Re: vowels: are they necessary?

Steven Williams wrote:

 >> Interesting. How are clusters like /s zdranat/ (I'm
 >> making up a Russian-sounding word here, because the
 >> only Russian I know comes from old spy movies)
 >> pronounced?

Stephen Mulraney wrote:

 > In these cases, _s_ becomes _so_. E.g. "so mnoy".
 > Similary with other prepostions (all these words
 > are prepositions). Indeed, even prepositions like _ob_
 > sometimes become _obo_. I can't seem to find the
 > situations in which the extra "o"s appear.

IIRC, the extra |o| only appears before certain consonant
clusters, most notably |vs-| and |mn-|:

vo vsyom        "in everything"
so vsyem        "with everything"
ko mnye         "to me"
so mnoy         "with me"

If a word happens to start with the same consonant as the
preposition, then that alone is not reason enough to add |o|.
To make a distinction, I believe that the consonant is
pronounced long.

v voskresen'ye  "on Sunday"        pronounced as [v:]-
v vodu          "into the water"
s sestroy       "with the sister"  pronounced as [s:]-
k kafe          "towards the cafe" pronounced as [k:]- ?


René

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