Vowel breaking in Russian

[Anna Razumnaya]

Dear Don,

My immediate intuition is that your colleague is pulling your leg. But it is also true that "native speakers" will pronounce their vowels (and not only) differently depending not only on the place one was raised but also on the decade of his or her birth. It seems a more reliable piece of information that one can tell the age of an unfamiliar caller on the phone, granted that we're speaking to a Muscovite, by the way she or he pronounces the 'sh' sound. Someone who is now about sixty will make it sound closer to a 'f', while a person in her thirties is more likely to turn her 'sh' into something like 'sch', sometimes with a slight whistle. But something as extreme as what you describe belongs to jest, eccentricity, and the peculiar mannerisms of former secret police servicemen. Also, I know someone who likes to say 'doa' instead of 'da', to let you know that his tongue is firmly in his cheek.

Best wishes,

AR

Sent from my iPad

> On Sep 21, 2013, at 5:15 AM, Don Livingston <temp0001 at SHININGHAPPYPEOPLE.NET> wrote:
> 
> Dear SEELANGtsy,
> 
> I had the most interesting conversation with a co-worker about vowel breaking in Russian.  I have to admit, I've never considered the topic.  Essentially she said that when Russian native-speakers are emphasizing the pronunciation of words, they break stressed vowels into diphthongs.  Among her examples she noted that vy in contrastive contexts by native speakers is pronounced [vwy] and ty in contrastive contexts is pronounced [twy].  This is a colleague whose opinions I very much respect; she is not a person of casual opinions.  
> 
> That said, I must say that I myself have not observed such a thing when Russian native speakers stress the pronunciation of ty.  The [w] sound one seems to hear in vy and my and pyl' I have previously ascribed to a difference between Russian labials and English labials; that is, I posited that Russian labials have more lip rounding than English labials, and the seeming [w] sound I have taken to be simply an artifact of my American ear trying to interpret Russian sounds as English phonemes.
> 
> She also said that other stressed vowels in emphatic contexts show vowel breaking.  I can only think of one vowel I have ever heard that sometimes shows this vowel breaking effect.  Sometimes ne becomes ne-a.
> 
> So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this topic.  Is vowel breaking something you have observed among Russian native speakers in emphatic contexts?  Do you know of any documentation on the topic?  (I don't remember anything of the sort in Avanesov, which is my go-to on pronunciation.) I look forward to any thoughts you might have.
> 
> Peace, joy and light to you, Don Livingston.
> 
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