# Ukrainian: ми



## Beobachter

Can someone tell me whether or not Ukrainian "ми" is pronounced EXACTLY the same as Russian "Мы"?


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## papillon

Depends on the region. In the East (Kharkov, Donetsk etc.) where there is a large numeber of Russian speakers, they are the same. In the West, I find that it sounds a bit softer (Polish influence?), maybe ~20 % closer to what would be [mi].


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## übermönch

Not exactly, but very similar. The Ukrainian и is something between the R. и and ы - try saying an ы but with your lips stretched as if it was an и!


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## Beobachter

Well, while we're on the subject, how exactly would you compare the pronunciation of Polish "y" to Ukrainian "и" and Russian "ы"?


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## Anatoli

übermönch said:


> Not exactly, but very similar. The Ukrainian и is something between the R. и and ы - try saying an ы but with your lips stretched as if it was an и!



I don't understand the meaning of this symbol R in this case. Please explain.

Polish "y", Ukrainian "и", Belarusian and Russian "ы" sound about 90-95% the same to my ear. These sound doesn't exist in Chezh, Slovak and South Slavic languages, IMHO.
It's called "close central unrounded vowel".

The IPA symbol for this sound is "*ɨ*".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel

I advise to pronounce it like Russian мы, Polish my - East or West. The regional difference is hardly noticeable and there's no special symbol or description for it, IMHO. A foreign non-Alavic learner shouldn't worry anyway. Some people have difficulty achieving 100% accuracy on this sound.

Maybe we need a Polish or west Ukrainian speaker to record us their pronunciation of my/ми and then compare it with the Russian sounds.


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## Crescent

Beobachter said:


> Well, while we're on the subject, how exactly would you compare the pronunciation of Polish "y" to Ukrainian "и" and Russian "ы"?



Hello there!  I'm afraid I don't know any Polish, so I can't tell you that one, but I can confirm that the Ukrainian и is the same as the Russian ы by sound. 

P.S. The Russian и is written as i in Ukrainian!


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## Thomas1

Anatoli said:


> I don't understand the meaning of this symbol R in this case. Please explain.


I guess it santds for _Russian_.



> Polish "y", Ukrainian "и", Belarusian and Russian "ы" sound about 90-95% the same to my ear. These sound doesn't exist in Chezh, Slovak and South Slavic languages, IMHO.
> It's called "close central unrounded vowel".
> 
> The IPA symbol for this sound is "*ɨ*".
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel
> 
> I advise to pronounce it like Russian мы, Polish my - East or West. The regional difference is hardly noticeable and there's no special symbol or description for it, IMHO. A foreign non-Alavic learner shouldn't worry anyway. Some people have difficulty achieving 100% accuracy on this sound.
> 
> Maybe we need a Polish or west Ukrainian speaker to record us their pronunciation of my/ми and then compare it with the Russian sounds.


I also thought Russian _мы_ and Polish _my_ sound (almost if not completely) identical, I never discern any difference (this is a practical observation not based upon scholastic phonetic comparison).

The article linked by you gives a nice combination:


> Polish: wy [vɨ] "you (plural)"
> [...]
> Russian: вы [vɨ] "you" (plural)


The second sound corresponds to the one in question. 

It doesn't says anything about Ukrainian but I'd give some credit to Anatoli on this one. 

Tom

Edit: Am I the only one who sees only squares instead of phonetic symbol of _y/ы_?


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## Beobachter

Thomas1 said:


> Edit: Am I the only one who sees only squares instead of phonetic symbol of _y/ы_?


 
I also can only see the squares.

And I see that linked article says that Romanian _î _is the same sound, so now I will post a separate question on the "Other Languages" forum to inquire how close Romanian _î_ is to Russian _ы._


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## papillon

Anatoli said:


> I advise to pronounce it like Russian мы, Polish my - East or West. The regional difference is hardly noticeable





Crescent said:


> ... but I can confirm that the Ukrainian и is the same as the Russian ы by sound.



