Why foreigners struggle with Russian phonetics

Vowel reduction

It’s not at all obvious that the word ‘молоко’ (‘milk’), for example, should not be pronounced as it’s written – with three ‘О’ sounds – but, rather as [мълако́] (‘muhlako’). This is typically called vowel reduction. 

This example also illustrates a rare phenomenon characteristic of Russian and Belarusian languages known as ‘akanye’, which is the failure to distinguish between ‘А’ and ‘О’ in unstressed syllables.

If a foreigner is unaware of this, their pronunciation will resemble a Northern Russian dialect, which, on the contrary, is heavily characterized by ‘okanye’ or the pronunciation of unstressed ‘О’ sounds, which sounds unusual to the Russian ear (except in Northern Russia!). 

“The devoicing of consonants at the end of words (final-obstruent devoicing) is more common, but this feature is not typical for all languages. In English, the words ‘bad’ and ‘bat’ are pronounced differently, but, in Russian, ‘код’ (‘code’) and ‘кот’ (‘cat’) sound absolutely the same,” Andrey Gorshkov, editor of Gramota.ru, points out.

Difficult words & sounds

The challenges begin immediately when foreigners start learning how to greet someone in Russian. The word ‘здравствуйте’ (‘hello’) is far from easy for everyone to master, let alone on the first try! ‘Zdrastvuite’… 

Additionally, Russian words contain letters and sounds that simply don’t exist in other languages. So, when transcribed in another alphabet, they are represented by multiple letters.

If an English speaker sees the word ‘защищающихся’ (defending themselves) in a text and tries to write down in English, it would look like this: ‘zashtsheeshtshayoushtsheekhsya’. How could anyone possibly pronounce that?

For many learners of Russian, the words ‘шапка’ (‘hat’), ‘шарф’ (‘scarf’), and ‘шкаф’ (‘cabinet’) sound almost identical.

It’s also difficult for foreigners to learn how to pronounce the letter ‘Ы’. And yet, it appears in the pronouns ‘ты’ (‘you’, informal) and ‘вы’ (‘you’, formal), which are used frequently.

Stress

One of the biggest challenges is to put stress in the right place. However, this aspect sometimes confuses even native speakers.

In some languages, stress is fixed, while, in others, there’s a special symbol indicating stress. But, Russian offers no such hints.

“In many cases, Russian orthoepic norms seem illogical: For example, in Russian, it is correct to say ‘дру́жит’ (be friends), however ‘звони́т’ (is calling), even though both verbs belong to the same conjugation. Such differences are related to the history of the Russian language: There are general trends, but individual words may retain their historical stress (in the 19th century, the norms were ‘дружи́т’),” Andrey Gorshkov notes.