Re: Really OT: insertion of extra letters in Russian phrases

"Peter Moylan" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:441aa00e$0$20112$afc38c87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Alexei A. Frounze wrote:
"Peter Moylan" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:441a2047$0$20116$afc38c87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Out of idle curiosity: there were about three words of Russian in the
above sentence that I did understand, and that prompts me to ask: why do
you have "×Ï ×ÒÅÍÑ" when I would have expected "× ×ÒÅÍÑ"? Is it because
"× ×ÒÅÍÑ" is considered too difficult to pronounce (seems unlikely), or
is it simply that "×Ï" is a word I've never heard of?

I think, yes, this has to do with the simplicity of pronunciation. But
having written the following examples I now think it might be not just
that...

Examples:

ñ ÎÅ ×ÅÒÀ × ÜÔÕ ÞÅÐÕÈÕ. I don't believe in this bull***.
ñ ÎÅ ×ÅÒÀ ×*Ï* ×ÓÀ ÜÔÕ ÞÅÐÕÈÕ. I don't believe in all this bull***.

Thank you, that answers my main question. I guess that I tend to think
that Russian speakers are so comfortable with consonant clusters that
they can put just about any combination together; and I'm fairly certain
that I've seen "× ×ÏÄÅ" as an acceptable combination.

You bet. That's absolutely right use of the preposition with that noun.

And now you've taught me the word for "bull***", if I can manage to
remember it. It's a pity that it turns out to be a word that English
speakers find hard to pronounce.

Perhaps we need a less formal kind of dictionary with a bit of slang and
words used informally.
So, for that one you can use:
ÞÅÐÕÈÁ
ÞÕÛØ
ÅÒÕÎÄÁ
ÂÒÅÄ
ÔÕÆÔÁ
ÈÅÒÎÑ/ÈÒÅÎØ (this pair is closer to the curse words and normally isn't used
formally/on public and there're even stronger forms of that)

[some examples snipped.]

ïÎ ÐÒÉÛÅÌ Ë ÂÒÁÔÕ. He came to the/his brother.
ïÎ ÐÒÉÛÅÌ Ë*Ï* ÍÎÅ. He came to me.

That's an interesting pair. I believe that most English speakers would
find "kbr" just as difficult, or even more difficult, to pronounce than
the triple "kmv".

kmv? Did you mean kmn?

ëÁË ÄÅÌÁ, ÞÔÏ ÎÏ×Ï*Ç*Ï? How is it going, any news? (unlike the above the
spelling doesn't reflect the pronounciation, which is *×* here, not *Ç*)

That's a different phenomenon, surely? I thought that the non-phonetic
pronunciation of words ending in ÏÇÏ was just one of those historical
accidents, of which we have many in English, where the pronunciation
changed over time while the spelling remained frozen.

Honestly, I don't know the history or reason. I could train myself easily to
pronounce ogo too, and it might be possible that this or similar nonphonetic
pronunciation is a function of a geographical location. For instance, in
Moscow and quite a few big cities the unstressed O's are pronounced always
as A's. But that's not the same everywhere. Another one is that some people
pronounce Û/sh instead of Þ/ch, here're a few example of a word where that
may happen: ÂÕÌÏ*Þ*ÎÁÑ, ÐÒÁÞÅ*Þ*ÎÁÑ -- these kind of fall into a pattern of
consonants ch and n. Then there's another thing -- some people would soften
consonants sometimes, a notable example of word would be ÎÁ×Å*Ò*È, where
they'd say ÎÁ×Å*ÒØ*È.

Anyway, thanks for the lesson.

You're welcome,
Alex
P.S. It's such a pity that we all know so little even about our native
languages so that we often don't see the odd and irregular things ourselves
nor we can explain them to someone else not speaking our language natively.
We only start thinking about things like that when we put ourselves in a
position of learning another language...


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