Re: Hi to the Ukraine from Tokyo

Hi,
> Russian would be ["k'ijif] - palatal (!) reduction.
Nope. In "Kiev" there can't be an 'i'. It can be a yer' (reduced _i_) or a
yer (schwa). A yer' arises after soft consonants mostly, but the yer can
appear in certain inflexions, as it does here, because in possessive
adjectives you get 'o' when stressed (Petróv)

> Ukrainian is ["ke<retr>jiw] - Ukr. /y/ is a front (!) vowel,
> similar to Fr.
> /é/ in 'bébé',
Huh? I tended to hear it as a high middle vowel, as in Welsh. OK, I speak
(or, rather, try to speak) a strange variation of Ukrainian - pronunciation
from L'viv (where I started actually _speaking_ it) - for example I say
"shcho" and not "sho" for "what" as in the Surzhik forms, but vocabulary
mostly Kiev/Poltava - I use "duzhe"and not "bardzo/bardzho" for "very

>and /v/ has an allophone /w/ in auslaut and before the
> consonants (!)
Yep, quite forgotten that, sorry.

Bye,
Pavel

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