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The Russian Alphabet Russian 0010 2007-08-30 Outline Administrative Handwriting notes Alphabet New letters Review Handwriting practice The story of Э ́ рик Administrative New students: handouts Conversation class Return homework and quizzes Quiz results Homework results
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The Russian Alphabet Russian 0010 2007-08-30
Outline • Administrative • Handwriting notes • Alphabet • New letters • Review • Handwriting practice • The story of Э́рик
Administrative • New students: handouts • Conversation class • Return homework and quizzes • Quiz results • Homework results • If you have prior Russian language experience … • Alphabet through Tuesday, September 4
Course web site http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~russ0010/2081/ (Not Courseweb / Blackboard)
Handwriting Notes • л, м, я begin with a hook http://www.brown.edu/Departments/LRC/RU_writing/index.htm
Group 1 Letters that look and sound more or less like their English counterparts
Group 2 Letters that look and sound more or less like their Greek counterparts
Group 3 Letters without obvious English or Greek counterparts
Hard and Soft Consonants, part 1 • Most consonant letters may be pronunced either hard or soft • Soft = pronounce a “y” sound simultaneously with the consonant • та, тя • Hardness or softness is indicated by the letter following the consonant
Hard and Soft Consonants, part 2 • A consonant followed by a soft sign (ь) is soft • мат ‘checkmate’ • мать ‘mother’ • A consonant followed by a soft vowel letter is soft • Hard: э, о, ы, у, а (та) • Soft: е, ё, и, ю, я (тя) • Otherwise a consonant is hard • A few consonants are always hard or always soft, regardless of what follows (more about this next time)
Stress • Almost all Russian words have exactly one stress: ма́́ма • Most Russian words are pronounced the way they are spelled, except that some unstressed vowels change their pronunciation
Vowel “reduction”, part 1 • Textbook, pp. 12–13 • Rule 1:о > а in syllable immediately before stress or at very beginning of word • профе́ссор ‘professor’ • Оклахо́ма ‘Oklahoma’ • Rule 2: о/а > ə (“uh”) in other unstressed syllables
Vowel “reduction”, part 2 • Rule 3, part 1: unstressed е/я > i not at end of word • Петербу́рг ‘Saint Petersburg’ • Rule 3, part 2: unstressed я > yə (“yuh”) at end of word • Япо́ния ‘Japan’
да́ yes
не́т no
па́па papa
ма́ма mama