
>: And I have no idea about rules for diphtongs...
>: I think the ending ...aya (with the backwards R)
>: is pronounced only as a schwa, as in moskovskaya.
>: (my book says that unstressed ya is pronounced
>: as yi... I don't think this is true in this 
>: example).
>
>Again, you're right.  The pronunciation rules often do not apply to 
>grammatical endings.  The unstressed ending "-aya" should be pronounced 
>with two schwas, the nominative ending "-ya" (as in "volya") with one.
>
>Ken Balakrishnan
><kbalakri@minerva.cis.yale.edu>
>

The Russian vowels a and o are pronounced differently depending on 
their position relative to the stressed syllable in the sentence. I believe this 
also applies to the "ya" (backward R). For example the word good: xorosho 
(ick! looks awful, doesn't it?) is actually pronounced xuh(schwa)-ra-sho. 
Since the stress is on the last syllable, the o preceeding the stressed one 
is pronounced as an "a" and all others that might come before that or after 
that are pronounced as schwas.

Karen Mayer
(kmayer@internet.com)
