There’s a lot of subjectivity to picking out what stands out, yes … but there are actual, definable aspects of individual languages that leave impressions on non-speakers. Combinations of two, three, and even four consonants are quite common. In Russian, usage is based on aspect, where actions are either completed or not completed. Like vowels, consonants can sound different depending on where in the word they are. Boing Boing – 17 Dec 09 Test yourself: “Take the third path to get to the theater.” (Like a Russian: Tyeyk ze soord pat to gyet to ze teeatr), Russians really struggle with the “uh” sound that is common in English. Meaning is expressed through the addition of words (for example auxiliaries) and movement of words within limited boundaries. Thinking of it like this: as English speakers, we’re used to a stressed syllable, then a “downbeat” made up of a few consecutive unstressed syllables. How easy will it be to learn Russian? (“Bien” [“good”] is the pathetically vacuous answer that a lot of Spanish-speakers tend to give.). The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: 10 vowels (а, е, ё, и, о, у, ы, э, … To have a good Russian accent, you must pick either one – “the,” for example, must be pronounced either as “de” or “ze.” “Thick,” on the other hand, could be either “tick” or “sick.” Don’t worry if people don’t understand you, by this point they’ll be way too scared to try and correct you.

Imagine, for example, that you’re in your room on the second floor, and your mom is downstairs in the kitchen. Putting a stress in the wrong place isn’t just a formal mistake.

Try saying this: Where did your voice rise? There was a thread not too long ago on how different languages sound to speakers of various other languages, but my searches have failed to turn it up. Russian Vocabulary Lists by Topic. The word contains four consonants following one another: vzgl. Consonants in Russian and English are roughly the same amount. Vowels are the musical building blocks of every Russian word. Copyright © 2020 LanguageSoftware.net. However, keep in mind that Russian and English sounds are never absolutely identical and only constant practice will help you acquire the perfect Russian … Why is that? Many Russian learners that are not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet spend a lot of time on just getting used to it. Are we describing languages or reading their horoscopes?
When pronouncing the letters p, t, or k, English speakers are used to straining their tongue and lips. It’s why you rarely see Russians (even those who lived in the States for a long time) talk like native English speakers.

Before learning a new Russian word, find out which vowel to stress. In comparison with Russian the modal verb system in English is very complex. Because Russian borrows terms from other languages, there are various conventions for sounds not present in Russian. If I really like a song, I’ll download the lyrics so I can find out what’s being sung. http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html. The /θ/ and /ð/ sounds do not exist in Russian, so words such as thin, then and clothes are predictably difficult. Okay well then, compared to Russian, English sounds light and gentle, yet somewhat lacking in melodic fluidity…. Many languages have very distinctive sounds that allow us to recognize the language even though we don't speak it ourselves, and allow us to "fake" it by making those sounds, (which some of us do more effectively than others).
The lyrics just don’t do much for me, because I rarely understand them. Compared to English pronunciation, which often has more exceptions than rules, Russian rules of pronunciation are fairly clear and consistent.

