Just as there is a template {{IPAEng|}} there could be an {{IPAru|}} that links to here. This would be a nice place to set up procedures for transcribing Russian in a consistant manner across Wikipedia. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 15:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, a place to set up procedures for transcribing Russian should not be located in mainspace. Cf. Romanization of Russian and Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? We're talking about IPA. Maybe Help:IPA might be a better place. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know we are talking about IPA :) I used romanization as an example of the encyclopedic article being separate from Wikipedia's guidelines. Procedures (of romanization, trascription, etc.) should not be set up in mainspace (a suggestion which I, perhaps mistakenly, derived from your original comment). Help space is, of course, another possibility. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no difference in pronunciation of stressed vowels in "жест" and "цель", "трава" and "палка", "пуля" and "чуть". At least any differences are absolutely incomprehensible by a native speaker (not a linguistics professional). As such, I believe there shouldn't be any difference in pronunciation charts for these sounds in general audience encyclopedia. Conversely, there are quite pronounced differences between unstressed vowels in "тяжелый" and "этап"; "дышать", "жена" and "сердце". Bottom line: the table should be fixed (not being familiar with IPA, I can't do this myself). --Dp074 (talk) 01:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Allophony usually means that speakers don't notice. Besides, vowel allophony is one of its more noticeable aspects of Russian (that and palatalization). In addition, a number of the allophones for the vowels are those that English speakers make contrasts in (the difference between [ɛ] and [e], [æ] and [ɑ]). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:47, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If speakers don't notice, the reader shouldn't either. Wikipedia is not a linguistic source, but rather targets a broad audience. I am not sure I understand your arguments about English, as this is about Russian pronunciation. To make it look like these sounds are different in Russian is definitely wrong. Can anybody offer a reasonable solution? --Dp074 (talk) 01:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bit draconian. The transcriptions are to give English speakers (Wikipedia's target audience) a phonetic rendering of Russian pronunciation without being unnecessarily technical. If we were to transcribe phonemes only, then readers would be misled on Russian pronunciation because, for example, жена is /ʐeˈna/ phonemically but ʐɨ̞ˈna] or [ʐɨˈna]. Do you have any suggestions for reasonable solutions? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although vowel allophony is an important aspect of Russian pronunciation, which phone a phoneme will be realized as is predictable from its environment. The table should probably make clear the distinction between the relatively small number of vowel phonemes that should be used in a phonemic transcription of Russian (e.g., жест /ʒɛst/, цель /t͡sɛlʲ/, пять /pʲatʲ/, чуть /t͡ʃʲutʲ/) and the much larger number of vowel phones to be used in a phonetic transcription (e.g., жест [ʐɛst], цель [t͡selʲ], пять [pʲætʲ], чуть [t͡ɕʉtʲ]). Also, /o/ is often realized as a clearly audible [oə], which is not indicated in the current table. Furthermore, if you're going to provide such a narrow phonetic transcription for the vowels, you might also want to note that phonemically nonpalatalized (or "plain") consonants are often affirmatively velarized/pharyngealized, so that нос and нёс are phonemically /nos/ and /nʲos/, but phonetically [n̴oəs̴] and [nʲoəs̴] (or [nˠoəsˠ] and [nʲoəsˠ]), respectively. And what about the labial offglide in, e.g., вы [v̴ʷɨ]? My point is that not everyone always wants to show the fine details of Russian phonetics; sometimes, a phonemic transcription is enough, and the table as it currently stands gives the impression that Russian has a lot more phonemes than it actually does. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hizkuntzalari (talk • contribs) 11:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If Russian is transcribed phonemically, then the link should go to Russian phonology (which is where one ought to get information about Russian phonology anyway). It's true that there can be even greater specificity in the phonetic transcription, but there are practical considerations. I happen to think that it's a good balance as it is fairly specific but doesn't require any diacritics but for the superscript j (which is unavoidable). I have a suspicion that you were being sarcastic in your suggestions, though if you have some serious ones I've got open ears. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One important thing is not mentioned here, that is, how to mark stress in IPA representation of Russian words?--92.39.161.219 (talk) 21:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very true. I've added it with an example. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I found many errors in example tables. Some of them mentioned above, in addition four top lines of unstressed vowel examples are incorrect (sounds in different words given are definitely not the same (i.e. this is the situation opposite to the aforementioned problems). Has this article undergone any professional review? What are credentials of the original contributors? --Dp074 (talk) 02:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you be more explicit about what the errors are? I'm pretty much the major original contributor. Although I don't speak Russian, I've done a lot of research in editing Russian phonology and almost everything here is sourced or has its basing in sources. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I gave quite specific examples above. I do not know what sources you have used, but you definitely should have double-checked them with Russian experts on the subject. I am not a trained linguist or philologist myself, but the problems with the page are obvious and amount to the inapplicability of this information. I can email you the most detailed information on the errors on this page - however I can fix not all of them myself --Dp074 (talk) 03:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ɣ

Remove that "Господь" there: г can only "glottalise" in such a way when starting a stressed syllable! You'd better show the word "бухгалтер" there: /bu'ɣalt^jer/. JLincoln (talk) 13:49, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Ƶ§œš:) JLincoln (talk) 15:40, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Russian phonology says [u] becomes [ʊ] when unstressed. Shouldn't this be included?AlexanderKaras (talk) 07:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked about this issue on a linguistic forum and they told me that since the quality of the unstressed vowel is pretty much different from the stressed one it would be better to use a distinct character for it, i.e. [ʊ] for unstressed <у>. Hellerick (talk) 15:37, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's true that /u/ becomes [ʊ] when unstressed. I just thought it might not be a necessary detail. But if you guys think otherwise, it's not too difficult to go through articles that use {{IPA-ru}} and adjust it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but you're all wrong. Save you've been talking about phonetics not phonology. Phonologically, Russian has only one /у/. Only one.
Phonetically? Oh, we could find thousands of "sounds" in Russian pronunciation — especially not being restricted to the Moscow region:)

Nice to neet you, Josh, linguist — JLincoln (talk) 14:01, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how exactly we're wrong. This is indeed a common allophone of unstressed /u/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:42, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

O'k, I see, the article's about IPA — phonetical alphabet; but the author of this section started with "Russian phonology says...":) Here's the incompatibility within our discussion:D JLincoln (talk) 10:57, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Our "X phonology" articles are pretty much all about both phonology and phonetics. Some of them are even only about phonetics (e.g. Danish phonology), at least to a large extent. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:17, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

English example, right... Maybe Japanese, but sure as hell not English! Пять >> pyat, tan >> тэн - no similarity anywhere. UNLESS this is a wisecrack from the Russian anime and internet community, which refers to women/girls/females as -тян (japanese: -chan, -tan). Aadieu (talk) 19:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

пять is pronounced [pʲætʲ] and English tan is pronounced [tʰæn]. I suppose we could change the English approximation to pat, since that doesn't feature nasalization of the vowel. Convinced? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 22:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't hear in пять (pronounced as пьать) tan, bad or sad sounds. It seems to me much more similar are sounds in car, but, dove. Russian readers in Russian Wikipedia express same doubts. But Russian linguists state that tan-sound is more exact. Common people and linguists are two completely different kind of people. From Russia with loveNice big guy (talk) 15:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's an allophone, native speakers of Russian aren't as likely to perceive the distinction. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Knowing that this sound exists in the word "пять" is a good trick for Russians learn how to pronounce the sound /æ/ correctly. Hellerick (talk) 15:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hellerick, I don't think it's for Russian learners here at all. And Ƶ§œš was absolutely right. (I hope you don't forget it's all approximation, for it's hard to find identical sounds in different languages.) JLincoln (talk) 14:12, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pat can not be approximation for 'пять, because this word doesnt contain "æ" sound. I'm pretty sure, because i'm native russian speaker. Пять- [pʲatʲ] p'at' -pyat' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eldavidok (talk • contribs) 13:45:26

пять

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папа

---

Problems playing these files? See media help.

@Eldavidok: To the right is the recording of пять from Wiktionary compared with папа. To me, it's clear the word have different vowels, [æ a]. Is this how you would say the words, and can you hear the difference? — Eru·tuon 19:43, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

bad comparison "папа" and "пять", because of "ь" sound , shortly "пять"="пьать", in russian p+y = p', therefore it sounds as p'a't'

as i said Пять- [pʲatʲ] p'at' -pyat' and no "æ" sound there. Im very sure of that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eldavidok (talk • contribs) 16:43, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a bad comparison. That's the point. When in the context of soft vowels, /a/ is fronted to [æ]. Being a native speaker means you're less likely to hear this. If it helps, what is often transcribed in English as /æ/ isn't exactly the same as this sound in Russian. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:46, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should we be marking the palatalization of earlier consonants in clusters, or not? (i.e., should сть be [stʲ] or [sʲtʲ]) From what I can tell, this is an allophonic process, not a phonemic one, but it's comparable to final-devoicing. Some articles mark it; some do not. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a complex set of rules of when it's palatalized and when it's not. Because it's so complex, we should mark it whenever it occurs. What are some pages that don't? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious: what are these rules? Russian phonology doesn't seem to include them. Of the articles I've edited in the last day or so, these feature clusters with palatalization: Glasnost (both palatalized), Ptichka (spacecraft) (I wasn't aware of this process at the time), and Lyudmila Alexeyeva (I didn't palatalize the whole cluster, assuming the syllable break blocked it). Oooh, just I found the section of Russian phonology regarding this. If transcriptions should include this, perhaps we can boil that section down to include as a note on this page? I don't think I understand well enough, or I'd try it. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 01:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, Russian phonology doesn't break down the rules as they are laid out in Sound Pattern of Russian. I think I can whip something up to put here. Your transcription is accurate, though AFAIK syllabification incorporates a maximized onset in Russian. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, it's late. I've started a table that incorporates these rules, though there are a few ambiguous cells:

• ^льн больница
• ^ньг деньги
• ^н before retroflexes, [ʂ ʐ], both [n] and [nʲ] appear (e.g. деньжонки 'money [dimunitive]' and Анжелика ('Angelica'))
• ^л(ь)к сколько vs. палка; сколькие vs палки (assuming these are pronounced as they are spelled)

This is more-or-less the information I've been operating under. I suppose we can assume that, for the question marked cells, palatalization is non-distinctive and not present but that's a questionable assumption given the example words I've provided. The grayed out box means that that sequence never occurs — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 08:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Navigating through Halle's dense and obscure wording may be difficult to the Google books previewer, so here's the relevant phonological rules (which start on page 63 for anyone interested) boiled down:

Palatalization of [r(ʲ) t(ʲ) d(ʲ) s(ʲ) z(ʲ) p(ʲ) b(ʲ) f(ʲ) v(ʲ) n(ʲ) m(ʲ)] is distinctive only before vowels other than |e| and at the end of lexical morphemes and non-final suffixes.

Before [tɕ ɕɕ], only soft [mʲ pʲ bʲ fʲ vʲ] appear. Before [ʂ ʐ] only hard coronal consonants (non-liquids) appear.

Before hard [t d n s z l r], only hard [r p b f v m t d s z n] appear

Before soft [fʲ vʲ pʲ bʲ mʲ tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ nʲ lʲ], only soft [tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ nʲ] appear

Before soft (non-liquid) consonants, only hard [r p b f v m k g x] appear. Exceptions:

• [xʲ] appears before [kʲ gʲ]
• soft [pʲ bʲ fʲ vʲ mʲ] may appear before [pʲ bʲ fʲ vʲ mʲ]
• before [lʲ tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ nʲ tɕ], only [p b f v m k g x] appear

I may be missing some deductive reasoning somewhere. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 09:03, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't claim that [zʲ] before [vʲ] does not appear in any Russian word, maybe it does somewhere, but in all the examples I can remember it's pronounced [zvʲ]. Just like the name of the Russian city Tver is pronouced [tvʲerʲ]. If any book states otherwise, then the book is wrong. Hellerick (talk) 07:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know which sources was used, but in standart russian pronunciation before zʲ (sʲ), v (fʲ) must be hard. For examples: зверь, звезда, сфинкс, связь, свекла and many-many others. Normal trancsription of the word зверь is given even in russian wiktionary. Tat1642 (talk) 08:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The source used is Sound Pattern of Russian (linked above), which is a quite old source. Perhaps the language has changed since then, but I have yet to find a more recent source that goes into such great detail about the phonetic nuances of consonant clusters in Russian. Most clusters are clearly nondistinctive in regards to palatalization, which may (along with the orthography) lead native speakers to perceive them as hard even if they're actually phonetically soft. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:41, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, first consonant in palatalised св and зв may be both soft and hard in Russian, but the latter pronunciation is more common nowadays. E.g., in Розенталь Д. Э., Джанджакова Е. В., Кабанова Н. П. Справочник по правописанию, произношению, литературному редактированию it's said that “в сочетаниях зв и св могут смягчаться з и с: зверь, звенеть [з’в’] и [зв’]; свет, свеча, свидетель, святой [с’в] и [св’], а также в слове змея [з’м’] и [зм’]” (italised by me), thus they may be soft, but normally are hard. — Glebchik (talk) 20:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My Russian isn't up to snuff. Is your quote saying that the hard pronunciation is more common or is it saying that there's free variation between the two forms? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In English it reads as “в) In combinations зм and св, з and с may be softened: зверь, звенеть [з’в’] and [зв’]; свет, свеча, свидетель, святой [с’в] and [св’], as well as in the word змея [з’м’] and [зм’]”. The same is said about тв and дв. To the contrary, it's said said that “н must be softened (обязательно смягчается) before soft з and s”, and “n before soft т and д are softened (смягчается)”. (§236. Произношение некоторых согласных) Thus in our case c and з just may be softened. — Glebchik (talk) 12:34, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find this rule on the website of Russian phonetics, but in pronunciation samples the hard з and с are used, e. g., звездный [зв'`ознъj], звездчатка - [зв'иш'ч'`атка], сверстник [св'`ерс'н'ьк]. — Glebchik (talk) 12:51, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I forgot to add a note in the comment. I added links to the IPA sound articles where applicable. Other "IPA for" languages are doing the same, and I think it's very useful and for some letters more precise than the English approximation examples. Thanks. 123.225.195.98 (talk) 09:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good job. Two things:

• [ɛ] is used for both an open mid and mid vowel. The link is then too specific. If no one has a problem with this (it's not like English speakers notice the difference) then keeping the link should be fine.
• Russian [l] is technically a velarized (or dark) [ɫ], though we're using [l] because it's non-contrastive and easier to type. So I'm thinking that the link should go to velarized alveolar lateral approximant. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I feel I am not competent enough, so you may want to wait for other comments or just go ahead with what you think is best. From my perspective, we should use the correct sound ([ɫ]) and link it as you suggest. As for [ɛ], it sounds to me like we should have two separate rows for two separate sounds.

