Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation

[Nobukatsu Minoura]

At 6:11 PM 10/4/96, Robert A. De Lossa wrote:
> 3) Leonid Kravchuk (West Ukrainian, former President of Ukraine) has much
> "better" (i.e., closer to textbook CSR) than Mykhail Gorbachov. Go figure.
> The latter learned it as a foreign language, probably, and then sharpened
> it up as he rose through the Party structure. Ukrainian Russian is as
> varied as Russian Russian (awkwardness intended)--just as American English
> is as varied as British English.

While Misha was still the head of the former Union, the Radio Russian
Course on the public radio station (NHK)  used his speeches as teaching
materials because they thought his pronunciation was very good.  I always
thought that wasn't true because he has a voiced fricative "g" instead of a
voiced stop "g."  Russian textbooks in Japan say Russian "g" is a stop.
But does any authoritative documents from Russia support that too?  Or do
they say both the fricative "g" and the stop "g" are standard?

Nobu (udarenie na "o" i bez akanija)

P.-S.:  I also noticed in my student years that the late Dr. Sakharov had a
uvular "r."  Is that an influence from Yiddish?  Or is it from French which
was supposedly used in the "high society" in the past?

---------------------------------------------
Nobukatsu "Nobu" Minoura
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