Phonology: Due to differences in the phonological systems, it is relatively difficult for Russians to acquire native-speaker-like standards of pronunciation and intonation. Practice until you don’t produce a puff of air with these words! You won’t often hear a Russian say a hard “e”, especially when following a consonant. For example, only an accomplished English-language student in Russia can pronounce the word “big” just like they do in England or America. Okay well then, compared to Russian, English sounds light and gentle, yet somewhat lacking in melodic fluidity… Just flip whatever descriptor you’d use for another language, and that’s English. Test yourself: “Happy Halloween, Harry!” (Like a Russian: kheppi khaloween, kherry”). The Russian system is based in the concept of aspect: actions are either completed or not completed. Another thing about spoken English (doesn’t matter what dialect) that can come off as … well, “odd”, I guess … is listening to the cadence of the words. Russian Alphabet. - 15 odd English phrases to help learn Russian. It was one of the first Slavic alphabets and was used to write down religious texts. To an English-speaking listener, a Spanish speaker is uttering an unusually long and unbroken stream of consecutive “stressed” syllables. What does English sound like--REALLY--to foreigners? For example, the word zamok (zah-muhk) means “castle.” However, if you shift the stress from the first syllable to the last, the word zamok (zuh-mohk) now means “lock.”. Chances are, you’ll mess this up a lot since there’s no real shortcut to figuring out gender — you’ll have to learn which is which for each noun you memorize individually. The Russian alphabet uses the Cyrillic script. The Cyrillic alphabet developed from the Glagolic and Greek scripts and was named after Cyril. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7803832. Sounded like a cross between George Clinton (music) and Bob Dylan (lyrics)! Now try again, inflecting on the word “want,” then bring the sentence on a downward slope: Much more confusing, right? I’ve always wondered this, but the answers one finds by Googling the question are woefully uninformative. If you want to sound more Russian, don’t shorten your vowels like English speakers often do. Look forward to learning and practicing when to make which sound — you’ll need that in order to earn a good grasp of skills in the vernacular. Perhaps someone else will recall it better. This contrasts with English which has 12 vowel sounds (5 long, 7 short), plus 8 diphthongs. So I was wondering, what do we sound like to people who don’t speak English? So, let them inspire you and be a little more liberal with your grammar! To alleviate this problem, they have a range of options at hand. Some Russian letters change their behavior depending on whether they’re in a stressed or an unstressed syllable. The phonetic transcription helps pronounce a word more or less correctly. This is what it sounds like to us. However, why not go for a stereotypical full monty here?

Often the Russian vowel Ы is one of the hardest Russian letters for native English speakers to pronounce. In other words, say it, don’t spray it! According to my five year old son, English sounds something like “warsch farscjh sarsshjf” […], The best example I had ever seem was posted by someone else here a while back While some Russian letters look and sound the same, others are completely different, and third ones look the same but sound completely different.

You’ll probably be familiar with the mean-sounding tone usually heard in Hollywood Russian accents, but do you know which sounds Russian speakers most commonly carry through to their spoken English? are common among beginners. I’m a person who has always found it very difficult to discern words in most songs, especially pop and rock songs with a lot instrumentals in them (drum beats, guitar, etc.). The phonological systems of Russian and English are very different. But that’s enough about vowels, for now. Even Russians who speak fine English will mess this up from time to time. This difference almost never happens in Russian.

/ I no have it. Many associate tongue rolling exclusively with Spanish. There is no “i” sound in Russian, and many native Russians substitute it with an “ee” sound when learning English. Excellent answer. As with many other learners of English, the /w/ and /v/ sounds are … Russian accent is firm. This causes significant problems because the whole concept of article use is alien to Russian learners of English, and the English article system itself is extremely complex. We hear other people talk different languages, and they sound strange, so of course they are gonna think we sound strange too. Per the first wiki link below: “English is a stress-timed language … stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this.” This will sound unusual to speakers of languages such as Spanish and Japanese which “… have syllable timing (e.g. What does English sound like to a foreigner? Many languages have very distinctive sounds that allow us to recognize the language even though we don't speak it ourselves, and allow us to "fake" it by making those sounds, (which some of us do more effectively than others). As for the tone: it should be somewhere between, “I don’t have time for this,” and “you get what I mean, yeah?” You can’t smooth-talk your way around Russia; getting what you want often involves assertiveness and sternness, so be ready to wear this attitude in public at all times. In English, we have progressive and perfect verb tenses, which help avoid the need for using affixes through the extensive use of auxiliary verbs. These are called voiced and voiceless consonants, respectively. For example beginning learners often omit the auxiliary in questions or negatives: How you do that? Another thing about spoken English (doesn’t matter what dialect) that can come off as … well, “odd”, I guess … is listening to the cadence of the words. And as a native speaker of English, yeah, it does sound like English. As with many other learners of English, the /w/ and /v/ sounds are troublesome, west being pronounced vest, for example, or vice versa. Copyright © 2020 RusslandJournal.de. It sounds much like if you break down a word on letters and say them all together. Try lightly flicking the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

This same tendency of changing the composition of words is present throughout most of Russian grammar, which makes things a lot more difficult compared to the English standard of merely adding new words to alter meaning.