Also, I was thinking of creating specific IPA templates (if they are not there) for each sound, so that for example {{IPA-ɫ}} expands to something like

[[Velarized alveolar lateral approximant|{{IPA|ɫ}}]]

It could then be reused by all these "WP:IPA for X" pages more easily. What do you think? 123.222.215.125 (talk) 23:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I have created a parametric Template:IPAlink, which is more maintainable. I have fixed up this article accordingly, please review. Thanks. 123.218.168.102 (talk) 12:16, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even though the Russian letter <Ж> sounds like a Voiced retroflex fricative, in many dialects in major cities (especially in Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.) it is a Voiced postalveolar fricative. Here are the features of a Voiced postalveolar fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, vvhich means it is produced by constricting air flovv through a narrovv channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is postalveolar vvhich means it is articulated vvith the tip of the tongue betvveen the alveolar ridge and the palate, but closer to the alveolar ridge than for alveolo-palatal consonants.
• Its phonation type is voiced, vvhich means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, vvhich means air is allovved to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, vvhich means it is produced by allovving the airstream to flovv over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, vvhich means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

This includes many features in the letter Ж. So, vvhy is the Russian letter Ж classified ONLY in the phonology category of a Voiced retroflex fricative and not also in the category of a Voiced postalveolar fricative? There is a vvebsite that allovvs native speakers from their native countries to pronounce words (letters in this case) in fluent Russian, and here is "Zhe" (transliterised as either <žɛ>/<ʒɛ>, or in the case of a Voiced retroflex fricative: <ʐɛ>):

| Forvo Ж

Here is another vvebsite, shovving all the Russian letters pronounce by Russian natives: http://listen2russian.com/lesson01/a/

Please, If it is possible to consider BOTH VVIDELY KNOVVN DIALECTS OF RUSSIAN (Both vvhich are considered official to the USSR [Soviet Union] novv knovvn as the Russian Federation.) Thank you. :D

序名三「Jyonasan」 ^Talk_Stalk 01:07, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to note 8, When /ɡ/ loses its voicing, it is also lenited.

In the standard dialect, this is only true for a handful of words as far as I know. Among them are the word <Бог> "god," pronounced [box] and the adjectives <лёгкий> "light" and <мягкий> "soft" which are pronounced [ˈlʲɵxʲkʲɪj] and [ˈmʲæxʲkʲɪj] respectively. Otherwise, it's just pronounced [k] as one would expect. AlexanderKaras (talk) 05:15, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not lenition but dissimilation before plosives, it happens only in words with -мягк-/-мягч- and -легк-/-легч-, and rarely in ногти, когти. The note 8 is not properly correct. Бог, Господь with [ɣ/x] is an ecclesiastic pronunciation, there is also no lenition, but rather a tradition. Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 08:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like it's both lenition and dissimilation. So is [ɣ] a notable enough pronunciation that we should feature it here or is it too precise? Does [ɣʲ] ever occur?— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:19, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the impression that [ɣ]/[ɣʲ] was a dialectal pronunciation of standard [ɡ]/[ɡʲ]. But that isn't the point. I'm talking about whether [ɡ] is always lenited to [x] when devoiced, or if this is a feature specific to a very few words. All the material I've read about Russian suggests the latter.

N.B. for dialects that realize /ɡ/ as [ɣ], this probably is the case. AlexanderKaras (talk) 14:05, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, you have sources? Do you think you could share them? (either here or at Russian phonology) — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:08, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, [ɣ]/[x] instead of [g]/[k] is the last South-Russian dialectical feature, which still remains and is widely used, and it is well persistent to the normalization. If you live some time in the South Russia, you will surely listen this even from well-educated people, though they will pronounce other sounds quite properly according to the standard. Other South Russian pronunciation features such as yakanie (ему:[jʌ'mu]), not [ji'mu]), wekanie (бровь: [-w], not [-fʲ]), hwekanie (фартук: [xw-], not [f-]) etc. have nearly disappeared; only older (>60 yo.) less-educated people from the countryside speak in such a manner.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 05:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Though I insist on dissimilation. /g/ in fact dissimilates to the next plosive becoming a fricative. During lenition (Latin vita > Spanish vida) a consonant assimilates becoming closer in articulation to the nearest sounds.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 05:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my pronunciation шаг and шах sound the same, but I am also a speaker of the Southern Russian dialect. -iopq (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that only-[g]-dialects and only-[ɣ]-dialects are not all Russian language. Some mid-southern accents have them allophonic, using ɣ in final positions (where it devoices to [x]), but preferring [g] before vowels. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't the sounds for [щ'] and [ж'ж'] be written as [ɕː] and [ʑː] instead of [ɕɕ] and [ʑʑ]? Hellerick (talk) 15:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What's the difference? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:03, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No difference, but I thought that's how long consonants are supposed to be designated in the IPA. Hellerick (talk) 05:23, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK, they're normally equally correct. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:41, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Transcription [щ'] and [ж'ж'] are influenced by spelling. In the majority of serious works on the Russian phonology [ш̅’], [ж̅’] are used. [ɕɕ] and [ʑʑ] look like two identical sounds are put together. [ɕː] and [ʑː] are preferable (ignoring the fact that [ʃː] and [ʒː] are more correct, Polish ś and Russian щ have not the same articulation, though…)--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 05:51, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought: would it be better to transcribe the Russian "hard" (non-palatalized) /l/ as [ɫ]? That does better represent how it's pronounced, but I think it may be overkill. What do you think? AlexanderKaras (talk) 03:20, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it might be overkill. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:54, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO unqualified [l]s should not be used for Russian at all. East Slavic speakers always distinguish hard лъ (Dark l) and palatalized ль [lʲ]. What can you propose for the former but [ɫ] (or its synonyms like [lˠ])? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the decision made years ago: I think transcribing the darkness of the Russian unpalatalized l would be helpful. The note saying that the pharyngelization is not distinctive is puzzling. That argument would make sense if this page were describing a phonemic transcription system, but because the system is phonetic, distinctiveness is not relevant to transcriptional choices. (If we went by distinctiveness, we would not transcribe the different realizations of any of the vowel phonemes, for example. /e/ between soft consonants and elsewhere would both be transcribed as [e], unstressed /i/ would be transcribed [i] rather than [ɪ], and so on. None of these differences are phonemic, after all)

I think it would be useful to transcribe the pharyngealization because some varieties of English have both clear and dark l. Without it, folks might think (incorrectly) that Russian hard /l/ is pronounced similarly to Received Pronunciation clear l (as in leaf), rather than closer to the coda pronunciation of /l/ or the North American pronunciation. The reason for transcribing the different pronunciations of the Russian vowels is because they are distinguished in English. So why not transcribe the distinct pronunciation of Russian hard /l/? — Eru·tuon 18:33, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. [l] is actually a better choice for the palatalized l than the velarized/pharyngealized one, and that's because Russian /lʲ/ sometimes has a rather neutral (schwa-like) coloring, whereas the hard /l/ is always dark. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:06, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's a compelling case. From what I understand, all hard-consonants are equally velarized/pharyngealized in Russian, except for /l/, which is even more velarized/pharyngealized. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 13:57, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: When I hear the Russian dark 'l' I immediately think of Scottish English (which is sometimes said to have a pharyngealized /l/), so you're probably right. It's quite probable that the Russian dark 'l' is generally more dark than the dark 'l's of most English speakers.

From my experience, /lʲ/ loses (some of) its palatalization especially in preconsonantal positions and perhaps also word-finally before a pause or a word-initial consonant. Before vowels, it has a much brighter quality and a palatal glide follows it pretty much all the time, especially in stressed contexts. The fact that /l/ is more strongly velarized/pharyngealized than other hard consonants is probably an attempt to maximize the /l–lʲ/ contrast.

If we're going to start transcribing [l] as [ɫ] (as Russian Wiktionary does) then I think [lʲ] should be transcribed as it is in order not to introduce confusion (many users are used to the transcription we use). Also, as I said, the palatalization of [lʲ] is variable, not completely absent, so [l] doesn't seem like a terribly right fit for the soft 'l' either (but obviously it's more phonetically correct than when it's used for the hard 'l').

PS: What about other Slavic, Baltic and Romance languages? Perhaps a similar change from [l] to [ɫ] is justified in some of those cases too? Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's obvious, that fluent «/lʲ/ loses (some of) its palatalization especially in preconsonantal positions», if the following consonant is hard: пыльца́ cf. пы́ли. Tacit Murky (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Padgett (2001), cited in the Russian phonology page, discusses the dynamic between palatalization, velarization, and adjacent vowels in Russian. The phonetics of the hard/soft contrast is a lot more complicated than I think we want to get into. Hard l is ok to make an exception to this (for the reasons stated above), but I would hate to complicate our notation with hard/soft consonant allophony by extending the nuance to how we transcribe consonants' hardness/softness any further. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:29, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: Agreed, but that source could be used to improve Russian phonology (which is the place for such information). Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There'd be less of a case for transcribing the secondary articulation of any hard consonants besides /l/, because English doesn't make a notable distinction in secondary articulation for any other consonant that I can recall. — Eru·tuon 19:24, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: I've changed the symbol for the hard 'l' to [ɫ]. However, we need to run a bot to change the IPA in the article space (unless there's a masochist who wants to go through more than 1500 pages himself?! :P) I'm also requesting that the bot replace [ɑ] with [a] per one of the discussions at the bottom. EDIT: I did it the latter myself. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:50, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The same should be done on Russian phonology (which has an enormous amount of instances of the IPA and similar templates) and probably also on English Wiktionary. I'll look into the later case. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:00, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the links to find [l] (obviously, there are false positives with [lʲ]):

• hastemplate:"IPA-ru" insource:/\{\{IPA-ru[^\}]*l/
• hastemplate:"lang-rus" insource:/\{\{lang-rus[^\}]*l/ Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:57, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for implementing this plan, but remember that the IPA guide should be usable to readers. In other words, the guide is the last place we should remove the l without velar marking or the [ɑ]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:57, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: [ɑ] has already been dealt with, but you might be right about [l]. I think we can revert the change from [ɫ] to [l] for now. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:04, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: Do you think you could create such a script? Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:24, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A bot script? No. I've only done Lua and a little JavaScript. It would be possible to create a module function that would then be invoked in {{IPA-ru}} and {{lang-rus}} to categorize all transcriptions that have plain [l], so that they could be more easily edited through with AWB. But finding a bot owner who can help might be simpler. — Eru·tuon 03:25, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: Sorry for not responding earlier, I'm trying to do too much at once and I keep forgetting things. Which bot owner would you recommend (if you know any)? Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:10, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: Unfortunately, I don't know any bot owners on Wikipedia. I would have someone to ask on Wiktionary. — Eru·tuon 22:26, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: Fair enough, I'll do my own research. Thanks! Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:28, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While some speakers pronounce words with <щ> as [ɕɕ] and some as [ɕtɕ], none contrast the two pronunciations, even in words where this sound is spelled with other letters. — It's generally but not always true. In some rare cases the prefix "с-" is still perceived as a separate morpheme and is pronounced as a separate sound, which is affected by the next sound, but does not merge with it. Thus, while a person generally pronounces Щ as [ɕɕ], he still would pronounce "считывать" with [ɕtɕ]. Curiously, the word "считать" may have two pronunciations depending on its meaning: "считать на пальцах" — with [ɕɕ] (because "счит" is treated as an indivisibile stem), and "считать с дискеты" — with [ɕtɕ] (because "с-" is a perfectivizing suffix speakers still aware of). Hellerick (talk) 11:35, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So what's a good reword? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 13:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno... Maybe something like this: "Generally the pronunciation of <сч> and <щ> is the same, either [ɕɕ] or [ɕtɕ], and does not depend on orthography. However the sounds [ɕɕ] and [ɕtɕ] may contrast in some morphological conditions." Hellerick (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How about, "While some speakers pronounce words with <щ> as [ɕɕ] and some as [ɕtɕ], none contrast the two pronunciations. This generally includes words spelled with other letters, though speakers with the [ɕɕ] pronunciation may still pronounce words like считывать with [ɕtɕ] because of with a morpheme boundary between с and ч." — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, sounds good. Strictly speaking though, the combination <сч> always has a morpheme boundary between the letters, it's just sometimes this boundary is "dead" and does not affect pronunciation anymore, and sometimes it's still "alive". Hellerick (talk) 11:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe in dead morpheme boundaries. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 11:46, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hellerick is right, except that "it does not depend on orthography". A speaker uniformly pronouncing ⟨щ⟩ with only [ɕ]s (without [t]), may nevertheless distinguish between [ɕɕ] or [ɕtɕ] in ⟨сч⟩ on the grounds explained above. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are they really not lowered from their stressed pronunciations, namely [ɨ] and [ʉ]? Maybe, near-close vowels [ɪ̈] and [ʊ̈] respectively are more appropriate, just like for [ɪ] and [ʊ]? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They are, but it's not necessary IMHO to transcribe every vowel with absolute phonetic precision. We basically stop when being phonetically precise would require diacritics. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I with my Russian students can create audio files for each line of text in this table, e.g.

