For a change, Russian pronunciation

On Sunday 24 November 2002 07:48 pm, Amanda Babcock wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 08:22:18PM -0500, David Peterson wrote:
> > Ha!   My goodness!   Yeah, my mistake.   I didn't mean i kratkaya; I
> > meant the vowel that's usually represented in IPA as [i-].
        Ah--you mean [1]. No, I can't think of any instance in which it would be
realized as a diphthong. Pavel?

> My teacher called that "yeri" or "yer[self-referrential-thingie]", accent
> on the second syllable. I can't recall ever having seen the word written,
> though.
        I've only heard it called "y" (/1/), which would make sense, since all of the
vowels in Russian are named by their sounds. Perhaps it's an old slavonic
name, similar to "az" and "buka"?

> I was not taught to pronounce that as a diphthong.  I think pronouncing
> it as a diphthong is how English-speakers deal with being unable to pin
> down its actual sound :)  It's actually a simple, self-contained sound,
> at least in the dialect of Russian (presumably Muscovite?) that I was
> drilled on.
        The way I tell others is to say /i/, slide the tongue back to /u/, and then
slide forward again halfway and stop. Or, say "kill" and strangle the vowel.
:) My only difficulty is that whenever I want to saw [m1] ("we") I have to be
careful not to end up saying [mw1]. I think it's because of the labial stop;
I also have to guard against saying [bw1].
        :Peter

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