Country Names & Word Stress

PRONUNCIATION OF VOWELS

If you want to pronounce Russian words correctly, you need to have a clear understanding of how the vowels are pronounced. In total, there are ten vowels in Russian, and there are some fundamental differences between them. Listen to each vowel carefully and try to figure out what sets them apart:

* Audio samples provided by Skvorets.

Four of the vowels above are pronounced with a preceding y, namely Я (ya), Е (ye), Ё (yo), Ю (yu). These vowels are called iotated. The pronunciation of words containing such letters might be tricky, in fact, they affect the way the preceding consonant is pronounced (if any). This is also true for the letter И, in spite of not being iotated. In contrast, the vowels on the left side do not affect the pronunciation of the preceding consonant.

READING PRACTICE I.

Read the following sequences of vowels out loud. Repeat the process until you feel comfortable with this task.

PRONUNCIATION OF CONSONANTS

By default, most consonants in Russian are pronounced hard, this simply means that they are pronounced normally, just as you would do in English. A Russian К is a K, a Russian М is an M, and the Russian П is pronounced the same way as the letter P in English. In some cases, Russian consonants are pronounced in a soft way – this topic will be explained in later chapters.

READING PRACTICE II.

Below you can find some combinations of vowels and consonants. Read them out loud a couple of times. When you feel comfortable with this task, you can move on to the next topic. NB. In this section, all consonants must be pronounced the default way.

COUNTRY NAMES IN RUSSIAN

Look at the following country names. As you will probably realize, in spite of a different alphabet being used, these words are quite similar to their English counterparts. As for their pronunciation, there are some important differences, though. Listen to the audio recordings carefully, and try to repeat what you hear. Note: although America and England are not considered to be countries in the strict sense of the word, they have been added to the list as commonly used geographical names.

* Audio samples are provided by The Shtooka Project.

WORD STRESS

If you have listened carefully to the names of countries, then you probably realized that some parts of the words are pronounced longer and louder than others. For example, the word КАНАДА contains three A’s, of which the second one is significantly longer than the other two. This is a phenomenon called word stress. Learners are advised to draw a stress mark above the vowels which need to be emphasized, like this:

Word stress in not specific to Russian. The English language possesses similar features, even though it is often overlooked by its speakers. It is important to point out that only vowels are stressed, not consonants. Native speakers of either language know perfectly well which part of a word is stressed, however, language learners need to pay special attention to this problem, as incorrect stress often leads to misunderstandings. If you compare the following two words, you will see that the only thing that differentiates them is the stress, however, their meanings are completely different.

* Audio samples are provided by The Shtooka Project.

In Russian, word stress is highly unpredictable. When you see a new word, there is usually no way of knowing which vowel is going to be emphasized. From now on, we will include stress marks when dealing with new vocabulary, and we recommend you to do the same. In case of doubt, consulting a dictionary will help you to clarify the issue. Here is how the above country names look with the stress marks included:

КАНА́ДА, АМÉРИКА, ФРА́НЦИЯ, ИТА́ЛИЯ, РОССИ́Я, БРАЗИ́ЛИЯ, ИСПА́НИЯ, ГРÉЦИЯ, МÉКСИКА, А́НГЛИЯ

⭢ Vowel Reduction & Sentence Structure