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Russian spelling

  Tags: Spelling | Russian
 Language Learning Forum : Русский Post Reply
37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4
QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5614 days ago

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

 
 Message 33 of 37
26 September 2011 at 9:40am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
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.


Do you know Belarussian? They do spell unstressed "o" as "a", even in cases where there is a shift in stress in declinations or conjugations.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4815 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 34 of 37
26 September 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged 
I know that. And I say that replacing all the unstressed "o" by "a" will simplify the
spelling. But the elimination of soft sign and soft vowels won't.
Unstressed "o" and "a" are pronounced like "a" only in the pretonic syllable and at the
beginning of the word, in other cases they are pronounced like shwa.

Edited by Марк on 26 September 2011 at 9:53am

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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5614 days ago

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

 
 Message 35 of 37
26 September 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
I know that. And I say that replacing all the unstressed "o" by "a" will simplify the
spelling. But the elimination of soft sign and soft vowels won't.


Yes, I understand the importance of the soft sign and soft vowels. I wished that these signs and vowels existed for English (eg the d in "do" and "dew")
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egill
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5455 days ago

418 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin, English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 36 of 37
26 September 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
Марк wrote:
I know that. And I say that replacing all the unstressed
"o" by "a" will simplify the
spelling. But the elimination of soft sign and soft vowels won't.


Yes, I understand the importance of the soft sign and soft vowels. I wished that these
signs and vowels existed for English (eg the d in "do" and "dew")


That would be kinda neat, but one problem might be that different accents of English
drop the soft sign in different places. For example, do" and "dew" are homophones for
me, as an American English speaker. There was actually an ad campaign a while back with
the slogan "do the dew", which relied on this. But it seems even amongst RP speakers
there is variation, e.g. in words like suit, Zeus, lute.

Of course you could argue that it'd be better than the way it is now, because speakers
that have the hard sound in particular environments could ignore the soft sign in those
words, and learners could pick in which environments they want to drop the sound, and
in which they want to keep the sound.

Wiki on Yod-dropping

Edited by egill on 26 September 2011 at 3:15pm

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matchboxauto
Pentaglot
Newbie
Austria
Joined 4564 days ago

24 posts - 27 votes
Speaks: German*, Portuguese, English, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Romanian

 
 Message 37 of 37
02 October 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged 
To me, spelling in Russian has always seemed rather easy and consistent. I used to have trouble with the soft sign as well, but it's more of a phonetic problem than an actual spelling problem, so I wouldn't count it as such.

The reason why so many learners make this type of spelling mistake is that it's hard to hear a difference between hard and soft consonants when your native language doesn't differentiate them. I remember learning to hear a difference between "л" and "ль" pretty soon, and I think I can hear a difference between "р" and "рь", and that enables me to spell words that contain them correctly, even if I've never seen them before. But to this day I find it difficult to hear what the soft sign does in words like "ткань" (that is, after "н"), and it's also very hard for me to pronounce it the right way. I know what my tongue is supposed to do in theory, but it never seems to come out the right way.

Anyways, I think that spelling is one of the easier aspects of learning Russian (from the perspective of a German native speaker). Also, the fact that even native speakers have trouble with spelling isn't unique to Russian and therefore not very significant.


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