• audio file 1 with text "бок; небо"
• audio file 2 with text "дом; деда"
• etc.

So I have two questions:

1. Does it help readers of this article to understand pronounciation?
2. Is it possible to add audio files at the end of each text line in the table? -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 17:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm definitely for number 1.--2.245.187.254 (talk) 03:30, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what the anon means, but it'd be a very good idea. You're welcome to do that if you're still interested. Peter238 (talk) 00:30, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Note after rv-ing me:) Biggest mistake I've noticed before editing was «шея» (along with «пень») is used as an example for «e» phoneme. It's а vocal equivalent of «шэя»: Ш is always-hard consonant, so it's hardening a vowel. I proposed to replace it with «се́я», which is a better example of non-yotted stressed «e» — ['seja]/['sejæ]. So, why this is wrong? Tacit Murky (talk) 23:26, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That I haven't reverted. Remember to compare the revisions. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All right, fair. But how come «pay» is better than «yes» ? The vowel is nowhere near Russian equivalent — «пей», but more like [пэй]. Moreover, below «choose» is used as an example for initial (therefore yotted) Ю, that is like «jʉ»=[you]. My proposal «лю́ди» shows only (non-yotted) ʉ, as required. Tacit Murky (talk) 00:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not, and it is an exaggeration to say that it is "nowhere near" Russian [e]. English /ɛ/ is most commonly an open-mid-to-mid front unrounded vowel, with some dialects realizing it as close-mid. The starting vowel of English /eɪ/ is also variable, most commonly realized as open-mid-to-mid front unrounded, but some dialects pronounce it even more open ([æ]), or monophthongize this diphthong altogether ([eː]). So Russian [e] and [ɛ] should have only one English example word.

Changed to «лю́ди». Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We also need a better example word for the unstressed [ʉ] (that is, with no <ю> in spelling). Any ideas? Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yes , both UK and US English recommend [jɛs] as correct IPA transcript. So, I'd prefer it for ɛ, otherwise it wouldn't be useful for readers to distinguish ɛ and e, which is important for correct Russian pronounce. Otherwise, how would you demonstrate the difference between «сэр» and «сер»? Tacit Murky (talk) 01:26, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

«Ура́!», «усы́». To me (as native): not much difference between «у» in «ус» and «усы». Tacit Murky (talk) 01:15, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Please do not reply inside my message). The Wiktionary transcription is not [jɛs], but /jɛs/, which is a very important difference. You're confusing phonemic and phonetic transcription (and there are levels of depth of the latter) - see phonetic transcription. The important distinction is not between [ɛ] and [e], but between /s/ and /sʲ/, as only the latter is phonemic. Besides, we do transcribe both «сэр» and «сер» with the same vowel: [sɛr], [sʲɛr], as the close-mid allophone [e] appears only before soft consonants, and the mid allophone [ɛ̝] we transcribe the same as the open-mid allophone [ɛ] for simplicity.

But that's not unstressed [ʉ] but [ʊ] - the former appears only between two soft consonants. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:36, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree, but [e] must appear not before, but after soft consonants. Moreover, it's easier to explain, that soft vowel is affecting the softable consonant before itself (retrograde morphoponology), not that soft consonant is changing next vowel (progradely). (However, the later seems more scientific for linguists.)

If you want [ʉ] to appear between two soft consonants, that's not normally possible without [Ю]. «Люде́й» = [ль-у-дь-е-й]. Except if using always-soft consonants й/ч/щ: «чуде́са». But is there a difference for [у] with «чу́до» ? Tacit Murky (talk) 02:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to Jones & Ward it appears only before and between soft consonants.

Maybe that's an acceptable analysis for some scholars, I don't know. That's not how it is explained on Russian phonology.

There is, we wouldn't be using different symbols otherwise. <чудеса́> will do, thanks.

I suggest that you read Russian phonology, Jones & Ward (1969) - The Phonology of Russian and Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015) - Russian (the last one appeared in Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45 (2)). Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:11, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reading suggestions, I have a lot of it in Russian originals. And I noticed a lot of English-speaking scholars use outdated information about pronounces and dialects. Let's switch to consonants table here, shell we? Unlike 1960-s, Ж (as Ш and Ц) is considered to be always-hard now (i.e. 20xx urban Russian), and so recommends Russian literary norm (of Moscow school). So [ʑː] should be considered as outdated and rarely occurring. Even «дрожжи» is now ['droʐːɨ] — «дро́жжы».

Щ as [ɕtɕ] is obsolete, too (as noted in recent reference to Yanushevskaya & Bunčić). However, apart from [ɕː] or [ɕɕ], there is also non-elongated [ɕ], if Щ is sided by another consonant: «Мощный», «кровельщик». Not sure, but all other cases seem to extend [ɕ] to [ɕː]. Tacit Murky (talk) 02:45, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Last suggestions for now: Note 7 is missing Ё, along with example cell for [j]. Then, yotting is default for Е-Я-Ё-Ю, except for most common case (vowel after consonant); other 4 cases are: initial letter, after vowel (including same one), after dash and after a sign letter (Ь or Ъ). (The term «Yer» in not used in Russian linguistics anymore.) Finally, И (non-yotted by default, in contrast to other soft vowels) may also became yotted, but only after Ь or Ъ: «судьи» = ['sudʲjɪ], «ручьи»; but no Slavic examples for «ъи» combination. Tacit Murky (talk) 04:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Next time, don't hurry me after 20-something hours of no response, right?)

I find it extremely dubious that any scholar would consider the sounds [ɛ] and [e] to be phonemic (/ɛ, e/) in Russian. The only Slavic languages that have these as separate phonemes are Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian and Slovene, and maybe some regional dialects (Kajkavian?). So you probably misunderstood someone, or maybe read (past tense) someone who is a fan of a very unusual analysis, an analysis which wouldn't be considered "correct" by many.

Yep, Yanushevskaya & Buncic (2015:224) confirm that [ʑː] is "somewhat obsolete", so we can replace it with [ʐː]. Will do it in a second.

Yanushevskaya & Buncic (2015:223) mention short [ɕ], which is an allophone of /s/ in e.g. <с чаеm>, so we can add it.

However, I'm not sure about [ɕ] occuring in e.g. «мощный», «кровельщик» - we'd need a source for that. Russian Wiktionary transcribes the former as long, whereas on Forvo, «мощный» has a short [ɕ], whereas «кровельщик» clearly has a long [ɕː]. So, unfortunately, native speaker's opinion won't suffice in this case, as it may be a mere free variation.

The same goes for yotting И, which we also need a source for. On Forvo, «судьи» is clearly pronounced [ˈsudʲɪ], not [ˈsudʲjɪ], but «ручьи» is pronounced [rʊˈt͡ɕji], maybe because it is stressed. So, as above, your words won't suffice, unfortunately.

I can add Ё, but I'm not sure if we need the rest. It's not Russian alphabet, we don't need detailed explanation on the relationship between Russian sounds and the spelling.

Oh, and the relevant thing is not whether the term "yer" is used in Russian writings, but whether it is used in English writings. This is English WP. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:13, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The note that you added ё to says "When these vowels are unstressed, the /j/ may be deleted." If we really want to add it there, that might need to be reworded. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:58, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Better? I hope that's what you meant. If I only had Jones & Ward (1969) with me now... :P Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with «dubious that any scholar would consider the sounds [ɛ] and [e] to be phonemic». I did confuse [*] with /*/, and Moscow school is using „morphoneme“ category to describe their statement «only 5 vowels in Russian». Denoting allophones would be redundant, but without it marking «сер» as [sʲɛr] (in Cyrillic phonetic — [с'эр]) may be misleading for non-linguists like me. Traditional Russian lessons in schools (including «Russian as foreign») insist that vowels are in charge of consonants (by softing — palatalization), therefore (presumably) there must be a difference between phonemes for (non-yotted) Е and Э letters. However, I'm still confused about subtle details.

Is there a point to «replace it with [ʐː]», instead of removing from the table? What is the point of keeping examples of long consonants, especially since they are marked by double letters («жж» in this case)? [nː] is much more common, but it's not in the table.

Example of «short [ɕ], which is an allophone of /s/ in e.g. <с чаеm>» is correct, but rare and obscure. Unlike „normal“ consonant morphing («счастье» ⇒ «щчастье» with plain Щ ⇒ «щастье» with long Щ), cross-word morphing is restricted to only 2 versions here: pure phonetic «с чаем» ([s't͡ɕa(j)em] or [s't͡ɕaæm]) and morphed «щ чаем» (with [ɕt͡ɕ+]), but no «щаем» (with [ɕː+]).

I don't see phonetic transcription for «кровельщик» here. But here are more words (and cases) present in Forvo: крановщик, точильщик, хищник, сообщник (CCC cluster), умерщвление (CCCC !), поощрение (somewhat long here). However — «вещмешок» maybe pronounces with [ɕː], because it's a colloquial slang for «вещевой мешок» (haversack, knapsack, kit-bag); and boundary between 2 stems allow to violate some morphophonology (just like «ИнЯз» is not [inʲ'as], but [in'jas] without Ъ).

«The same goes for yotting И» — much easier for this case. Use this page (this site helps to find words for crossword puzzles), enter letter mask *ьи* and you'll see a lot of examples with many of them present in Forvo: Ильин («Иван Ильин» is very clear), Ильич (massive of them), оладьи, соловьи, Ильичёвск (toponim, but Slavic one). «On Forvo, «судьи» is clearly pronounced [ˈsudʲɪ]» — right, and that is an obvious mispronounce.

As a matter of fact, it 'is' possible to leave Ё unstressed (without converting it to Е), but only in an extreme case: «ёфик'ация», rare new word, meaning «converting Е's то Ё's were needed in a text».

Maybe we should add a notion, that Ц-Ж-Ш are considered to be always-hard and non-palatalizable, even in presence of soft vowels. (Except old-style [ʑ] for Ж.)

(Isn't this message too long to keep it whole?) —Tacit Murky (talk) 01:27, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not too long, but we seem not to understand each other that well.

The Moscow school states that there are five phonemes: /i, u, e, o, a/. You must be confusing phonology with orthography, or you simply misunderstood words of some scholar. If somebody says that there are /e, ɛ/ phonemes in Russian, that's not Moscow school - that's his own interpretation, and an unpopular one.

I replaced because of the former pronunciation with [ʑː]. The presence of [ʐː] allows for a note explaining that [ʑː] is somewhat obsolete. EDIT: I think you're right, I've just removed [ʐː] from the table. A note next to the short [ʐ] should be enough.

We're talking about allophones here, not morphology. I'm pretty sure that both of your transcriptions are wrong; phonemically, it is /s ˈt͡ɕajem/, phonetically - [ɕ ˈt͡ɕæ(j)ɪm]. [æ] appears only between soft consonants.

I said "Russian Wiktionary transcribes the former as long", so I was referring to «мощный», not «кровельщик» (which is not transcribed in IPA on Russian Wiktionary, and which I would have to call "the latter", as it was the second word that I mentioned).

Let's judge the recordings:

- крановщик - two out of three pronunciations are long

- точильщик - long

- хищник - long

- сообщник - sounds short to me

- умерщвление - this may be short (it also sounds abnormally hard to me, but that's probably just my non-native hearing)

- поощрение - long, as you say

- вещмешок - long, as you say

- Иван Ильин - does have [j], as you say

Slightly elongated [ɕˑ] still counts as long, not short. I'm afraid that you're just mishearing some of these, so, until you present reliable sources to back up your claims, nothing can be done in this regard - especially since what we're doing is WP:OR judgement of Forvo recordings which, as you yourself admit ("«On Forvo, «судьи» is clearly pronounced [ˈsudʲɪ]» — right, and that is an obvious mispronounce."), are also unreliable themselves!

I'm not sure about yotting И - maybe other editors would want to comment on that. I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place for such information.

What we were talking about is [j]-deletion in unstressed <ë>, not whether <ë> can be unstressed... or at least that's my understanding. Maybe I'm wrong. EDIT: Apparently I am wrong.

Added. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:03, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So, in case «We're talking about allophones here, not morphology», here's something I find strange: English Wiktionary shows «change» as /tʃeɪndʒ/, despite clear sounding (especially for UK-En) with soft /nʲ/. Likewise «million» is also with hard /l/. So how came Russian version show this word as ['ʧænʤ] (still hard n) and then «есть» as [jesʲtʲ] (with proper palatalization marks)? So, does square brackets have different meaning?

OK, let's use «phonetically - [ɕ ˈt͡ɕæ(j)ɪm]» as one case, but my point was that it's not the only one. Preposition still may sound as [s], which is how I and my surroundings pronounce this.

You say «not sure whether this is the appropriate place for such information», but other yotting examples are there, so we should make it complete with «ьи»/«ъи» (even that later is not used anywhere).

