# в январе [pronunciation]



## Encolpius

Good morning, do you pronounce я in the expression в январе with [ji] or with _? 

A/ [vjinvare]
B/ [vinvare]

Thank you in advance and have a beautiful Sunday. Encolpius_


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## Sobakus

A - /vjanvarʲe/ (the pronunciation of unstressed /ja/ may vary).

One way to think of this is there's an invisible hard sign at the end of all words that end in a hard consonant, which was written in the pre-revolutionary orthography: въ январѣ. This hard sign is now written only after prefixes and in most other compound words: въезд, объяснить, подъязычный, трёхъязычный... but not иняз (< факультет иностранных языков), which is pronounced as инъяз /injaz/, not /inʲaz/ - because what logic? The hyphen results in the same pronunciation as the hard sign: плод-ягода /plodjagoda/.
On practice, the contrast between _вьй_ /vʲj/ and _въй_ /vj/ isn't strict and you will hear both pronunciations, especially if the consonant isn't dental - but never with л: пол-яблока = полъяблока != польяблока.
When _и_ follows a hard consonant, it's always pronounced as _ы_ and spelled like that in compound words: безынтересный.
To pronounce /vynvarʲe/ or /vinvarʲe/ the initial /j/ needs to disappear, and this never happens. /j/ is only relaxed/elided between vowels (ая, ие etc).


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> the initial /j/ needs to disappear, and this never happens.


It *does* frequently happen in the absolute beginning and after vowels. Not after consonants, though (and "в январе" is a single phonetic word).
Also there seem to be some lexicalized droppings regardless of the position (like in "ещё"~"ищё", where "в ещё" may result in "выщё" for many speakers).


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## Encolpius

Thank for the interesting comment. I am a little bit surprised you write [vjanvarje], how about [vjinvarje]? Is the reason you are from the North? I have learnt я in unstressed position is [ji] but I heard something about Russian dialects.


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Is the reason you are from the North?


I bet the reason is just that most Russians have great trouble differentiating various unstressed vowels. 
Dialects with either okanye or yakanye are highly marginal as far as the total amount of Russian speakers is concerned. Most of the time it's just a more or less standard city koine with only minor phonetic differences.
Strictly in IPA that would be [vʲjɪnvɐ'ɾʲɛ] or [vjɪnvɐ'ɾʲɛ] for most speakers (the automatic palatalization before /j/ is highly individual).


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> It *does* frequently happen in the absolute beginning and after vowels. Not after consonants, though (and "в январе" is a single phonetic word).
> Also there seem to be some lexicalized droppings regardless of the position (like in "ещё"~"ищё", where "в ещё" may result in "выщё" for many speakers).


I would argue that the test for whether it actually disappears is precisely adding a consonant before it - ещё~ищё is a perfect illustration. I doubt you will hear изда for езда or ийцо for яйцо except in very relaxed speech, and I personally wouldn't confuse the learners with this when they just want to know the standard pronunciation.


Encolpius said:


> Thank for the interesting comment. I am a little bit surprised you write [vjanvarje], how about [vjinvarje]? Is the reason you are from the North? I have learnt я in unstressed position is [ji] but I heard something about Russian dialects.


I specifically explained that "the pronunciation of unstressed /ja/ may vary". What I use in /vjanvarʲe/ is the phonemic transcription (phonemes); square brackets show the phonetic transcription (sounds), which I decided against for the reason mentioned above.

Russian has a two-level vowel shift system, phonemic neutralisation /ja~je/ followed by phonetic reduction /e/ > [ɪ, ə, Ø]. The degree of phonetic reduction depends on how long the vowel is pronounced. For example, in careful pronunciation январь shows neutralisation to /je/ [je], but no reduction. In general Russian avoids [ji] both in spelling (мои, not мойи) and in pronunciation because [j] and [_i_] is the same sound, the difference being that one is a semivowel and the other a full vowel.

I'd like to ask you, Encolpius: from your transcriptions it appears that you think that _ре_ is actually pronounced [rje] with 2 consonants; actually it's pronounced [rʲe] with 1 soft consonant. Is this due to sloppy transcription or did you really mean that? Because [rje] is written _ръе._ I've seen people who already spoke decent Russian but were unaware that soft consonants are completely different from the consonant [j], which can follow both soft and hard consonants.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> I would argue that the test for whether it actually disappears is precisely adding a consonant before it


How exactly can it be a test for positional phonetic disappearance when you clearly change the position in the first place?  It could only indicate the presence of /й/ on the morphopophonological level, which isn't very informative as far as actual phonetics goes.


Sobakus said:


> I doubt you will hear изда for езда or ийцо for яйцо except in very relaxed speech


I would actually *expect* to hear that after vowels, except in artificially clear speech (maybe not in the absolute beginning, though). However, these words undoubtedly contain /*й/ for real (which is unsurprising, since its presence is constantly verified even by other word forms) - something which may be not always the case for "ещё".


