Vowel sound, consonant sound: a little bit about Russian phonetics

Everyone lives in a world of sounds. He hears the murmur of a stream, the rustling of tires, the howling of the wind, the singing of birds, the barking of dogs, the gurgling of water in a kettle, the grumbling of meat in a frying pan, singing, speech and many other things. A person becomes so used to these irritants that he often goes crazy, being in absolute silence.

The first thing that language learning begins in school is phonetics, that is, the science of speech sounds. Usually this section of linguistics is not liked by students, although in fact it can be very interesting! Studying the vowels and consonants of the Russian language, schoolchildren will learn that 33 letters of the alphabet have 42 sounds: 6 vowels and exactly 6 times more consonants. There are letters to which there correspond two sounds, and there are those that do not indicate any sound.

The same predominance of consonants is observed in most languages of the world. Philologists also know such unique languages as the now dead Ubykh, which in the 90s of the last century was spoken by the last representatives of a small people who lived on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus in the Sochi region. Ubyshsky language is famous for the fact that for 2 vowel sounds (long and short [a]) there were 84 consonants in it! In a related Abkhazian for 3 vowels, there are about 60 consonants. Such languages are called consonant.

In the same languages that are commonly called vocalic (French, Finnish), the number of vowels rarely exceeds the number of consonants. Although there are exceptions. In the Danish language, there are 26 consonants in 20 consonants.

Absolutely in all languages of the planet there is a vowel sound [a]. This is the most popular, however, not necessarily the most frequent vowel sound. For example, in English the sound [e] is most often used.

It is interesting that the vowel sounds of the Russian language are formed "on exhalation". The only exception is the interjection "A-ah," expressing fear, which is pronounced in the inspiration. How does a vowel sound? The air from the lungs enters the respiratory throat and meets on the way the obstruction in the form of vocal cords. They oscillate from the stream of exhaled air and create a tone (voice). Then the air enters the oral cavity.

When we utter vowel sounds, lips, teeth, tongue do not interfere with the airflow, so additional noise is not generated. Thus, a vowel sound consists of one tone (voice) - that's why it's called. The louder you need to pronounce a vowel, the wider you have to open your mouth.

Differences between vowels from each other are related to what form we attach to the oral cavity. If the lips are rounded, the sounds are [y] or [o]. The tongue does not interfere with the exhaled air so much as to create noise, but its position in the oral cavity varies slightly when pronouncing different vowels. The tongue can rise slightly upwards or fall down, and also move back and forth. These small movements lead to the formation of different vowel sounds.

But that's not all. A characteristic feature of the Russian language is the difference in the pronunciation of percussion and unstressed vowel sounds. In a shock position, we really hear [a], [o], [y], [s], [and], [e] - this is the so-called strong position. In an unstressed position (in a weak position), the sounds behave differently.

The vowels [a], [o], [e] after solid consonants designate something similar to [a], but strongly weakened. Pupils traditionally define this sound as [a], but philologists have a separate icon []. After soft consonants, these same sounds tend to be similar to [and] (philologists call this sound "and with the sound of e" - [uh]). Such phenomena are observed in pre-syllable syllables (except for the absolute beginning of the word).

It is this feature of the "great and mighty" that makes it difficult not only for foreigners, but also for native speakers. The spelling of unstressed vowels must be checked or memorized.