pronuncation question about Russian

[Katherine Crosswhite]

Dear Andrew,

I am not a native speaker, but one of my areas of research is on Russian 
vowel phonetics.  Here is a simple summary that does not assume much 
phonetics background, plus some suggestions of what you can tell 
beginning students. 

Stessed positions:
The pronunciation of /e/ when stressed depends on the preceding 
consonant.  However, note that not all the consonants you ask about have 
the same effect on /e/.  In particular, some of the "sibilants" you 
refer to are always hard (sh, zh, ts), and some of them are always soft 
(ch, shch).  It is the hardness or softness that is important for /e/, 
not the sibilant-ness.

Whenever you see a (stressed) e written in Russian after a zh, sh, or 
ts, it is pronounced like "e oborotnoe" (i.e., the same vowel as in eto 
or etazh).  You also pronounce "normal" e like "e-oborotnoe" in certain 
borrowed words, like kedy and tenis.  Phonetically speaking, this vowel 
is "open-mid".  In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it would be 
given as [?] (that's the epsilon vowel, if it doesn't come through).

When you see "normal" e in any other position (including after ch or 
shch), it is not pronounced like "e-oborotnoe".  The most noticeable 
difference (for English speakers) is that it will have an [i]-like 
on-glide.  Additionally, it has a higher tongue position -- in IPA it is 
close-mid ([e]).  Many English native speakers approximate the [i] 
on-glide by putting in an English "y" sound (i.e., like Russian 
i-kratkoe) before the vowel.  That pronunciation seems to be 
intelligible to native speakers, but does give you an accent.  It is 
better to focus on pronouncing the preceding consonant as really soft, 
but that might be something to save for more advanced students, not 
beginners.

Also, as noted in the email from Robert Rothstein, the consonant that 
comes after a stressed /e/ also affects the pronunciation, although to a 
much lesser extent than the preceding consonant does.  Basically, a 
following soft consonant raises the vowel somewhat, and produces an 
[i]-like off-glide at the end of the vowel.  This off-glide is much less 
noticeable than the [i] on-glide mentioned above.  Also, when an /e/ is 
found *between* two soft consonants, as in chest', some speakers will 
raise it so much that even the middle portion of the vowel sounds like 
[i].  (This is undoubtedly too much detail to introduce into beginning 
Russian classes.)

Unstressed position:
You also asked about the pronunciation of /e/ when it is unstressed and 
preceded by a sibilant.  This is another case where it is the 
hardness/softness that is important, not really the sibilant-ness.

After soft consonants (including ch and shch), /e/ is pronounced like 
[i].  So, a word like chetverg is pronounced [chitverx].  In phonetics 
books you will see this type of unstressed [i] transcribed using the 
soft-sign symbol.  Avanesov says that the soft-sign phonetic symbol 
denotes only that the vowel is short, not that it is centralized or 
lowered.  Bondarko 1998 (Fonetika Sovremennogo Russkogo Iazyka) is 
consistent with this view as well, but points out that the shorter a 
vowel gets, the less distinctly it is pronounced.  Basically, the 
movement of the tongue that is required for a "clear" pronunciation of 
the vowel will get shortchanged, and the tongue will become displaced 
towards the positions needed for the surrounding consonants.  In many 
cases, this *will* result in some sort of centralization, but that is 
apparently being viewed as an epiphenomenon.  If you tell your students 
to pronounce unstressed e preceded by ch or shch (or any other soft 
consonant) like a short [i] vowel, they will probably get the right result.

After hard consonants (including ts, zh, and sh), unstressed e is 
pronounced like a yeri.  So, a word like tsentral'nyj should be 
pronounced like [tsyntral'nyj].  Again, this unstressed yeri is shorter 
than a stressed one would be and therefore has some changes in exactly 
how it sounds, but not enough to trouble beginners with.  In explaining 
this rule to beginners, you might first want to introduce the fact that 
orthographic [i] is pronounced like yeri when preceded by sh, zh, ts 
(examples:  zhit', shit', tsikl are pronounced [zhyt'], [shyt'], 
[tsykl]).  Then, you can just say that unstressed e reduces to i.  The 
change from i to yeri after sh, zh, and ts then comes for free.

I hope this answered your questions!

Best wishes,

Katherine Crosswhite



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