Looks like «лёгкий» may not be perfect example for lenition + palatalization of Г into [xʲ]. Listen to Forvo's clips for «лёгкий» (лёгкие, лёгким, лёгких and «воспаление лёгких» with 2 indicative cases) and «мягкий» (plus more cases with «мягк-»), and you'd find some 50-50 distribution between [x] and [xʲ]. I suggest to replace with «легко́» — lenition Г-Х applies without palatalization. Tacit Murky (talk) 02:09, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But we've already talked about this. I told you that "The Wiktionary transcription is not [jɛs], but /jɛs/, which is a very important difference. You're confusing phonemic and phonetic transcription (and there are levels of depth of the latter) - see phonetic transcription. The important distinction is not between [ɛ] and [e], but between /s/ and /sʲ/, as only the latter is phonemic."

Anyway:

- English does not have the /nʲ/ phoneme, but Russian does. You can't transcribe change as /tʃeɪnʲdʒ/, because in English, [nʲ] (really, it's just laminal postalveolar [n̠] with optional palatalization [n̠ʲ]. Some speakers pronounce English /tʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ/ quite hard (similar to Russian and Polish), and so there probably is little to no palatalization ([n̠]) for them.) is merely an allophone of /n/, not a phoneme.

- There are levels of depth of the phonetic transcription. The General American pronunciation of change is, in narrow transcription, [t͡ʃʲʰe̞ˑɪ̯n̠ʲˑd̥͡ʒ̥ʲ ~ t͡ʃʰe̞ˑɪ̯n̠ˑd̥͡ʒ̥], with the first affricate aspirated, the first element of the diphthong and the nasal somewhat lenghtened, both affricates and nasal somewhat palatalized (or not - this depends on the speaker, I think weak palatalization is, however, pretty normal), and the final affricate strongly devoiced, unless the next word begins with a voiced sound. Normally, however, we're happy with [t͡ʃeˑɪ̯nˑd͡ʒ] (if we want to show the lack of pre-fortis clipping) or [t͡ʃeɪ̯nd̥͡ʒ̥] (if we want to show the final devoicing).

- The Russian IPA was totally incorrect, so I fixed it.

- Once again, please read phoneme, allophone and phonetic transcription. The difference between /this type of transcription/ and [this type of transcription] is dramatic.

Ok, fair enough. Looks like we don't really need to include the short [ɕ] after all...

I'd rather let other editors comment on that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:56, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, much more clear now with this explanation. But should we add a statement in the intro about level of allophonic depth and coverage in transcriptions in this article?

Maybe we should make a link to «Iotation». Moreover, I think Note 1 better be placed above consonant table as a plain text, as it is most important. And we should update Russian alphabet article as well — after all we did here :) Tacit Murky (talk) 23:21, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should we replace «fish ship» with «fish sheep» ? Because later has [i] instead of [ɪ], which is a better palatalizer. Tacit Murky (talk) 23:45, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's a fish sheep? Our examples have to be in proper English. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:02, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, but Russian_alphabet article has «sheer» as an example for Щ. Should it be consistent across pages? Also see other cells in the „Alphabet“ table. Tacit Murky (talk) 20:46, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Russian alphabet should not have such half-assed approximations at all. We should reduce their amount to what we have on this page.

I don't see much of a point in consistency, as long as the examples are correct.

Changed to "wish sheep", as in e.g. "I wish sheep could fly". Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why «yes» and «pay» are «too variable, should have only one example word», if we are denoting allophone details? «Yes» is most appropriate for «пень», as it has close-mid [e], not open-mid [ɛ] of «met». Tacit Murky (talk) 17:02, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"«Yes» is most appropriate for «пень», as it has close-mid [e], not open-mid [ɛ] of «met»" - This is the third time you're writting the same, incorrect stuff. The answers are above. Please pay closer attention next time. Unless you're trying to tell me that Russian vowel allophony of /e/ applies to English? That, obviously, is not true. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:38, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So, notion of allophony is different in English and Russian. It seems awkward: if we are making English article about Russian, what is the point of using English allophony, if it can't represent correct phone? I mean the difference between correct [sʲer] and [sʲɛr], assumed by «met». If I'd tech someone to pronounce unyotted /e/ correctly, vowel of «yes» seems to be best example. «Yemen» in both Rus and Eng is supposed to be pronounced the same, however, both «Йемен» and *«Емен» give that result. Is there a better word for „Russian-style [e]“, where E is not follows Y? Tacit Murky (talk) 02:31, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's called "doing our best". English is not Russian and Russian is not English. The rest, as I said, has already been answered. Look above please, there's no point in me repeating myself. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All right, I suppose, the answer to my last question about „Russian-style [e]“ is «none». Now, was there a debate about adding a glottal stop? Sometimes it appears at the starting vowel and between words or hyphened word-parts as a vowel delimiter. It may have some phonemic weight, marking the difference in «a-a» interjection between [aː] („got it“, „oh well“) and ['aʔa] („no!“ = «не-а», also with [ʔ]). GS is mentioned here. Tacit Murky (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea why you won't just scroll up and re-read my messages again (hint: one of them is my second response to you), rather than write me a third message based on your suppositions. After all, it's the facts we want, no?

I don't know about the glottal stop, I'll let other editors comment on that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did re-read your explanations, but one thing still unclear. Usually, morphphonological rules of a certain language still apply to some degree to extreme cases: voice mimicking (onomatopoeia), interjections and/or exclamations, recently loaned (not-yet-adapted) words and transliterations. This later case is most interesting: we can type «йес» in Russian, expecting it to sound as close as possible to original. But what phonemic and phonetic transcriptions would look like for this „word“? Despite the alternative allophony, one might expect minimal or no difference with the original, right? Tacit Murky (talk) 05:40, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Russian <йес> would be [jɛ̝s] phonetically (note a mid [ɛ̝], which you can also write [e̞]) and /jes/ phonemically. It'd sound almost completely native, yes.

English /ɛ/ is typically an open-mid/mid vowel, as I already said, so the typical English pronunciation is [jɛs ~ jɛ̝s], with the open-mid/mid vowel height pretty much in free variation (especially in Received Pronunciation). This is not the case in Russian, in which the open-mid, mid and close-mid allophones appear only when certain conditions are met (unlike in English). Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure, but I think I've finally found an alternative for «met» to show actual (little varying) [ɛ̝] as «е» in English: Cheyne or Cheney; if diphthongs shouldn't be allowed, then there is Chechnya or Chechen. Reason: /ɛ/ is surrounded by (somewhat) palatalized /tʃ/ and /j/ (if later is not diphthongized to /ɪ/). That'll make English /ɛ/ very close to Russian /ɛ/ in «чей». Is it better than «met»? Tacit Murky (talk) 22:42, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not. Diphthongs are not allowed, and English palato-alveolars do not raise English /ɛ/ like Russian soft consonants. Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:45, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone check Lightner (1972) "Problems in the Theory of Phonology, I: Russian phonology and Turkish phonology" and see whether on page 67 he actually says that Russian has retroflex (hard postalveolar) affricates? No other sources say that AFAIK. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just sent a request to researchgate.net to get a full text for checking; need to wait. Meanwhile, since we are not shy to add loans, maybe «soft Ц» would do as well? As explained [[1]], there are some words with apparent [tsʲ] for some dialects (especially southern): Пацюк, Цюрупа (Ukrainian family names), Цюрих (city), хуацяо (Chinese word). See Forvo's examples for these. Tacit Murky (talk) 17:37, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've read Lightner (1972) (and am the contributing editor to the claim in question). I would find the claim of hard affricates a little surprising as well, but the claim is not that Russian has such an affricate. At Russian phonology (and, if my past competence surpasses my recall from 8 years ago, in Lightner 1972), /dʐ/ is described as a sequence, not an affricate. For many languages, there is no distinction between the two. But, for Russian (as well as its sister language, Polish), there is indeed a contrast between a sequence of a stop and a sibilant and an affricate. The Russian phonology article doesn't articulate this difference, but it would be easy to do so. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:12, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So the source doesn't claim that. Looks like our anon misread something... or simply lied. Who knows. Thank you, Aeusoes. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:03, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This difference «between a sequence of a stop and a sibilant and an affricate» is described in quite a detail in Russian article for Affricates, a cite from Н.Трубецкой (1960). These rules are claimed to be universal, not just Russian-specific. Tacit Murky (talk) 11:11, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Отсек [ɐtʲ͡sʲˈsʲek] is an example I've found for the allophonic [tʲ͡sʲ], a non-sequential affricate. It should be a genuine soft counterpart for a nominal «ц» [t͡s]. However, other people may pronounce this cluster as [t͡ssʲ] or sequential [tsʲ] (with a clear stop). Not sure about adding this… — Tacit Murky (talk) 09:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

лучший

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Problems playing this file? See media help.

Thanks for explanations about some consonants, but I still don't understand why [d͡ʐ] and [t͡ʂ] have been removed. They actually are separate phones. Moreover, they appears only within one morpheme. For example, поджидать [pədʐɨˈdatʲ] but джем [d͡ʐɛm], артшкола [ɐrtˈʂkolə] but лучший [ˈɫut͡ʂɨj] (it can be listened) and cognates, музыкантша [mʊzɨˈkant͡ʂə]. [d͡zʲ] appears in same cases: подземелье [pədzʲɪˈmʲelʲjə] but дзинькать [ˈd͡zʲinʲkətʲ]. Maybe they should be in the table? 176.103.81.104 (talk) 17:16, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some of them are 2 consonants («отцы» = [ɐtː'sɨ]; Rus.Wiktionary propose [ɐɗ̥ˈt͡sɨ] , but I disagree with voiced ɗ̥ in there — it should be devoiced by both t and s); others are true affricates («джинсы» = ['d͡ʐɨnsɨ], but Eng.Wiktionary has it [ˈd͡ʐʐɨnsɨ], go figure; BTW, in both cases unstressed Ы is still [ɨ]). «Музыкантша» has a boundary between suffixes -ант (action performer) and -ш (noun feminizer), so it's [tʂ] here, too. Unfortunately, «лучший» falls out of the rule here; for my ears, „чш“ for this case can be an affricate only as a combination with a standalone consonant: [ˈɫut͡ʂʂɨj]. Tacit Murky (talk) 17:50, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

English Wiktionary transcribes automatically. I can call to mind only one word's root with «чш». It's «лучш». However, «чш» can appear at the junction of morphemes, for example, начштаба that pronounced [nat͡ɕ ˈʂtabə]. I have to apologize, I've written that affricates (that not allophones) appears only within one morpheme. But in mentioned музыкантша «тш» is pronounced [t͡ʂ], because it is at the junction of one type of morphemes. Thus [t͡ʂ] should be in the table as separate phone, I think. In similar article in Russian Wikipedia it is designated as [ʧ]. That's incorrect, however. [d͡ʐ] and [d͡zʲ] are forming in same cases. They appears pretty rarely, but I think that it's enough already. 176.103.81.104 (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like there is no other root with «чш». But there is more complex case: Маньчжур+ (-ия, -ский; and so on) — «Ч» is voiced within presence of 2 voiced consonants. Possibly, other Chinese or Eastern toponims might have «чш» combination. Good cases with «цс»: соцстрах (-ование), соцсоревнование, спецслужба, спецсубъект. And a curious case: «танцзал»; almost [nd͡ʐː]. About «музыкантша»: [t͡ʂ] in these examples is very well fused, unlike «тш» here with clear [ʂ]; here's Forvo's example. Moreover, casual fast speech elides [t] in such clusters to form [nʂ]: here. Tacit Murky (talk) 22:34, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A few comments. As I mentioned in the above section, Russian instances of a stop followed by a hard sibilant are likely stop+fricative sequences, rather than actual affricates.

