Russian pronunciation query

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Dear Jeff,

> With "S dnyom rozhdeniia", the literary pronunciation will be [zdn].
> Your intuition (or familiarity with pronunciation rules) is good,
> however.  In the middle of words like prazdnik, the -zdn- is
> simplified to -zn-.  Seemingly, since the [zdn] in S dnyom crosses a
> word boundary, the [zdn] is kept in literary pronunciation.  However,
> in rapid speech and in casual speech, I encounter "S dnyom" as the
> simplified [snyom] quite frequently.

That's pretty close to what I expected, especially the bit about the
word boundary influencing the result, but I didn't expect a voiceless
[s] in [snyom]. I guess the deletion occurs before the assimilation.

> ...
> (On a side note, in your transliterated section [my computer doesn't
> like your Cyrillic at all, unfortunately], you have [razhzhen-] for
> rozhden-; it should be [razhden-].)

That was actually a subconscious troll, I think. In reviewing my
pronunciation manuals, I see that the long soft [zh] is deprecated
except when spelled "zhzh" or "zzh" or in words from the root "dozhd',"
pronounced [dosh'sh'] in the nominative and [dozh'zh'-] elsewhere. And
even there, [-zh'd'-] is permitted under the influence of the spelling.

But I've always been curious what real people do with this stuff. Books
can only tell you so much, and I miss the daily exposure to real live
informants.

Thanks for your info. Go Bucks!

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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