Mark J. Reed jazdy:
> I just hadn't heard of the /_je/ => /_ji/ reduction, which is sort of odd
> since I took a year of Russian in college and we spent a lot of time
> cultivating authentic accents. According to my teacher, I was one of the
> best pronouncers (pronunciators? :)) in the class - even as I did among
the
> worst in remembering the vocabulary and grammar.
Usually they teach reduction only to professionals, except mentioning about
pronouncing |o| as [a] when unstressed. Last year I met a Swiss guy who had
been learning Russian for almost two years and still was absolutely sure
that in Russian "you read what you see".
> Russian was the arrow
> that burst my "I'm good at learning languages!" balloon. :)
No wonder. Any East Slavic langauge blows one's mind up! Only Georgian can
supercede them!
-- happy Yitzik, a native russophone