Now I must make a disclaimer that Anatoli, Crescent and myself are from exactly the same city in the mainly Russian-speaking portion of Ukraine. Indeed, when we learn Ukrainian in school or at home, we're simply told, as Crescent said, that Ukrainian и is the same as the Russian ы. Indeed, everyone in this area will pronounce it exactly like that. 

The problem is, if we happen to travel to certain portions of Western Ukraine, this pronunciation is what gives us away as non-locals. Particular areas that come to mind are Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankovsk. *Not softening* our ы sound is one of the telltale signs of somebody from the East. I couldn't find too much information on this topic (other than personal experience), but here is the Wiki article on Ukrainian (in Russian  ). If you go to the Графика и фонетика section and then scroll down to "буква и" you will see:

буква *и* произносится близко к русскому |ы| или средне между |и| и |ы|
 Now, I agree that the difference is not so great, but it is noticeable and real. I agree with Anatoli that the official pronunciation may be pretty close to the Russian sound, although this may change given the current trends...


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## Anatoli

Beobachter said:


> I also can only see the squares.
> 
> And I see that linked article says that Romanian _î _is the same sound, so now I will post a separate question on the "Other Languages" forum to inquire how close Romanian _î_ is to Russian _ы._


In Russian we say Рум*ы*ния, which sounds exactly like Romanian "România"

â and î sound identically in Romanian.


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## Anatoli

papillon said:


> Now I must make a disclaimer that Anatoli, Crescent and myself are from exactly the same city in the mainly Russian-speaking portion of Ukraine. Indeed, when we learn Ukrainian in school or at home, we're simply told, as Crescent said, that Ukrainian и is the same as the Russian ы. Indeed, everyone in this area will pronounce it exactly like that.
> 
> The problem is, if we happen to travel to certain portions of Western Ukraine, this pronunciation is what gives us away as non-locals. Particular areas that come to mind are Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankovsk. *Not softening* our ы sound is one of the telltale signs of somebody from the East. I couldn't find too much information on this topic (other than personal experience), but here is the Wiki article on Ukrainian (in Russian  ). If you go to the Графика и фонетика section and then scroll down to "буква и" you will see:
> 
> буква *и* произносится близко к русскому |ы| или средне между |и| и |ы|
> Now, I agree that the difference is not so great, but it is noticeable and real. I agree with Anatoli that the official pronunciation may be pretty close to the Russian sound, although this may change given the current trends...


Thanks for clarifying, Papillon.

I am aware of this difference and have talked to West Ukrainians and Polish people, so although I am influenced by my native Russian and East Ukrainian pronunciation, I do mention they are very close (it means not identical). If I were to define the Polish - West Ukrainian pronunciation, I would say that "_буква *и* произносится близко к русскому |ы| или средне между |и| и |ы|_" is exaggerated but for a Russian speaker some indication that you have to soften _ы_ a bit when speaking Polish. Well, IPA system doesn't differentiate them, I don't think we need to be picky either.


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## papillon

Anatoli said:


> ...If  I were to define the Polish - West Ukrainian pronunciation, I would say that "_буква *и* произносится близко к русскому |ы| или средне между |и| и |ы|_" is exaggerated ...



I agree, that's why in my first post I gave it a "20% softening shift" toward _", to indicate that's it's definitely a very moderate change._


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## Jana337

Where do you see squares, please? 

Jana


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## papillon

Jana337 said:


> Where do you see squares, please?


All looks well to me!


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## Beobachter

Jana337 said:


> Where do you see squares, please?
> 
> Jana


 
In Reply #5, this line: 



> The IPA symbol for this sound is "*ɨ*".


 
I see a square in quotation marks, instead of the IPA symbol.


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## Anatoli

It's an i crossed in the middle, not sure what encoding it is in.


