Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!EU.net!sun4nl!knowar!harmsen.knoware.nl!rharmsen
From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: Russian vowel  bI
Sender: news@knoware.nl (News Account)
Message-ID: <rharmsen.371.00116CD5@knoware.nl>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:25:23 GMT
Lines: 16
References: <3kcq7c$167k@news.ccit.arizona.edu> <3kpp90$phs@news.ycc.yale.edu> <joeclark-2503951129140001@joeclark.tor.hookup.net>
Nntp-Posting-Host: harmsen.knoware.nl
Organization: none
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A]

In article <joeclark-2503951129140001@joeclark.tor.hookup.net> joeclark@hookup.net (Joe Clark) writes:
>> 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. 

>Upside-down and backwards small m.
Is that really a unrounded back sound? I always thought it was central 
unrounded. If it were back, it would be the same as the Turkish sound 
written as i-without-dots, but that sounds different, I think.
Like front i palatalizes the preceding consonant (or vice versa), there 
seems to be a considerable "colouring" of consonants before the "bl", 
like in the words for "we" and "you", "Mbl" and "Bbl" (this is cyrillic, 
painted with the Latin alphabet). It sounds a lot like what happens
to the i vowels in Arabic before the so-called emphatic consonants.