Also, [ɗ̥] is devoiced. That's what the little circle at the bottom means. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:31, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This case is harder than it seems. Most verbs with reflexive suffix -ся/-сь have a combination of -тся/-ться in the end. Despite an explicit digraph and morpheme boundary, morphophonologically it's a case of Ц (which is always hard): both Т and С become hardened, so both cases are [-tsa], which is close to -ца in pronounce. This is the reason why it can be hard for scholars (even native Russians) to distinguish between these cases: -ться is used only with infinitives, and [s] can be soft even in the same verb — одевать (inf; normal [tʲ]), одевайся (imperative+refl; normal [sʲ]), одеваться (inf+refl; hard [ts]), одевается (singular+refl; hard [ts]). This may be a kind of exception, as other combinations of -тс- can have phonetically clean [tsʲ] pronounce (which is not possible for true or „simulated“ affricate): отсидеть, отсев. But: «отсю́да» (= from here) can be respelled as «отсу́да» (see here), which can be another case of implicit morphophonology for Ц, but more likely is a consequence of an alternative spelling for «сюда» as «суда́» (= (to) here). Tacit Murky (talk) 12:25, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Look, 176.103.81.104. While your comments are appreciated, you still haven't provided a source to back up your claims. Moreover, you lied about (or misread?) Lightner (1972) confirming the existence of the voiced retroflex affricate in Russian (his claim is that it is a stop-fricative sequence). I think we should end this discussion, as the affricate retroflexes won't be included in the table unless you (or anyone else) provide a source, and someone else confirms its reliability (which is reasonable to ask for in this situation - see above). Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:10, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not going to deceive somebody. This source I've found in corresponding article. Because it has been reviewed I've thought that verification was not necessary. However, I have some sources. Soviet linguist Mikhail Panov in “Russian phonetics” (Русская фонетика, 1967, page 35) has mentioned about a phone that he named «[ч] твёрдый» or “hard [ч]”. He has given three examples with cyrillic transcription. It is лучше [лу́чшъ], Ницше [нʼи́чшъ] and Ротшильд [ро́чшылʼт]. According to traditional Russian transcription, phone [t͡ɕ] designates as [чʼ] (che with an apostrophe). For example, человек [чʼилавʼэ́к] in IPA is [t͡ɕɪɫɐˈvʲek]. [ч] (che) signifies a phone that in IPA designates as [t͡ʂ] today. Transcriptions of example words in IPA looks [ˈɫut͡ʂʂə], [ˈnʲit͡ʂʂə] and [ˈrot͡ʂʂɨlʲt]. See page scan (Russian). Is it a reliable source? I shall try to find sources for other cases. But I think that it can be only in modern literature. 176.103.81.104 (talk) 16:27, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Then we need to decide whether [t͡ʂʂ] is a long type of affricate, or it's just [tʂː]. First case is more viable, since [t] in these combinations is not laminal dento-alveolar [t̪] (i.e. standard Russian Т), but more like normal English [t], which is the case with „short“ affricate [t͡ʂ]. However, all of these cases also present clear [ʂ] just as a separate letter would produce. Same with other „long affricates“. Tacit Murky (talk) 23:22, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For my ears it's just [t͡ʂ] at all. I agree that it phone is not simple [t] + [ʂ], because articulation is completely different (idem book, page 34 as a source). In Russian language phone [t] is laminal denti-alveolar. [t] in [t͡ʂ] is alveolar rather, you're right. I think that [t͡ʂʂ] is more correct variant. But I repeat that it is rather just [t͡ʂ] for me. 176.103.81.104 (talk) 07:52, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The articulation is not completely different, it's only slightly different. In [t̪], the blade of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge and the tip of the tongue touches the back of the upper front teeth. In [t], there's no tongue-tip contact with the teeth. That's the only difference. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've made experimental addition with Лучше and Отсек per this section. 176.103.81.104's arguments sound legit. Since we have notes 1 and 2 about allophonic appearances of [dz] and [dʑ], it should be extended to other hard-soft pairs of allophonic affricates. [d͡zʲ] and [d͡ʐ] are awaiting. — Tacit Murky (talk) 10:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB, is M.Panov's work „Русская фонетика“ (mentioned in the comment above — 16:27, 12 June 2016) not reliable as a source for [t͡ʂ]? Russian biorgaphy says: «В 1968 году получил степень доктора наук за исследование „Русская фонетика“.» — «In 1968 [he] received doctor's degree for „Russian phonetics“.» The book can be DL-ed here. Section 61 (pp. 32-34) describe affricate [t͡ʂ] (очумел) and the difference with cluster [tʂ] (отшумел); a table of consonants mentions [t͡s t͡ʲsʲ d͡z] dentals and [t͡ʂ t͡ʲɕ d͡ʲʑ] DA's. Section 62 (pp. 34-35) is devoted to allophonic affricates with many examples: [d͡z] in Шпицберген, спецзадание; [d͡ʲʑ] in начбазы, испечь бы; dialectical [t͡ʲsʲ] in цвет; and [t͡ʂ] in лучше, Ницше, Ротшильд. That should be enough.

About two sources for [ɖʐ͡]: yes, Lightner is claiming about this being a sequence, not affricate; interestingly, Hamann (2004:65) also don't mention any «jam» words neither in Polish nor Russian, investigating only fricatives, as paper's name implies. This may be a call to question this source too in «d͡z» article. — Tacit Murky (talk) 12:47, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: (Writing @Mr KEBAB doesn't notify me, you need to use the ping template instead). Panov only provides examples of the alleged affricate [tʂ] followed by [ʂ]. My Russian is bad, but I think he considers it to be a mere allophone of /t/ before /ʂ/, which is a valid analysis. However, it's not the only possible one. Stops followed by homorganic fricatives tend to form affricates with a lengthened fricative component no matter the language (there may be some exceptions though), so [tʂ] seems like a good enough transcription to me. The fact that the stop is laminal alveolar in that sequence is irrelevant - it's just a slight allophonic retraction from the default laminal denti-alveolar articulation.

There's a good argument not to include the phonetic affricates [tʂ, dʐ, tsʲ, dzʲ] in this guide. The JIPA article on Russian states explicitly that these consonants are non-standard and do not occur in standard Russian, only in local dialects. It's only 2 years old and so we should consider it a more reliable source than the ones you mention.

I see that you also brought up the case of the word очумел, which you say contrasts with отшумел. But according to Russian Wiktionary, the former word is pronounced with a soft [tɕ]. Forvo confirms that. I'm afraid that Panov's paper may be simply outdated in some aspects. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, idea was that fluent /tʂ/ must be [t͡ʂʂ] with apical [t̺], not laminal [t̪] (produced by /t/ in isolation). But other allophones are in this article's table, so at least it's worth noting below the table.

I'm curious about what are these dialects with above-mentioned 4 allophones? Because modern literary Russian is almost identical to Moscow dialect, widely known by TV/movie speech and recommended in schools for both natives and foreigners. So, we can hear a variety of «лучше» samples, including Moscow's pronounce. Do the sound non-standard?

Yes, «очумел» involves [tʲ͡ɕ] affricate. Panov should have been used «лучше» for [tʂ͡] example as a contrast. Later in that paragraph he made a better pair with «отсадит»/«оценит» for /ts/. — Tacit Murky (talk) 13:11, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: I really doubt that the difference is apical vs. laminal. Russian /ʂ/ is pretty much the same as Polish /ʂ/, which is laminal postalveolar. Therefore, the difference between /t/ before /ʂ/ and the default allophone of /t/ is (post)alveolar vs. dental. They're both articulated with the blade of the tongue, so they're both laminal. I don't find it that notable at all, as I said this affrication happens in pretty much any language I'm aware of and it's automatic.

The source doesn't say, but what they mean in the case of [tʂ, dʐ] are hard realizations of /tɕ/, so it's about something else.

The очумел - отшумел contrast would be truly phonemic if the former word was pronounced with an affricate [tʂ]. That's what I meant by 'contrast'. I'm pretty sure that the correct phonemic transcription of лучше is /ˈlut.ʂa/ (or perhaps /ˈlut.ʂi ~ ˈlut.ʂɨ/), with a syllable boundary after /t/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:46, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how to distinguish laminal and apical fricative (especially in case of [ʂ]). But this «They're both articulated with the blade of the tongue» is clearly not always true, because /tʂ/ may be pronounced like this on the morpheme boundary (like отшумел with от- prefix), but not within (as for лучше). And Russian consonants are not dental, they are denti-alveolar.

IMO, correct phonemic transcription of лучше is /ˈlut.ʂe/ (because |-е| is a productive suffix, see here). According to Russian rules of syllabification, word-break between lines should be луч-ше, but syllable breaks can be both луч-ше and лу-чше, and later is preferred (§2). Tacit Murky (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: How is it not true? I'd like to see some proof of that. You said it yourself that you can't distinguish laminal and apical fricatives, so I'm not sure why your statement is so definitive.

Morphology/grammar in general may or may not be taken into account when discussing phonology. Clearly, there's not one 'correct' phonemic analysis of this word but several. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your quoted statement was about /t/, for which there is a clear difference for laminal and apical sounds. I'm arguing that in fluent speech laminal /t/ becomes apical, when followed by /ʂ/; otherwise it wouldn't be possible do hear and feel the difference between stop+fricative and a true affricate, like «Джон» and «John» (assuming voiced pair acts the same). Tacit Murky (talk) 19:27, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: That's almost completely wrong. The difference between the stop-fricative sequence /tʂ/ and the dialectal affricate /tʂ/ (which doesn't occur in standard Russian as a phoneme) is mostly the length of the fricative (an affricate is a stop released into a fricative). And again, prove that /t/ is apical before /ʂ/ which, as far as I know, is not apical itself. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is mostly the length of the fricative; but stop also sounds differently. As for /ʂ/, I've yet to hear any difference between «apical /ʂ/» and «laminal /ʂ/», even not from the same language. I'm comparing sounds and tongue positions for typical Romance /t/ (apical alveolar) with East-Slavic /t/ in isolation (laminal) and before /ʂ/. This later case sounds and feels much more like the first one. Panov mentions this effect on page 35 (§63): «Comparing pronounces of „от сора“ and „от шума“, it's easy to gear different „т“'s. First one is pronounced by tongue touching the teeth, second — by touching alveolae above the teeth. We'll call this one [т́]. It's like [ш], front-tongued front-palated.» (In Latin terms this means coronal palato-alveolar. Obviously, Panov translates «ш» into [ʃ], not retroflex [ʂ].) «Also, in words like вонжу, ханжа we can hear nasal [н́] with similar place of articulation as for [ш, ж]. How frequent this pronounce is and is it the only norm for these words — it's hard to say. Same place of articulation has plosive element of [ч'].» (I find this last statement very questionable.) And a note for this paragraph: «Л.И.Жирков (Лингвистический словарь / Linguistic dictionary; Moscow, 1946, p. 130) also noted that [т, д, н] after [щ, ж] are also front-palated: ш[т́]ук/с[т]ук, ж[д́]ал/с[д]ал, ж[н́]у/з[н]ал. It's not clear, if this is obligatory for literary Russian, or it's just one of possible cases.» Well, for me there is no difference in Zhirkov's 3 pairs. But [n] in вонжу and ханжа does sounds distinct. Curiously, this trick does not work with /lʂ/ and /lʐ/: волшебный generates regular (velarized lamial) /l/, despite the same place of articulation. Tacit Murky (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: A typical Romance /t/ is laminal denti-alveolar, not apical alveolar. Please do your research. The citation you provided doesn't prove that /t/ is apical before /ʂ/, it proves that it's alveolar which we already know.

Even if he means palato-alveolar, he means a palato-alveolar fricative that is not palatalized, i.e. 'flat postalveolar' or 'laminal retroflex'. The way it's called varies from scholar to scholar. Read Russian phonology#Consonants.

I find this last statement very questionable. So you're wrong, what else can I say. You need to learn more about possible places of articulation and stop basing so much on your suppositions or your ears (you can't hear everything). You get too many things wrong and it's confusing people, especially when they're said with definitive language.

Yes, all of that is quite obvious, so I'm not surprised. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:41, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oops; yes, yesterday I confused /t/ with description of /l/, which (for Romance) is apical alveolar. However, Panov citation shows, that (as he thinks) there still is a difference in articulation of /t/ and /n/ before /ʂ/ or /ʐ/ (whatever it is). So, is it indicated here?

This — It's like [ш], front-tongued front-palated. — was about /t/, not /ʂ/. I replaced parts of that proposition for translation. Originally it's like this: It's front-tongued front-palated, like [ш]. Tacit Murky (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Are you asking if we're transcribing those allophones here? No, and we shouldn't. Such details are appropriate for Russian phonology, not this guide.

Fair enough, but what I wrote also applies to /t/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:03, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't we use this ͡ symbol for all affricates in a table? Why it's «tɕ», not «t͡ɕ» ? Tacit Murky (talk) 00:38, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Laziness, perhaps. The tie is omitted in Help:IPA for English too. But it is probably more important in Russian than in English. — Eru·tuon 19:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I browsed the page history and discovered that @Aeusoes1: removed the ties in this edit. Could you give your reasoning? I think the ties should be restored. — Eru·tuon 20:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember right, it was because The tie-bars do not display correctly in all browsers. That's what the note at Help:IPA for Polish says, which shares Russian's distinction between affricates and stop+fricative clusters. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, okay. (So not laziness.) I noticed that Help:IPA for Polish has a note saying that it omits ties for the same reason. — Eru·tuon 05:01, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: A similar note should be placed here. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Im not linguist or russian language specialist, but wouldn't a better english approximation for "я" in пять be more like "piet" or something like that — Preceding unsigned comment added by Petergstrom (talk • contribs) 21:59, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

«Я» is a letter denoting 1 or 2 sounds: (optional) /j/ and /a/ (with some allophones for it); «piet» is not a proper word in English (unless you mean some of that: Piet ) and it encodes several vowel sounds (including possible diphthong). That's a bad choice for an explanation. Tacit Murky (talk) 22:38, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:18, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is a difference with alveolar tap [ɾ] (more frequent in Russian, but not mentioned in the table) and alveolar trill [r], which (within morphemes) may happen only in loans with «рр» (and even there trill is not obligatory): кора́ — корро́зия (hard); гори́ — корри́да (soft). Heteromorphemic «рр» generates trill most of the time: контрразве́дка (even if morphemes are loans by themselves). Should we add or change anything? Tacit Murky (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: I'm not sure. Are there any minimal pairs? Is the ⟨рр⟩ mandatorily trilled in words like контрразве́дка? Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:55, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The only MP I can envision is: контроль (control) / контрроль (counter-role); while later word is synthesized, there is a rock-band called «КонтрРоль». Trill is inevitable, when there is morpheme boundary (incl. word boundary: «тигр рычит» — tiger roars), and it's possible to use one /r/-containing morpheme with another non-/r/-containing (or without another one): in above example prefix контр- (with [ɾ]) can be used with roots not starting with /r/; and разве́дка is a standalone word (also with [ɾ]). Of course, forced trills may happen in mimicking (e.g. animal roar) and emotional exclamations («Ур-р-ра!») etc. Tacit Murky (talk) 18:56, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: I think we would transcribe these as [kɐnˈtrolʲ, ˌkontrˈrolʲ, ˈtʲiɡr rɨˈtɕit], all with [rr]. контроль - контрроль is only a near-minimal pair, the first vowel is different because the syllable containing it has secondary stress in the latter word. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But if you mean by [r] particularly trilling /r/, then it's not correct for контроль. Other 2 cases require at least 2-tap /r/=[ɾɾ], so it should be considered a trill, right? And what exactly is [rr] then? Analogue of [rː], i.e. very-multi-tap trill? Tacit Murky (talk) 19:19, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: No, [r, rʲ] denote rhotics with undefined amounts of alveolar contact (one or many, i.e. taps or trills). [rr, rʲrʲ] denote trills explicitly. Mr KEBAB (talk)

Well, then we should note that tap is most common «р» in Russian. So, it's a question about level of detalization in this table. Tacit Murky (talk) 20:04, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: We already say that in Russian phonology, I'm not sure whether we need to repeat that here. It's a phonetic detail. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But the table cell here say «trilled r, like in Spanish». That's not the main case! Tacit Murky (talk) 20:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: Actually Russian phonology says "Hard /r/ is postalveolar, typically a trill [r̠]", and the table row for the r's is marked trill. Only the soft /rʲ/ item mentions a tap at all. --Ørjan (talk) 07:06, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Then, I'm afraid, Skalozub's (1963) interpretation needs to be checked by newer sources. Because now-days trill is not typical. This can be easily heard by any speech sample. Tacit Murky (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Erutron, could you provide a source for this edit? Everything I've seen points to them not appearing in unstressed position (at least in Standard Russian). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:00, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1) The lack of reduction for unstressed /e/ and /o/ in the careful, if not somewhat affected, pronunciation, is recommended by some orthoepists (e.g. Avanesov). I believe it is not as widespread in everyday speech but may still be worth to be noted.

