hard sounds

[Michael Denner]

I wonder if Mr. Steffen was not, perhaps, referring to the ways in which many consonants are articulated in Russian, rather than to the linguistic category of hard and soft. What I mean (and what I think Mr. Steffen meant) is that consonants -- especially the dentals and some of the labials (not P, of course) -- are pronounced with a lot more "plosion" in Russian than they are in English, German and French. (My linguistic training is, admittedly, "чему-нибудь и как-нибудь," and I anticipate a firm correction from the real linguists out there. But here goes.) The hard (linguistically) dentals in Russian SOUND hard (now I'm using the word non-linguistically), and therefore subjectively maybe aggressive, because they're articulated much farther back in the mouth (closer to the O position than the I position), and the lower jaw is dropped much lower. 

The result is a very different, more "aggressive" sound, at least to my ear. One of the "tells" of an Anglophone accent in Russian is the delicate way we pronounce our d's, t's, and v's, especially the American tendency to "tongue flap" consonants (when we say butter, for instance). The same holds true for French, I think -- perhaps even more so than English, French is a language that dawdles on its vowels and swallows its consonants. Russian does just the opposite. The net effect (and this is subjective) is that Russian sounds HARD and, therefore, aggressive. 

As proof for all this subjectiveness: When I've talked to non-Russian speakers, they always say that Russians (especially males) sound "angry" when they speak. Part of that is the intonational pattern, but part of it is the way Russians articulate their consonants.  (Anecdotally, my cat goes crazy when I speak Russian around the house -- she actually bats at my mouth and I end up locking her in a closet until my guests leave. Clearly, Anglophone felines also perceive Russian's strangeness.)


mad
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Dr. Michael A. Denner
Russian Studies Program
Stetson University
Campus Box 8361
DeLand, FL 32724
386.822.7381 (department)
386.822.7265 (direct line)
386.822.7380 (fax)
http://www.stetson.edu/~mdenner
http://russianpoetry.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Margala [mailto:miriam at LING.ROCHESTER.EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 1:11 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] hard sounds

 I think Benjamin Rifkin gave a good response. It's tricky to associate
purely linguistic terms with any other phenomena though I think I sort
of know what you're trying to express,

best

Miriam Margala
Dept. of English, Dept. of Linguistics
University of Rochester
Rochester
New York 14627
USA

Edil Legno wrote:

>I think I didn't express very well my ideas. One thing is the harder mode of pronunciation and another the sign of lacking in education. Tbe geographical part which is very close to Bratislava is called Zahorie.From here and from Trnava are usually the people which pronounce  all sounds di-ti-ni-li and  de-te-ne-le only in hard mode.As those people (in the past)were
>usually peasants and very simple persons ,with no education,
>the way how they pronounce these sounds - made a bigger  mark on  the difference between the  so-called people with education and non. They were a lot of jokes on the past communist governers because of their  hard mode of pronunciation. Someone of those past com.politics had a very low level of education  (only evening schools)  .The correct pronunciation of some words:peasant is sedliak,they pronounce it like "sedlak". the word "kde" with soft-de- they pronounce it only with hard - de-. Word Bratislava - hard -ti-is pronounced only by foreigners and "zahoraci".Educated Slovak NEVER will
>pronounce it that way.That's why it's considered just a lacking in education.
>
>Best wishes
>Katarìna Peitlovà,Ph.Dr.
>
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