Russian phonology

This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect (unless otherwise noted).

The five-vowel analysis, taken up by the Moscow school, rests on the complementary distribution of [ɨ] and [i], with the former occurring after hard (non-palatalized) consonants (e.g. жить [ʐɨtʲ]ⓘ 'to live', шип [ʂɨp]ⓘ 'thorn, spine', цирк [t͡sɨrk]ⓘ 'circus', etc.)

The allophony of the stressed variant of the open /a/ is largely the same, yet no scholar considers [ä] and [æ] to be separate phonemes[citation needed] (which they are in e.g. Slovak and Australian English).

The six-vowel view, held by the Saint-Petersburg (Leningrad) phonology school, points to several phenomena to make its case: The most popular view among linguists (and the one taken up in this article) is that of the Moscow school,[2] though Russian pedagogy has typically taught that there are six vowels (the term phoneme is not used).

Subsequently, sometime between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the allophone of /i/ occurring after a velar consonant changed from [ɨ] to [i] with subsequent palatalization of the velar, turning old Russian хытрыи [ˈxɨtrɨj] into modern хитрый [ˈxʲitrɨj] and old гыбкыи [ˈɡɨpkɨj] into modern гибкий [ˈɡʲipkʲij].

On the other hand, the pronunciations of words such as отель [ʌˈtelʲ]ⓘ ('hotel') retain the hard consonants despite a long presence in the language.

For example, speakers of some rural dialects as well as the "Old Petersburgian" pronunciation may have the latter but not the former merger, distinguishing between лиса́ [lʲɪˈsa] and леса́ [lʲɘˈsa], but not between валы́ and волы́ (both [vʌˈɫɨ]).

The distinction in some loanwords between unstressed /e/ and /i/, or /o/ and /a/ is codified in some pronunciation dictionaries (Avanesov (1985:663), Zarva (1993:15)), for example, фо́рте [ˈfortɛ] and ве́то [ˈvʲeto].

Unstressed vowels (except /o/) are preserved word-finally, for example in second-person plural or formal verb forms with the ending -те, such as де́лаете ("you do") /ˈdʲeɫajitʲe/ (phonetically [ˈdʲeɫə(j)ɪtʲe]).

For the most part, Russian orthography (as opposed to that of the closely related Belarusian) does not reflect vowel reduction.

[citation needed] There are a number of exceptions to the above vowel-reduction rules: Unstressed /u/ is generally pronounced as a lax (or near-close) [ʊ], e.g. мужчи́на [mʊˈɕːinə]ⓘ ('man').

[38] In other forms both pronunciations [sə] and [sʲə] (or [s] and [sʲ] after vowels, spelled -сь) alternate for a speaker with some usual form-dependent preferences: in the outdated dialects, reflexive imperative verbs (such as бо́йся, lit.

[39][40] In adverbial participles ending on -я́сь or -а́сь (with a stressed suffix), books on Russian standard pronunciation prescribe [sʲ] as the only correct variant.

Typically, the soft–hard distinction is allophonic for velar consonants: they become soft before front vowels, as in коро́ткий [kʌˈrotkʲɪj]ⓘ ('short'), unless there is a word boundary, in which case they are hard (e.g. к Ива́ну [k‿ɨˈvanʊ] 'to Ivan').

[84] Despite such proposals, linguists have long agreed that the underlying structure of Russian is closer to that of its acoustic properties, namely that soft consonants are separate phonemes in their own right.

The voicing or devoicing is determined by that of the final obstruent in the sequence:[90] просьба [ˈprozʲbə]ⓘ ('request'), водка [ˈvotkə]ⓘ ('vodka').

In foreign borrowings, this isn't always the case for /f(ʲ)/, as in Адольф Гитлер [ʌˈdolʲf ˈɡʲitlʲɪr]ⓘ ('Adolf Hitler') and граф болеет ('the count is ill').

However, the last consonant of prefixes and parts of compound words generally remains hard in the standard language: отъезд [ʌˈtjest]ⓘ ('departure'), Минюст [ˌmʲiˈnjust]ⓘ ('Min[istry of] Just[ice]'); when the prefix ends in /s/ or /z/ there may be an optional softening: съездить [ˈs(ʲ)jezʲdʲɪtʲ]ⓘ ('to travel').

Paired consonants preceding /e/ are also soft; although there are exceptions from loanwords, alternations across morpheme boundaries are the norm.

This phenomenon in literary language has complicated and evolving rules with many exceptions, depending on what these consonants are, in what morphemic position they meet and to what style of speech the word belongs.

In old Moscow pronunciation, softening was more widespread and regular; nowadays some cases that were once normative have become low colloquial or archaic.

[97] In addition to this, dental fricatives conform to the place of articulation (not just the palatalization) of following postalveolars: с частью [ˈɕːæsʲtʲjʊ]ⓘ) ('with a part').

Some prefixes, the best known being вз-/вс- ([vz-]/[fs-]), produce long word-initial clusters when they attach to a morpheme beginning with consonant(s) (e.g. |fs|+ |pɨʂkə| → вспы́шка [ˈfspɨʂkə] 'flash').

[106] This can create a 4-consonant onset cluster not starting in [vz] or [fs]; for example, the phrase в мгнове́ние ('in an instant') is pronounced [vmɡnɐˈvʲenʲɪje].

[108] Consonant cluster simplification in Russian includes degemination, syncope, dissimilation, and weak vowel insertion.

There are also a few isolated patterns of apparent cluster reduction (as evidenced by the mismatch between pronunciation and orthography) arguably the result of historical simplifications.

The historical transformation of /ɡ/ into /v/ in genitive case endings and the word for 'him' is not reflected in the modern Russian orthography: the pronoun его [jɪˈvo] 'his/him', and the adjectival declension suffixes -ого and -его.

There are a handful of words in which consonants which have long since ceased to be pronounced even in careful pronunciation are still spelled, e.g., the 'l' in солнце [ˈsontsɨ] ('sun').

[114] (Halle (1959) cites заезжать and other instances of intervening prefix and preposition boundaries as exceptions to this tendency.)

[115] /o/ is a diphthong [ʊ̯o] or even a triphthong [ʊ̯ɔʌ̯], with a closer lip rounding at the beginning of the vowel that gets progressively weaker, particularly when occurring word-initially or word-finally under stress.