Re: Hi to the Ukraine from Tokyo

Re: Pavel Iosad on Friday, November 30, 2001 7:17 PM

> 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)
Already corrected. Vassily showed it earlier. Apologies! It's surely yerj!

> > 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
High middle? Like Russian {y} [1] 'yeru'? Strange. Especially for L'viv
pronounciation, where it tends to be almost [e] in contrast to [E] for
{e}... I still see it like close-mid front retracted (not retroflex, of
course!), smth average between [e] and [9].

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

-- Yitzik

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