2.1) In word-initial and word-final positions certain vowels are affected by less reduction than expected. This is foremost true for word-initial /o/ (here we do not show the lesser degree of its reduction, but whatever) and less so for word-final /o/.

2.2) This is also somewhat true for /e/ and /a/ from etymological/orthographic «е» and «я», but this case is more obscure, and the available sources are not quite so clear on this. E.g. Avanesov in his Fonetika (1956) gives жители vs (о) жителе vs жителя, for the former he uses [и], for the second [и^э], and for the third [ъ]. Considering we do not distinguish between unstressed [и] and [ь] (but he does) and write both as [ɪ], the second sign may be interpreted as [ə] or even better as [ɘ]. Though further he says that in fast speech this distinction disappear and both merge to [и], or our [ɪ]. So I'm less sure if we need any new signs for our already over-detailed table like [ɘ]. For now I've put this case to [ə].--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:47, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My edit might have been overly bold, as I don't have access to any sources.

Regarding final -е, it was based on the automatic transcription module on Wiktionary (wikt:Module:ru-pron), which encodes a bunch of rules for the pronunciation of final -е according various categories, including part of speech. I do not have the sources used to create that module. Wiktionary doesn't have the same requirement of no OR, so that module may have been partly derived from some of the editors' own native-speaker intuitions. Atitarev was one of the creators of that module. I wonder, from what Любослов Езыкин says, if the "enunciation" of final -е in endings (pronunciation as /e/ rather than /i/) is somewhat old-fashioned, and if the phonetic value would be similar to pretonic е pronounced by speakers from St Petersburg, as described in Russian phonology: [ɘ]. (In that case, the Wiktionary module is somewhat inexact in its transcription.)

As for о in ра́дио, it's transcribed with unreduced /o/ on Wiktionary and is mentioned in the Russian article (ru:Русская фонетика#/o/ (/о/)) as an exception to reduction of historical /o/, along with some other words. (Our article, Russian phonology, mentions lack of reduction in a similar loanword, ве́то.) — Eru·tuon 22:39, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: Делаете or similar with the unreduced final vowel [e] seems for me incorrect. I rather say and hear it with [ɪ]. I've no idea where they got this.

On the other hand we indeed have certain morphemes where expected /Cʲe#/ → [Cʲɪ#] is [Cʲə#] instead. This is covered in Timberlake's Grammar (p.48-51). He says that there is a contradiction in the sources: one claim that the shift/merger is complete, others, based on experimental studies, claim the opposite that the shift moves backward. My anecdotic evidence: I believe that I sometimes may pronounce it without the merger. Though, maybe it is the othography that makes me believe this. However, I've seen the claims that the word-final vowels tend to be less reduced than it is expected: Нужно при этом заметить, что заударный гласный в абсолютном конце слова не подвергается сильной количественной редукции и его длительность может быть очень значительной, хотя артикулируется он с ослабленной напряженностью и имеет малую громкость.[2]

Finally we must not confuse the above mentioned with ekanye, typical to St.-Petersburg[3], but which now seems to be largely extinct. This applies only to the pre-tonic vowels. In Russian tradition it is written as [э^и] to contrast with modern normative [и^э], e.g. веселить is [в’ьс’э^или́т’] in old ekanye, [в’ьс’и^эли́т’] in the modern normative, but I believe in the modern colloquial the latter even goes further to [в’ьс’или́т’] or [в’ьс’ьли́т’]. I know that [ь] is interpreted as [ɪ], but I cannot get how we might convert [э^и] and [и^э] into the IPA. All the slots seem to be filled. If [э^и] = [ë]/[ɘ], what then [и^э]? Here the author has simply decided to ignore the distinction. We may do and in fact have done this already.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to allophony table in Russian version of R.phonology article, [ə] should be used only for шея and кожа, as it denotes word-final unstressed vowels. Other cases («ы-и, э-е, о») are [ɪ] (that is [ь] in Cyrillic notation), and поле is not an exception. Tacit Murky (talk) 23:45, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: It hardly matters, as WP cannot be a reliable source for itself. While there are enough sources which suggest the opposite: I've given one English source which in turn refers to many Russian sources where they clearly write [ъ], that is our [ə], after soft consonants. If anything your table, which, by the way, is also needed to be checked, gives but an overview of the reduction and does not cover peculiarities.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:10, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tables (in both Russian and English versions of the article) «does not cover peculiarities» intentionally — it's a set of typical cases. And what source say clearly that «[ъ] is our [ə]»? It can only be seen, that unstressed vowel can be [ь] and [ъ] in Russian notation, but only [ɪ] in non-Russian works. So, Cyrillic notation is somewhat closer to explain those «peculiarities». Tacit Murky (talk) 17:50, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: I've given one of Timberlake's above, can't you see? And Panov, which you cited above yourself, dedicates a whole chapter on this matter and he clearly states that [ъ] is central which can only be [ə].--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:40, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should we remove [ɑ] from the table? The JIPA article says that the main allophone of /a/ varies from central to advanced back, they don't specifically say whether the more back realization is restricted to pre-/l/ contexts (it's probably not). Transcribing it may be an overkill. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's better to compare stressed /a/, when followed by bilabial consonants, as they don't require change of tongue position: /á/ in па́па and ма́ма sounds just like in па́лка. So, back /a/ is quite frequent. Tacit Murky (talk) 18:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Interesting. Do you have a source (preferably a modern one)? Neither Jones & Ward nor the JIPA article talk about bilabial consonants in the context of the backness of /a/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:47, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They don't, because it's easier to compare isolated „default“ /a/ with contextual cases. Is it backed? Tacit Murky (talk) 19:55, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Sorry, I don't understand. Can you rephrase it? Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:12, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I mean: nor Jones & Ward nor JIPA doesn't need to go in that detail (bilabial context etc.) to mention possible backness of /a/, in case they already mention it for more general cases like isolated «·V́·» or «CV́·»/«·V́C». Tacit Murky (talk) 20:22, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: The JIPA article seems to say that the advanced back and central realizations are pretty much in a free variation, whereas Jones & Ward say that the advanced back allophone occurs before the dark /l/, though I could be wrong in both cases. Someone should check those sources. Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:03, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed /a/ (stressed or unstressed) acoustically is somewhat retracted before velar /l/, as shown by Halle (p. 165) who also refers this originally to Trofimov & Jones. This may be indeed too redundant, it's clearly allophonic and does not bear much functional load. But I'm not that sure.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: My point was that the retraction from a perfectly central position may not be restricted to pre-/l/ contexts. Indeed, as far as I remember, authors of the JIPA article use the symbol [ɑ̟] in other contexts as well. Perhaps a case could be made for replacing [a] with [ɑ], but that may be an overkill too. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:06, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot access the JIPA article, but I suggest they use [ɑ̟] because they treat [a] with its original IPA value (low front) rather than low central. So their [ɑ̟] is our [a], and our [ɑ] might be their [ɑ] as well. Am I right? But in no way plain /a/ is always as back as [ɑ] (like in English), this would be definitely wrong.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: No, I'm pretty sure they write [ɑ̟] for an advanced back vowel and transcribe the central vowel with [a] or [ä]. They probably transcribe the (near-)open front vowel with [æ] which, as you know, is the most usual transcription. I'd send you the PDF but I probably don't have it anymore either, I'm just speaking from memory and what I've noted in my notebook.

That's not what I nor the JIPA article meant to say. I'm saying that [ɑ] may be a slightly better transcription because the vowel it denotes varies from central to advanced back, rather than from central to front. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:33, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, according to Trofimov & Jones it varies from mid-front (basic position) to mid-back, so either choice might be correct, but as the mid-back allophone is rather rare and restricted to only one particular environment, so better to leave it as is. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:19, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We're also trying to figure out exactly what that environment is, because it may not only be /ál/. Tacit Murky (talk) 20:26, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Yes, and to do that we need reputable sources. Also, we already have one source (JIPA) that says that the central and advanced back realizations may be in a free variation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: By 'restricted to only one particular environment', do you mean the environment before the dark /l/? Also, what do you mean by "better to leave it as is?" Do you want to keep both [a] and [ɑ] in the table, or are you talking only about transcribing the main allophone of /a/ with [a]?

Our note says [ɑ] appears between a hard consonant (or a pause) and /l/, so [ɑ] is even rarer than I thought. I checked Forvo, and at least some of the audio files for па́па and ма́ма have back(ish) vowels. Unless there's a modern source that would tell us that a) [ɑ] occurs in a complementary distribution with [a] and b) where exactly it occurs, I think the case may be pretty much closed and we should remove [ɑ] from the table. Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: are you talking only about transcribing the main allophone of /a/ with [a]? Yes. If we choose [ɑ] over [a] for the only sign for /a/, it would certainly give the wrong expression that Russian /a/ and English /ɑː/ are the same. Which is obviously wrong under any conditions. I'd rather say it is modern BrEn /æ/ (now often written /a/) which is quite close to Russian /a/. I'd say it is often somewhat troublesome for a Russian speaker to differentiate BrEn /æ/ and /ʌ/, unlike GenAm, where they are quite distinct, but on the other hand GenAm /ɑ/ and /ʌ/ may be heard similar.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: Thanks, but it's quite a stretch to say that it is obviously wrong under any conditions - millions of native speakers of English pronounce /ɑ/ as central. Central /ɑ/ is a part of General American (in which it varies with a back vowel) and it's the standard pronunciation in Australia. It's also fairly common in Britain, especially outside RP. That's exactly why GenAm /ɑ/ and /ʌ/ may be heard similar is true - they may differ in nothing but height and perhaps length (though, as you know, GA doesn't have phonemic vowel length). On the other hand, Australian /ɑ/ is just a long /ʌ/ and both of them are open central.