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> How exactly can it be a test for positional phonetic disappearance when you clearly change the position in the first place?  It could only indicate the presence of /й/ on the morphopophonological level, which isn't very informative as far as actual phonetics goes.


I don't think there's positional phonetic disappearance word-initially - I think it happens on the phonemic level in some high frequency words. Word-initial is not a weak position and Russian prefers syllables with onset. Between vowels, there's relaxation but complete disappearance happens only when you get a single long vowel or diphtong (when _и_ becomes non-syllabic) as a result.  Otherwise a weak glide remains to separate the vowels.


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## Encolpius

Sobakus said:


> I'd like to ask you, Encolpius: from your transcriptions it appears that you think that _ре_ is actually pronounced [rje] with 2 consonants; actually it's pronounced [rʲe] with 1 soft consonant. Is this due to sloppy transcription or did you really mean that? Because [rje] is written _ръе._ I've seen people who already spoke decent Russian but were unaware that soft consonants are completely different from the consonant [j], which can follow both soft and hard consonants.


Of course it is merely a sloppy transcription.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> I don't think there's positional phonetic disappearance word-initially


I'm not sure about the absolute beginning (not quite equivalent to "word-initially"), but it does diappear after vowels. Unstressed jV combinations after other vowels are generally unstable in Russian, tending to monophtongize in some way. And for [*jɪ] it would be pretty much equivalent to the disappearance of [j].


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## Nikined

I pronounce it [vjinvare]


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## pimlicodude

Sobakus said:


> I don't think there's positional phonetic disappearance word-initially - I think it happens on the phonemic level in some high frequency words. Word-initial is not a weak position and Russian prefers syllables with onset. Between vowels, there's relaxation but complete disappearance happens only when you get a single long vowel or diphtong (when _и_ becomes non-syllabic) as a result.  Otherwise a weak glide remains to separate the vowels.


Question: can его and её lose their initial yods?

Weak medial yod is a noticeable feature of Russian in comparison with Ukrainian, eg. Украина vs. Україна where there is an additional /j/ in Ukrainian.
Следующий>>> Следущий
Проект>>> Проэкт

The transcription /əɪ̯ə/ rather than /əjə/ captures the not-fully-y-sound in -ая. But I'm not sure it is only -ая that shows this trend. Делаю and all others seem to me to have /ɪ̯/ too.


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## Awwal12

pimlicodude said:


> Следующий>>> Следущий
> Проект>>> Проэкт


I must stress that these pronunciations are basically lexical (cf. бедствующий and проехать, where the same fragments are pronounced differently), even though the fact that they exist is somewhat related.


pimlicodude said:


> The transcription /əɪ̯ə/ rather than /əjə/ captures the not-fully-y-sound in -ая.


Frankly, I'd transcribe it simply as something like [əə̟]. At least I cannot pinpoint any narrowing followed by a wider opening there. On spectrograms it often even looks like a slightly fronted monophthong.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> I'm not sure about the absolute beginning (not quite equivalent to "word-initially"), but it does diappear after vowels. Unstressed jV combinations after other vowels are generally unstable in Russian, tending to monophtongize in some way. And for [*jɪ] it would be pretty much equivalent to the disappearance of [j].


I don't disagree about between vowels. I'm talking about the absolute-initial position.


pimlicodude said:


> Question: can его and её lose their initial yods?


Yes, especially _иё _is practically the standard pronunciation - not so with _иво._ This points to dissimilatory deletion (we don't like sequences of /j/).


pimlicodude said:


> Weak medial yod is a noticeable feature of Russian in comparison with Ukrainian, eg. Украина vs. Україна where there is an additional /j/ in Ukrainian.


This particular case is an instance of /ji/ avoidance, which is totally regular.


pimlicodude said:


> Следующий>>> Следущий
> 
> Проект>>> Проэкт


I agree with Awwal12 that these are lexical, they don't contain /j(u)/ on the moprhophonemic level.


pimlicodude said:


> The transcription /əɪ̯ə/ rather than /əjə/ captures the not-fully-y-sound in -ая. But I'm not sure it is only -ая that shows this trend. Делаю and all others seem to me to have /ɪ̯/ too.


It doesn't depend on the vowels involved; there's already strong vowel colouring by palatal/velar consonants in Russian, giving palatalised/fronted vowels ä, ö, ü, ë, and this enables the relaxation/deletion of the colouring yod. You can look it in terms of the yod originally being epenthetic (like the corresponding epenthetic в- [w] before back vowels which is mostly dialectal now), and while other Slavic languages fully phonologised it, in Russian it still comes and goes subject to optimality conditions.


