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Russian spelling

  Tags: Spelling | Russian
 Language Learning Forum : Русский Post Reply
37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 35  Next >>
236factorial
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6300 days ago

192 posts - 213 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 25 of 37
27 June 2011 at 7:15pm | IP Logged 
unityandoutside wrote:
Other than that, the orthography could only be more straightforward if stresses were
marked. Then again, I don't like the appearance of stress marked Russian.


I agree. Sometimes, a certain Russian stress pattern "feels" better, but most of the time, I have to look the stress pattern up. This, of course, is also a problem in English, where I've done several embarrasing mispronunciations in public discourses (e.g. 3rd grade: determined = /'deh tur ,maind/), despite being a native speaker.

I mix up the "a" and "o" all the time. I don't even know why - the other reduced vowels don't give me nearly as much trouble. The seemingly random placement of the soft sign in numbers was difficult to remember at first, but as time went on, they became more or less naturalized in my brain.

I was wondering, whether Russian schoolchildren also go through spelling quizzes/textbooks (I imagine they do). Are there spelling bees? In the US, I remember having spelling tests weekly up until 5th or 6th grade.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4816 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 26 of 37
27 June 2011 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
We studied spelling for many years. In primary scool we studied general, simple spelling
rules and a few rules of punctuation. Then in the fifth grade we
learnt (and revised) all the rules about spelling roots. In the sixth grade we quickly
learnt rules about prefixes and moved to morphology. In the sixth and seventh grades we
learnt morphology of each part of speech, especially participles and gerunds, which were
completely new to us and which have the most tricky rules of spelling and punctuation. In
these two grades we considered suffixes and endings, of course. A half the fifth grade we
spent for syntax and punctuation in general. The eighth grade was dedicated to simple
sentence, and the ninth was dedicated to complex sentence. The main focus was on
punctuation. We did exercises and wrote dictations by the end of the school.

Edited by Марк on 27 June 2011 at 8:04pm

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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5615 days ago

428 posts - 597 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 27 of 37
25 September 2011 at 5:29pm | IP Logged 
Russian spelling is indeed difficult. However, it is still way more logical than those
of French and English. The difficulties for a learner of Russian, in terms of the orthography are:

1) Akanie (should I write "a" or "o" for this unstressed position pronounced as "a"?)
2) Ikanie (should I write "э" "я" "и" or "е" for this unstressed position pronounced as
"и"?)
3) The voicing of voiceless consonants and the devoicing of voiced consonants (which
consonant should I write when two consonants appear together or at the end of a word?)
4) Identifying a soft consonant (Should I write a hard vowel of a soft vowel? / Should
I write a soft sign after this consonant?)
5) Stress (This actually makes spelling difficult when combined with the first and
second above mentioned issues)

Overall, as a learner, I remembered a written form and a spoken form of the words I
learned. This tactic worked for difficult languages like Chinese, English and French
and is more effective for Russian as it is largely phonetic.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4816 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 28 of 37
25 September 2011 at 5:40pm | IP Logged 
Identifying of a soft consonant isn't a question of orthography because it simply
reflects the pronunciation. So, that's a problem of hearing and pronouncing, not spelling
itself.
The general rule is very simple: you should write a soft vowel or a soft sign after a
soft consonant.

Edited by Марк on 25 September 2011 at 5:46pm

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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5615 days ago

428 posts - 597 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 29 of 37
25 September 2011 at 6:04pm | IP Logged 
But you can only have good spelling only after you can identify the soft consonant,
right? I tried to do a dictation and I realized that I wrote the hard vowel instead of
the soft version for quite a number of words. I can write these words correctly only
after some memorization, before my ear can hear the difference of hard and soft
consonants at a rapid pace.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4816 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 30 of 37
25 September 2011 at 6:24pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
But you can only have good spelling only after you can identify the soft
consonant,
right? I tried to do a dictation and I realized that I wrote the hard vowel instead of
the soft version for quite a number of words. I can write these words correctly only
after some memorization, before my ear can hear the difference of hard and soft
consonants at a rapid pace.

Of course, but it is true for any sounds one can't distinguish, for example voiced and
voiceless. You should listen slowly first.
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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5615 days ago

428 posts - 597 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 31 of 37
26 September 2011 at 9:19am | IP Logged 
Марк, I think it is more of my learning style to remember the orthography before I can differate the sounds, because I am a visual learner. Therefore, the knowledge of when to write the soft sign/vowel is critical to me and I remember it more as an orthogarphy rule which I must observe. Otherwise, it will take me a long time to adjust to the correct spellig/pronouncation, as in the case of my English.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4816 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 32 of 37
26 September 2011 at 9:35am | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
Марк, I think it is more of my learning style to remember the orthography
before I can differate the sounds, because I am a visual learner. Therefore, the
knowledge of when to write the soft sign/vowel is critical to me and I remember it more
as an orthogarphy rule which I must observe. Otherwise, it will take me a long time to
adjust to the correct spellig/pronouncation, as in the case of my English.

I see. I meant that for example a spelling reform could make all the unstressed o
replaced by a, but elimination of soft sign and soft vowels won't be a good idea.


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