Re: OT coins and currency

Mark J. Reed jazdy:

> On 1/11/06, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> > Yes, they are the same in spelling, and different in propnunciation. Ru.
> > |Европа| [jiv"rop@]
>
> [jiv]?  Really?
By Ghu! It is [jiv...]

> How did that happen?  I would expect [jEv] or [jev]
> from that spelling.
Ha ha ha. This is called vowel reduction!
In literary standard, only *stressed* |е| is [e] (or, bettersay, smth
average between [e] and [E]). Unstressed, it becomes [i] (or, as some people
insist, [@_+] with palatalization of the preceding consonant). The same is
true about |и| and |я|, only they are [_ji] and [_ja] when stressed.
The situation with |о| is even worse. It is [o]±[O] when stressed, [V] in
immediately preceding prestressed syllable, and [@]/[@_-] everywhere else,
and mixes with |а| that is [a] when stressed.
So the Russian language needs an orthographic rule to distinguish between
е-и-я triplet and о-а pair in unstressed position. An hundreds of words in a
learnt by heart list that have them there just for etymological reasons, and
cannot be checked according to the rule, like e.g. |заяц| ["zaj@_+ts)]
'hare'. Only Ghu knows why it is written with я…
I'm glad Ukrainian has only one pair (е [E] - и [I]) merged in unsressed
position. But even there you should beware of duplets like мене 'me.Acc' vs.
мине 'it will pass by', both read as [me"nE].

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