I'd say it is often somewhat troublesome for a Russian speaker to differentiate BrEn /æ/ and /ʌ/, unlike GenAm, where they are quite distinct - this feeds into my theory that cardinal [a] sounds more back than [æ]. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:09, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: millions of native speakers of English pronounce /ɑ/ as central. Yes, but yet there is still an established tradition to write that English vowel with the symbol for the back vowel /ɑ/. While for Russian there is a tradition to write its central low vowel with simple basic /a/. Overall we still have not been given any proofs that that backed articulation is present in any environment but before velar/hard /l/. That means in the absolute majority of cases this vowel is articulated in the midway between cardinal /a/ and cardinal /ä/. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:19, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: I've removed [ɑ] from the table. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:48, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I asked here and there and the JIPA article does say that the default allophone of /a/ varies from central to advanced back. This is confirmed by their transcription of the North Wind and the Sun, in which they write [ɑ̟] far more frequently than [a]. So not only is [ɑ] a quite restricted vowel (at least according to some sources), sources also disagree on where exactly it's used. To transcribe it is an unnecessary complication. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:09, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: they write [ɑ̟] far more frequently than [a] Did you realy mean [a], or [ɑ]?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: [a]. Maybe they drop the centralizing diacritic for simplicity, I'm not sure. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:59, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: I wonder what they wanted to say with this. [ɑ̟] literally means a vowel midway between [ä] and [ɑ], but this is exactly the allophone of /a/ before [ɫ]. Do they want to say that папа is actually п[ɑ̟]па rather than п[ä]па? I've always believed it must be п[ä]па, but п[ɑ̟]лка (plus п[a]тка and п[æ]ть). I am reluctant to agree with them, do they have strong proofs for this articulation?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why «п[ä]па?» How can there be a centralized stressed vowel between hard consonants? And you probably mean «пʲ[a]тка» (пя́тка). Tacit Murky (talk) 20:01, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Don't mistake centralization from the default Russian pronunciation (as in the case of Russian /o/) with vowels centralized in relation to cardinal vowels. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:48, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: The basic, that is in the (C)_(C) environment, allophone of Russian stressed /a/ is [ä]. We write [a] for the low central vowel because of tradition, as with many languages.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:59, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: I'm afraid you'll need to buy the pdf yourself or simply mail the authors. I don't know the answers to these questions. Either way, I'm pretty sure that we agree that [ɑ] is an unnecessary symbol. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:48, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: Alright, I do not need this as such, as I know Russian phonetics very well without their source. I was wondering just because we use them here, not that I think their source is that important or 100% reliable (I start to doubt that, their views seem to be quite idiosyncratic).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:59, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: Easy, you don't have to explain yourself. It's not unheard of that some of the JIPA articles have small inaccuracies or that they sometimes overgeneralize things. As far as I can remember, a large portion of their article is virtually identical to Jones & Ward's description of Russian. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: I believe I have to revert your deletion, as both Cubberley and Timberlake clearly cover the issue with the unstressed vowels as we have been discussing above; plus they support other peculiarities of the transcription. Jones&Ward are also not out of place here. So overall I do not understand why you have had a preference for some sources over the others. Two or five sources to list, what's the deal?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:27, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: Maybe my line of reasoning was wrong, but I've always treated X phonology articles to be 'mothers' of IPA for X guides and thought that we shouldn't list sources that are not cited in inline citations. I see that you've already reverted me, which is fair enough. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:34, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I lean toward Kebab's approach. Perhaps we could have a further reading section. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:39, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: If we're going to include them, I think listing them in one section is the way to go. If 'further reading' is the only section in which we could place a citation without being dishonest about its scope/content, then we definitely shouldn't list it here at all. Russian phonology is the place for that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:54, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is these sources support several statements in the notes; plus they provide examples for our transcription and our choice of symbols showing we do not invent our own transcription but rather follow reliable authorities on the matter (e.g. Jones&Ward and Cubberley provide very explicit descriptions of the vocalism using the IPA). Deleting Jones&Ward, Cubberley and Timberlake would be as if they are of little or no importance to the page, while the remaining two are of the uttermost importance, though I do not know whether Halle is such an essential source, while the only advantage of Yanushevskaya&Bunčić is their novelty. I'm OK with deleting them all (by the way, who has added the section in the first place?), but why to bother, when it is just up to five short lines of text? Will the deletion help anybody?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:58, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We don't want that section to become bloated, though. As long as it's just a handful as it is, we should be fine. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:18, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see there have been recently a new addition to the table, /ɣʲ/ (or [ɣʲ]?). Considering the above topic about the allophones of /r/, I have been about to raise a question: what are our goals here? what are the goals of such pages? I believe the majority of cases (over 90%?) this transcription is used for Russian proper names, and much less frequently for simple Russian words (e.g. in articles about the Russian language or other languages). So when the reader sees the transcription, he or she goes here and sees what these "funky" symbols mean. Or the editor wants to add the transcription to a name/word.

Considering this, what is the use of ɣʲ? Where are you going to employ this symbol? Where are you going to employ dz and dʑ? The former is used only in a dozen of words, for the latter I could have only come to the word начдив. Not to say about the addition of two or more symbols for /r/.

Wouldn't it be better to clear the table of these?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: If you're certain that we won't need some of the symbols we list then remove them from the guide, sure. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you remove [ɣʲ], beware, for there will probably be someone complaining that a Russian phone is missing and needs to be added. Perhaps the rare phones should be put in a note below the table with an explanation. — Eru·tuon 21:17, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's better to leave them in a table; either with a note about rarity, or in a separate table. Definition can be simple: if there is no letter for it — it's rare. So, there should be [dz, dʑ, ɣ, ɣʲ, ʑː]. Tacit Murky (talk) 23:39, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Let's not encourage our readers to conflate spelling with pronunciation. They're closely related but not the same. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:51, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: As I said above [dz, dʑ, ɣʲ] are but positional allophones, which usage is extremely restricted and rare. Not that they are rare, they're extremely rare, that is [dʑ] does exist only in one (!) real well-known word начдив (plus Lopatin's spelling dictionary lists two little-known loanwords матчбол and мульчбумага, but I doubt that they are even worth mentioning). You haven't answered my question: where are you going to use them? What words exactly of what article exactly? You seem not to understand the goal of this page. It is not to collect all the allophonic rarities and oddities of Russian, but give a clear-cut reference for both the readers and the editors. Your overzealousness to add in here every allophone possible (as you've been trying with /r/ recently) seems to be counter-productive.
As for [ɣ, ʑː] their presence is a little more controversial. From one point they are independent, even if marginal, phonemes: they are variants recommended by several dictionaries and orthoepists. From another point they are as rare as the above-mentioned allophones. [ʑː] is already mentioned under note [12]; so only [ɣ] may remain, or similarly may go under a note.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:08, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: My feeling is [ɣʲ] has been added only to bring a "symmetry" to the table, rather than as if it is really needed. For complains we have the talk page; I'm alright to explain why we do not need to inflate the table.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:15, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've reworked the table making it more symmetric (the hard-soft opposition in both the consonants and the vowel), plus a few tweaks here and there. Any suggestions.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:29, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Words «сего́дня, сего́дняшний, итого́» have wrong audio links. And I don't like the idea of placing [ts] and [tɕ] in the same row. Tacit Murky (talk) 02:57, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Fixed. I left итого redlinked hoping somebody would make an audio; alright I've hidden it.

[ʂ]-[ɕː] and [ʐ]-[ʑː] were paired together in the original, so why to make an exception for [ts]-[tɕ]? The greyed "stepped" empty cells looked ugly.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:44, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would make more sense, by analogy with [ʂ]-[ɕː] and [ʐ]-[ʑː], to pair [tɕ] with the nonexistent [tʂ]. [ts] isn't postalveolar like [tɕ], so the two don't belong together. — Eru·tuon 23:50, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think we may leave such theoretical peculiarities for a sake of simplicity. Ч being the soft pair of Ц, and vice versa, makes perfect sense in Russian.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. An additional point is that ц does not become ч when followed by и; rather, the и is pronounced like ы. — Eru·tuon 19:15, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ц and ч are a little more different than the other pairs of unpaired consonants, but the issue of one sound replacing (or alternating) with another isn't all that salient (and technically is an orthography-centric approach that doesn't quite fit the language's phonology). Plus, ш does not become щ (a pairing I'm assuming you favor) when followed by и. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:23, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A fair point regarding ш–щ. But that has the clear connection of a postalveolar place of articulation; ц–ч does not. I don't see how it's an orthography-centric approach; if the letters were replaced with the phonemic symbols, the point would remain. — Eru·tuon 21:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It just sounds like you're saying that a consonant becomes soft with the addition of a vowel. That's not quite how it works in Russian phonology, only with the writing system (with the exceptions such as those we've already mentioned).

Pairing ц and ч is a little shaky, and I think is motivated more by simplicity than anything else. I could go either way, considering adding a couple gray boxes wouldn't make the table too unwieldy. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:30, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, in some cases hard and soft consonants alternate. ц and ч don't alternate in those situations, except maybe from historical sound changes? — Eru·tuon 23:11, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are too many such cases. Like «конец — кончик, конечный»; as usual, final consonant in the root morphs or alternates, including the presence of soft vowel. However, IMO there is no case for morphing of ч back to ц. Tacit Murky (talk) 01:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

why in some words the stress marks are not placed according to how the word is broken down to syllables, for example Москва is [mɐˈskva] and not [mɐskˈva] and Ростов is [rɐˈstof] and not [rɐsˈtof]

but for example Иркутск is [ɪrˈkutsk] and not [ɪˈrkutsk] LICA98 (talk) 02:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LICA98: The stress mark is placed according to phonology (even though we use phonetic, not phonemic transcription), not spelling. Basically, 'Иркутск' must be transcribed [ɪrˈkutsk] because no word can begin with the /rk/ combination in Russian, but 'Москва' and 'Ростов' can be transcribed [mɐˈskva, rɐˈstof] because Russian words can begin with /skv/ and /st/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:43, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: but what is the reason of it not being [mɐskˈva]? LICA98 (talk) 03:12, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LICA98: I've said it: because /skv/ is a possible syllable onset. If you can prove it's not, we should change the IPA to [mɐsˈkva]. Mr KEBAB (talk) 03:18, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: so you want to say that the ˈ should be as close to the previous vowel as it's possible without leaving a consonant combination with which no word can start with? LICA98 (talk) 03:27, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LICA98: I think that's a good description, yes. Mr KEBAB (talk) 03:28, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: Do you read Russian? You may google for основной закон слогораздела and закон восходящей звучности (I won't give you a particular link, there are a lot of materials, read any you like). --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:18, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: I mean I could try, but my Russian is rather poor and I read it like a snail. But I do recognize something like sonority hierarchy in the second name, if I'm not mistaken.

Was I wrong in anything I told LICA98? Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You were entirely correct, you just did not know how to say it properly, so I tried to help. Alright, I will know next time. There is not much about it in English, but maybe this will help[4].--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:39, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

there is эти listed for /e/ but it is pronounced /ɛ/

шея listed for /ə/ but я is pronounced /jə/ there

‿ and unstressed /ɵ/ can also be added LICA98 (talk) 17:44, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Э case and replaced э́ти with э́тика. Wiktionary has 2 sound-files: [5] . First one sounds like [e], and second — as [ɛ] (IMO, more common, so I added it here). The note says: «/e/ is realized as [e] before and between palatalized consonants»; but I'm not sure about abundance of „before“ case.

«Шея» is commented out as a temporal decision. And where can we find «unstressed /ɵ/»? Cёгу́н [sʲɵˈɡun]? It's probably the only one more or less known. As for the tie ‿ symbol, there is note 10 for this. Tacit Murky (talk) 10:50, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

the problem is that stressed э is always pronounced as /ɛ/ so it shouldn't be listed under /e/

unstressed /ɵ/: for example трёхэтажный, сёрфингист, самолётостроение

by ‿ I mean the symbol like in какой-то /kɐˈkoj‿tə/ LICA98 (talk) 17:12, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to sources, the pronunciation of stressed э depends on context. Russian phonology#front vowels goes into more detail. I'm not sure what purpose ‿ would have, since I don't know what it indicates in the example you've provided. Sources also explain that [ɵ] is an allophone that only occurs in stressed syllables. Do you have anything that contradicts this? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:07, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

in what word stressed э is not pronounced as ɛ?

read here: "The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the IPA"

I already provided: трёхэтажный, сёрфингист, самолётостроение LICA98 (talk) 07:31, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's Wikipedia, so you have to prove any claim with a reliable source (secondary one is preferred). (A secondary-stressed {ё} between soft consonants would be [ɵ], but that's a particularly rare and obscure case: самолётикостроение?) Undertie is rarely used in Russian language articles, so I see little point of mentioning it here. Tacit Murky (talk) 09:13, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

so if it's rare we can't mention it? /ʑː/ is almost obsolete and yet it is mentioned

besides undertie is not rare - it is used in words with -то, -нибудь, and -либо, as well as in some multiword expressions such as что ли or без толку LICA98 (talk) 12:10, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just that it's rare. It's pretty pointless. If two words are pronounced without a break, we can just transcribe them as one phonological word. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:04, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

that's like saying we don't need ː either as we can just write 2 letters instead

and you didn't answer in what word is stressed э not pronounced as /ɛ/? LICA98 (talk) 07:14, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've added the undertie. Secondary stressed [ɵ] is still stressed, and unstressed [ɵ] used only for weakly adopted loans like сёгу́н, so Russian phonetics are not fully applicable here. Tacit Murky (talk) 10:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the undertie. Maybe someone can explain what point it has that necessitates an additional symbol that readers have to learn. Let's get a consensus before we change things.

As for a word with [e], both э́ти and э́тика would qualify. According to our article on Russian phonology, "a following soft consonant raises it to close-mid [e]." The open-mid allophone may appear word-initially, but this is, according to the source cited, only before a hard consonant. The source, Jones and Ward (1969) specifically transcribes эти this way. If you would like to provide a more recent source that says otherwise, feel free to share. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:29, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, it was Jones&Ward (1969) who claimed about э=[ɛ]: «a following soft consonant raises it to close-mid [e]». Indeed, it was quite common at those days not only to hear that way, but also read in casual correspondence «ето(т)/ета/ети» etc. (even older „rural speak“ phonetic spelling was «енто(т)/ента/енти»), graphically and phonetically replacing initial э. Today, however, this pronounce (with initial [je-]) is almost extinct, as more words (mostly loans) are pronounced with a clear [ɛ], even if it's not initial and not following always hard ж/ш/ц. But you are right, we need a source. I thought, Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015) could have mention that… Tacit Murky (talk) 12:36, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it doesn't look like they talk about that level of detail. Even the precise phonetic transcription provided isn't helpful, since the context we're looking for (word initial /e/ before a soft consonant) doesn't occur. The issue of Jones & Ward's age comes up every once in a while. So far, neither I nor anyone else has come forth with anything more recent that contradicts them. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

about the undertie: I already explained what is the point of it, just saying it's pointless is not an argument

эти этика both pronounced with /ɛ/ LICA98 (talk) 22:08, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure I understand your argument. I'm just not convinced. Is there some phonological process that the undertie conveys? Is there phonetic information that might be useful to the reader that simply omitting a space wouldn't accomplish more cleanly? Help me out here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

can you read? it clearly says "used to represent linking (absence of a break) where only one stressed syllable occurs across words or word parts"

just hoking "pointless" doesn't make sense LICA98 (talk) 08:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@LICA98: You can stop the WP:EDITWAR, you know. Just because you revert us it doesn't mean that you "win", you still need a consensus to include it in the guide.

