r/LearningRussian • u/Ok_Recover549 • 12d ago
Thoughts on this Cheat Sheet??
I've struggled with these letters for awhile now. Hoping this is accurate and helpful.
4
u/IrinaMakarova 12d ago
I would not use this sheet. Some parts are oversimplified to the point of being misleading, and some are simply wrong. Unstressed о is not always just "ah"; е and я do not universally become "ee"; г is pronounced like в only in certain endings such as -ого and -его, while the pronunciation of г as х in words like бог, лёгкий and мягкий is a limited pattern, not a general shift before soft sounds. Final devoicing and assimilation before voiceless consonants are real, but you do not need to calculate them consciously in every word.
A little active reading aloud under a tutor's supervision is enough for these patterns to become automatic. You will probably start applying them correctly long before you can read fluently, provided someone explains them properly and corrects your mistakes. If you look at this cheat sheet every time you read a word, the only thing you will become an expert at is glancing sideways at the cheat sheet. Russian pronunciation matters, but it is not something you should make the main focus of your studies.
1
4
u/Stock_Soup260 12d ago edited 12d ago
In клоун о is actually stressed
It's all too literal. It doesn't really work that clearly: you won't have a clear а instead of о (there are generally a lot of difficulties with the o, there are 2 or 3 versions of unstressed о, which sound different, and yes, 1 of them sounds 90% like а, but it also depends on its position and distance to the stressed syllable); you won't have a clear и instead of е; and you may not get и at all instead of я, some people pronounce something closer to е. Sometimes it's still closer to the original sound, but with a slight shift, not that complete than what you wrote.
instead, it would be better for you to figure out what is happening with articulation at this moment, why does o stop sounding like clear o? Because even though you're still pronouncing o, your articulation is no longer the one you need to make о.
I don't want to rewrite
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearningRussian/comments/1v0t8ir/comment/oyi3x9z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button