Re: tSat: Re: 'tEst 'pli:z ig'nOr\

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

| The Russian pronunciations are IIANM /'i:g@r;/ and
| /I'va:n/ (Yitzik are you listening? You even used to be an
| Igor IIRC?)

This week I am busy with lecturing (and oral translation/interpreting of
lectures for a visiting professor) at an extramural students session, so I
am extremely tired and have too little time, but yes, I am lurking. But I
have to be brief.

Ru. pronunciation is ["ig@r;] and [i"van].

| Russian has both /i/, Romanized _i_, and /i\/, Romanized _y_
| as different phonemes. The Ukrainian equivalent of Russian
| /i\/ is however /I/ IIANM.

Yes for both.

| An old Swedish book I read
| identified the Ukrainian front vowels Romanized _i y e_ with
| Swedish _i e ä_ /i e E/!

Pretty close to the Truth.

======================

T. A. McLeay wrote:

| I did not think that Russian made a distinction of length.

It does not, indeed.

| > Russian has both /i/, Romanized _i_, and /i\/, Romanized _y_
| > as different phonemes.
|
| Indeed, it was that contrast that I was alluding to by observing that
| "y" sounds more like my /Ii/ than "i" does, or vice versa. Hence that
| "Igor"/"Ivan" with a "long e" vowel is not particularly much more apt
| than with a "long i" vowel. Perhaps I should try saying what I mean,
| instead of expecting people to jump to my conclusions :)

Don't understand what you mean exactly, but Ru. /i\/ indeed has somewhat
diphthongish in oral realisation...

==============

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

| Yes, those transcriptions should've been flagged as
| phone_t_ic. Sorry. I started out phone_m_ic without lengths,
| then thought I better add lengths, but forgot to change the
| delimiters.

Even on the phone*t*ic level, Ru. doesn't distinguish length. Or, bettersay,
stress, reduction and vowel length go hand in hand. Thus we can imagine 4
degrees of reduction/vowel length instead of plain [a:]/[a].

| Yes, stressed /i\/ tends towards [i\j], and probably did in
| Old Bulgarian too, as Old Church Slavic used the spelling
| ЪI or ЪИ, consisting of Ъ /U\/ and /i/.

Looks highly probable.

| Also I read
| somewhere that the spelling ИЙ in the Russian adjective
| ending is a Church Slavicism for what in natural Russian
| should have been unstressed ОЙ [@j].

I'm not an expert in the history of Ru. language, but again, look highly
probable.

| (In phonetic transcription with Cyrillic letters Russians do
| use Ъ for [@] just like Bulgarian orthography uses it for
| /@/. I'm as sure as can be that the OBul. Ь and Ъ were
| /I\/ and /U\/ however.)

Modern Bulg. Ъ is [7], in my experience.
[I\] and [U\] are almost impossible to be distinguished by an untrained
Slavic ear from [@]. Technically, Ь and Ъ they should be [I_x] and [U_x].

Truly yours,
-- Yitzik / Igor