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## übermönch

Anatoli said:


> The IPA symbol for this sound is "*ɨ*".
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel



 Well, the symbol for the Ukrainian и is [*ɪ*].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_alphabet

I don't know if it's different in regional versions of the language, but the *ɨ* sound would complicate the prounciation considering how often it appears.


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## Jana337

Beobachter said:


> In Reply #5, this line:
> 
> I see a square in quotation marks, instead of the IPA symbol.


OK, I would have fixed it but most people do not have a problem, so it must be weird settings on your computer.  Please click on View in your browser and try to select another encoding. 

Jana


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## Anatoli

übermönch said:


> Well, the symbol for the Ukrainian и is [*ɪ*].
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_alphabet
> 
> I don't know if it's different in regional versions of the language, but the *ɨ* sound would complicate the prounciation considering how often it appears.


Strange. On the same site there's a link to a Ukrainian page with symbol *ɨ *for* и. *Maybe some linguists think the Ukrainian и (дим) is like English i (pin). At least, the West Ukrainian.
http://www.vesna.org.ua/txt/biloust/UkrIPA.pdf

If this is true, then the Ukrainian phonology is different from both Polish, Russian and Belarusian for this sound (close central unrounded vowel). I can't confirm this with my personal experience.


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## Beobachter

Jana337 said:


> Please click on View in your browser and try to select another encoding.
> 
> Jana


 
Can someone suggest an encoding that might work? I have tried many and none of them allow me to view the IPA symbols here. On the other hand, I see them with no trouble on the original Wikipedia pages.


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## Jana337

Beobachter said:


> Can someone suggest an encoding that might work? I have tried many and none of them allow me to view the IPA symbols here. On the other hand, I see them with no trouble on the original Wikipedia pages.


I tested a couple of encodings in IE and all worked. Try Unicode, for example.

Jana


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## Anatoli

When I open http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel and check encoding it's Unicode UTF-8. If you're using Windows XP, then support for this encoding should be there already. You might be simply missing the font on your PC.


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## Thomas1

Anatoli said:


> When I open http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel and check encoding it's Unicode UTF-8. If you're using Windows XP, then support for this encoding should be there already. You might be simply missing the font on your PC.


This is strange. It doesn't work on my computer even when I change the encoding into Unicode UTF-8. None of the phonetic symbols are displayed even though I can see them on the source sites.

I copied the IPA symbol for y and paste it here ɨ can you see it? I see only a square. The thing becomes even more weird since I checked the encoding on Wiki site (cited above by Anatoli) and the encoding is set as Unicode UTF-8 but when I set it for the WR sites it doesn't help at all.  

Tom


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## übermönch

Thomas, but you see Anatoli's signature anyway, right? Could it be that you use IE?


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## Thomas1

Yes, I can see Anatoli's signature and use IE. Why, could IE be the perpetrator of the whole mess?

I've just changed the encoding into Unicode UTF-8 and to my amazement the site works even worse than beofre it. I have French as a set language in the WR forums and all the diacritics appear as Chinese(?) signs as in "Posté °ar"    I wonder if Beobachter solved the problem?

EDIT: now when the encoding went back to its, I think, normal setting, that is West Europe (ISO) I see a circle instead of _p_. 

Tom


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## übermönch

Well, i just opened the page in IE6 and found out it behaves just as Beobachter described. A mess. Leave it for good.  Firefox doesn't bite, nor does Opera!


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## Beobachter

Thomas1 said:


> I wonder if Beobachter solved the problem?


 
No, the problem persists, but I'm still using IE. I had the same experience that Tom reports. I guess it really could be an IE problem. As long as I can see the symbols SOMEWHERE (e.g., on the Wikipedia pages), I'm not going to worry about it for now. Later I'll try to experiment with Firefox.


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## Anatoli

Beobachter, please also check - Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Advanced (tab) -> Select a language to match the language version of the non-Unicode programs you want to use.

Sometimes it messes up things, try changing temporary to English (need a reboot.


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