Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation

[Alina Israeli]

>
>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?

His final L's as u's were even better (from normative point of view).

>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?


Just a common speech defect. R's and L's are hard, and those are most
common speech defects.
Alina Israeli