I do see it as pointless. The absence of word stress is conveyed both by the absence of the stress mark and perhaps by the quality of the vowel(s) in any given word. If they're only of the [ɪ, ʊ, ə, ɐ] type, it means that it's unstressed. Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[kɐˈkoj tə] and [pɐ ˈsutʲɪ] are perfect examples of what I'm talking about. There's literally zero need for the undertie in such contexts. Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:14, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

so you wanna say that in all articles in wiktionary they are wrong because they include it?

and with the same "logic" you can remove ː as well as you can just write 2 letters instead LICA98 (talk) 11:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Use of the symbol isn't wrong or phonetically inaccurate. It's just unnecessary. We're trying to keep this guide as simple as we can without losing information. I would be fine with replacing ː with doubled consonants, which is how Russian was transcribed for a while. But using ː isn't that outlandish and is a common symbol in other IPA guides. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:29, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

double standards

if the tie was unnecessary it wouldn't be used in the first place LICA98 (talk) 19:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yet you can't provide a meaningful reason to use it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:43, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I did, it's you who can't provide a meaningful reason not to use it LICA98 (talk) 09:34, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I've done that as well. If that's all you care to share for your rationale, then I remain unconvinced. I maintain that the information the undertie is designed to convey is more cleanly and simply conveyed without the undertie with the methods I've articulated above. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 13:59, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

only thing you've done is repeating "unnecessary" and "pointless" LICA98 (talk) 15:58, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've done more than that. And I've even prompted you to elaborate on your perspective with direct questions, which you have only answered by repeating yourself. This conversation is going nowhere. Unless you have something more to say, I think it's good to end it here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:19, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

me: "The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the IPA"

you: pointless unnecessary

me: it's used often with postfixes and multiword expressions

you: unnecessarypointless LICA98 (talk) 08:30, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Part 2

The only well-known usage of undertie I remember is in French where it is necessary to show liaison (I'm pretty sure historically this sign actually got into the IPA from transcriptions of French). I see no point of this for Russian as there are no similar processes involved.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For [e]: you all just needed to read the sources given. Timberlake explains this explicitly on page 35 of his book, so there were no need to allege the "outdatedness" of Jones&Ward (even if it's true in many ways, but not here). Tacit Murky was not correct with ети/енти/etc. Let's not to confuse Latin and Russian letters here. Probably the prosthetic /j-/ may have had something with the fronted pronunciation of the vowel, but clearly this is not the indication of that frontedness, neither the absence of /j-/ in modern speech is an indication that the vowel is not fronted.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

what do you mean by "read the sources given"? and you didn't give an example word where stressed э is not pronounced /ɛ/ LICA98 (talk) 08:30, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

LICA, they did give example words, as have I. Your failure to accept the arguments and evidence of other uses is getting into WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT territory, which is disruptive. If you don't change your behavior, you're going to get reported.

User:Любослов, feel free to edit Russian phonology section with Timberlake in mind. If anything, it would be nice to augment the older sources with newer ones for cases like this where editors claim that Jones & Ward might be indicating outdated pronunciations. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:24, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I already proved that those words (этика, эти) are pronounced with /ɛ/ and not /e/ LICA98 (talk) 19:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You've literally proved nothing.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk)

эти этика LICA98 (talk) 21:49, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have nothing to add substantial, as this page seems alright to me now. The question is not about adding something new, but deleting.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon, but I can't confuse «Latin and Russian letters» by using only Russian ones. Initial [e-]/[je-]/[jen-] (for isolated pronounce) in these pronouns is the old-style speech, still occurring today, but considered non-literate. IMO, Jones&Ward would be correct, saying: «a following soft consonant raises it (/e/) to close-mid [e]» in fluent speech, when preceding word ends with a soft consonant — i.e. both /CʲeCʲ/ and /Cʲ·eCʲ/ cases end up in [Cʲ(·)eCʲ]; OTOH, phrase-initial /eCʲ/ would be [ɛCʲ] (see «эй» and «шесть»), just like cross-word /C·eCʲ/ is [C·ɛCʲ]. Once again, we have found that a morphophonetic rule is working across words; nothing new here. Moreover, cross-word influence may be stronger and render /e/=[e] even with the hard consonant following: «кинь эти мячи́» („throw these balls“) and «кинь э́тот мяч» („throw this ball“) both should have [-nʲ·e-]. Tacit Murky (talk) 17:21, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you've literally said that only in the past they pronounced [et-] for the эт- pronouns, and this was why they even wrote е(н)т-. In fact, and you know that, in Russian there is no way to discriminate [e] and [ɛ] in writing, so they as well could not do this either, writing е (Cyrillic) would not do the trick (note е(н)тот, that is before a hard consonant as well). The pronunciation with prosthetic [j-] (and further epenthetic [-n-]) and hence writing е(н)т- has had nothing to do with the frontedness or the openness of the vowel. It is rather a trace of some ancient variation between Slavic *e- and *je-. In modern speech the vowel is fronted as proved by Timberlake (or you may read any modern Russian sources you like, you'll find the same). Timberlake gives an example о мэре that is exactly after a hard consonant.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:03, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, «there is no way to discriminate [e] and [ɛ] in writing», but there is a difference between initial «э» [ɛ-] and «е» [je-]. So pronouncing ['etə] may present [e] as the allophone of /e/ (outdated dialectical variation), but pronouncing ['jetə] would be an attempt to „normalize“ it among other phonological rules of Russian, hence written form «ето». But did Timberlake concluded about «о мэ́ре» and «о ме́ре» to have the same pronounce for the stressed vowel? Tacit Murky (talk) 02:01, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I see two problems here: first, let's remember that allophones are written within square brackets [...], not slashes /.../ which indicate phonemes. It's a very important difference. Russian has one mid front phoneme of unmarked height that is typically written /e/, but you can also encounter /ɛ/. Whether you choose to write it as the former or as the latter has zero impact on the actual phonetic realization, it's just an abstract symbol.

The second problem is that, at least according to Jones & Ward, Russian has five allophones of /e/, which are [e, ë, e̞, ɛ, ɛ̈] (close-mid front, close-mid near-front, mid front, open-mid front and open-mid near-front). This guide transcribes first 3 as [e] and the rest as [ɛ]. The fact that we would transcribe этика and эти as [ˈetʲɪkə] and [ˈetʲɪ] doesn't mean that the vowel is close-mid in these words, it means that it's higher (true-mid rather than close-mid) than the genuinely open-mid [ɛ] in жест and э́тот, in which /e/ has no contact with soft consonants.

Now, there's a question: is what Jones & Ward say about the allophones of /e/ also outdated? I remember that Yanushevskaya & Buncic say that /e/ is somewhat raised in contact with soft consonants (or between them? I can't remember the exact quote). So Aeusoes1 might be right that it's about time to update this page and Russian phonology. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Problem one: what do we define as "outdated"? How recent the work must be to pass for "not outdated"? Year 2018? English sources we have very few, but there are enough Russian sources which say the same "outdated" statement. I'm alright if somebody does not make the vowel fronted or refuse to/cannot hear the difference, but what about the Russian people who do (even if they are a little "outdated", I mean not children or teenagers who may indeed be in the process of changing Russian speech, but we have even less information about it).

Problem two: what we should decide is to what general group - [e] or [ɛ] - to assign the fronted variant of э-. Is it front/close enough to be within the [e] group, or is it back/open enough to be within the [ɛ] group? I'm for the former for the reasons I've explained. Plus it seems the rule "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: I don't know. It's an open question without an easy answer.

We sort of already did, probably years ago. We transcribe it with [e] and I'm positive that it should stay that way. EDIT: Apparently we don't - see below. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, it would be more precise to transcribe [ˈe̞tʲɪkə] and [ˈe̞tʲɪ] (or better: [ɛ̝], which is exactly «somewhat raised») — yes, but it wouldn't be so convenient for thousands of other pages with phonetic transcription. And because we are digging so deeply, more often personal speech variations would arise, as well as scholar's own presumptions, even when using sonograms, rather then „playing by ear“. Making transcriptions „too narrow“ (but strictly following some linguist' opinion) render them incompatible with other linguist' work because of minute variations. So, it wouldn't be possible to claim «what Jones & Ward say about the allophones of /e/ (is) also outdated», because it's not possible (and there is no reason) to reproduce their work completely for a fact-checking; other linguists will differ in tiny details for sure (unless citing older work). Tacit Murky (talk) 02:01, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: I'm afraid you misunderstood my message. I'm not advocating for using either [e̞] nor [ɛ̝] (which isn't better than [e̞], they mean practically the same) here. It's too narrow a transcription. What I'm saying is that as of now, [e̞]/[ɛ̝] is transcribed as [e]. EDIT: Apparently it isn't - see below.

So, it wouldn't be possible to claim «what Jones & Ward say about the allophones of /e/ (is) also outdated», because it's not possible (and there is no reason) to reproduce their work completely for a fact-checking; other linguists will differ in tiny details for sure (unless citing older work). - that's not true. We know that J&W analyzed standard Russian as spoken in 1969 (or 1968, etc.). This is enough to know what type of speakers you should be looking for. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the impression that we were transcribing [e̞] as [ɛ]. That's how it's done at Russian phonology. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:51, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeusoes1: Sorry, you're right. According to Russian phonology, [e] is used before and between soft consonants, but not after them, where [ɛ̝] occurs. We indeed transcribe the true-mid allophone with [ɛ], not [e], and I think it can stay that way. If it ain't broke... Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

enough to know what type of speakers you should be looking for — Well, most of those speakers are no longer alive. Modern ones speak differently, but that difference can be expressed mostly in the narrow transcription, which is what we are trying to avoid; so, reproducing J&W wouldn't help us much. If Timberlake is any better at this, we should be quoting him using more than 2 allophones, like adding [e̞] or [ɛ̝]. I wouldn't be so bold to do that. Tacit Murky (talk) 15:09, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: There probably exist thousands and thousands recordings of them that can be analyzed. No offense, but I'm starting to feel like Captain Obvious. I mean, what's the difference between analyzing a recording you made and a recording you didn't make?

I thought it was clear that this discussion is *not* about adding [e̞] or [ɛ̝] to this guide, but about the way of transcribing the allophone of /e/ in words such as предок, where /e/ follows a soft consonant and precedes a hard one.

But you're assuming that just because normal transcription of Russian uses only the symbols [ɛ] and [e] that those are the only allophones of /e/ that exist and that their quality is that of cardinal [ɛ] and [e]. Let's not mistake Russian vowels for cardinal vowels. They may or may not be the same thing. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by this discussion and the previous ones we've had, I'm afraid that you're not the best person to comment on the minutiae of the IPA transcription of Russian vowels. Some of the mistakes you're making are amateur ones. Sorry, but that's how I see it. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:05, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can it occur in that context? Russian phonology#Vowel mergers is a bit vague. Does the closeness of the word-final [ə] assimilate to the openness of the word-initial [ɐ]? In other words, is LoveVanPersie right or is my transcription correct? Thanks in advance. Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:26, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, it looks like LVP was right after all. Jones & Ward say that [ɐ] occurs in phrases such as [pɐ ɐdnɐˈmu] and [nɐ ɐstrɐˈvax]. But are those the same grammatical contexts as human names? I'm not so sure about that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:41, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your fix seems to be proven by stand-alone (or phrase-final) pronounce [mɐˈrʲinə], as in other words with unstressed {-на} = [-nə]. However, hiatus can occur across words, so — yes, there can be [ɐ·ɐ], like «А Анто́н до́ма?». Because openness-closeness depend on the speed and (especially) loudness of the speech, word-final [ə] may be assimilated to the openness of the word-initial [ɐ], but that can't be the rule. Tacit Murky (talk) 13:15, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Thanks. So, are you saying that my transcription is better/more universal or that both are equally correct? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would transcribe it like LVP, but that's based off of Jones & Ward. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:46, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I can't decide for you, but if we can postulate (in the Phonetics article), that not only «hiatus can occur across words», but that rule has a priority over «word-final [ə]», then [ɐ·ɐ] sequence is correct. But you'd be the one to be asking for sources for that, too, right? ;) Tacit Murky (talk) 15:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Sourcing would not only help us adjudicate this, but also help us improve the Russian phonology article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:38, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My two kopecks: there is no middle dot in the IPA. The syllabification is shown with simple period.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's about word-breaks. Middle dot is a good separator, otherwise it should be NBSP, not just a space. Tacit Murky (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Could you enlighten me then what the IPA recommends for such situations? I could not find any, except for undertie. So the proper way must be [ɐ‿ɐ] ("absence of a brake", as they say). Surely not middle dot.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: I'm not Tacit, but it is the undertie. The middle dot is perhaps used to distinguish stop-fricative sequences from affricates (when the transcriber doesn't use tie-bars), but I'm not sure if it's an official part of the IPA. It probably isn't. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, there is no way to differ mid-word and cross-word underties. It's good to have something to denote absence of a sound-brake, but presence of a word-brake. Tacit Murky (talk) 00:56, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: Underties aren't used in a mid-word position. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:33, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All right, I'm out of arguments, but I still prefer the mid-dot, because it so easy to type it on my keyboard, and it's used in math :) Interpunct article says: «Various dictionaries use the interpunct (in this context, sometimes called hyphenation point) to indicate syllabification within a word with multiple syllables. There is also a separate Unicode character, U+2027 ‧ hyphenation point.» Tacit Murky (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tacit Murky: They do, but in orthographic forms. I've never seen it used in IPA, at least in that context. With that being said, I understood what you meant so there's no problem. Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:19, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]