Awwal12 said:


> Frankly, I'd transcribe it simply as something like [əə̟].


Not a chance it sounds like that. The schwa in Russian is the result of extreme shortening; double-vowel endings are never shortened to such an extent. Listen to feliutn's and especially ToniSaku's demonstration of how a full-duration schwa sounds like, to us it's a speech mannerism - a feature of some pre-revolutionary pronunciations perhaps.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Not a chance it sounds like that.


Seems that the ending is not sufficiently fronted.


Sobakus said:


> listen to how a full-duration schwa sounds like


I'm familiar with Komi (where the mid central vowel is often stressed), thank you.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Seems that the ending is not sufficiently fronted.


I pronounce it essentially with the General American vowel of _bit__._ Front it any more and it will become _быстрой._


Awwal12 said:


> I'm familiar with Komi (where the mid central vowel is often stressed), thank you.


I'm glad about that, but this personal fact doesn't really contribute to our discussion. I provided the recording as an illustration and an ancor to put everyone on the same page about how a full schwa sounds like. Your reply makes it look like you're offended by that demonstration: "thank you [but I dont need your demonstrations]". Of course you do - firstly, two people being familiar with something doesn't guarantee that they're thinking about the same thing, and wrong assumptions is a prime cause of disagreements - most especially with subjective phonetic descriptions. Secondly, we're specifically looking for the unstressed position because we don't hear the stressed schwa as a Russian vowel at all. Finally, your transcription of -ая leads me to believe that your familiarity with Komi didn't help you in this case. In my opinion there are no full schwas in that ending - both vowels are significantly lower and fronted, and they may turn into a single long, somewhat centralised low front vowel. But there are no long schwas (the sound of the thinking эээ...) in standard Russian.

One example of how to reply to my illustration productively is "I agree that this is the full schwa and I pronounce it in -ая - here's a recording of how I pronounce it", or "I don't think this is a schwa - here's a Komi recording with a real unstressed full schwa, and here's a Russian recording where -ая is pronounced with the same sound".


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## Encolpius

Good morning,  you have made me feel you are great experts in pronunciation and your comments have aroused new questions. 



Awwal12 said:


> I bet the reason is just that *most Russians have great trouble differentiating various unstressed vowel*s.



What do you mean, Awwal?


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> What do you mean, Awwal?


I mean since in most unstressed positions many phonological contrasts become irrelevant (sometimes even /u/ gets positionally affected, especially in certain southern dialects) and many automatic shifts occur, perceptional issues arise as well. Those unstressed positions form some sort of blind spots, where you may put many different vowel sounds without the speaker even noticing that. Let's consider the typical first pre-tonic position after a soft consonant (e.g. зал*е*те́ть). Sure when you actually pronounce [æ] there it will be normally noticed there at once, because you at least expect the vowel to be non-open. But [ɪ], [e], [ə̟]?.. On the other hand, when you have /*a/ on the phonemic level in the same position (п*я*то́к), you may be not even aware you aren't actually pronounce [a]~[æ] there unless you actually attempt to do so and hear that something's off, as all the changes are entirely automatic.


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## Encolpius

I think similar things happen in English, too, you can say [ɪ] or [e] in some unstressed positions, but the English pronunciation is rather liberal, there are many correct possibilities, so you mean it is important if it is [ɪ], [e], [ə̟], right? Is the Russian pronunciation not so liberal? I think it might not be so liberal, and that could be an answer to my question on Gorbachev's accent.


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## Saltie

Encolpius said:


> Thank for the interesting comment. I am a little bit surprised you write [vjanvarje], how about [vjinvarje]? Is the reason you are from the North? I have learnt я in unstressed position is [ji] but I heard something about Russian dialects.


I'm not sure how your books show the transcription of Russian sounds, but I would write it as [vjanvar'e/vjinvar'e], I mean there's no [j]sound before the last vowel and I mark the soft (palatasied) consonant as " ' ".
As for the original question, I could even pronounce it as [vjenvar'e] without noticing that I did so. There are dialects that prefer this or that option in all words of the kind, but most speakers just don't care.


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## ahvalj

pimlicodude said:


> Question: can его and её lose their initial yods?
> 
> Weak medial yod is a noticeable feature of Russian in comparison with Ukrainian, eg. Украина vs. Україна where there is an additional /j/ in Ukrainian.
> Следующий>>> Следущий
> Проект>>> Проэкт


_Проект_ was actually often written _проэктъ _in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That's an example of the typical Russian confusion of the relationships between our _е_ and the foreign _e._ Since _je _is very rare in Latin, many people seeing that _e_ in _проектъ_ tended to pronounce it in a more foreign way, that is without _j,_ hence _проэкт._ A related problem is insertion of a redundant _Й_ in foreign names beginning with _je,_ so that _Yellen_ is transcribed as _Йеллен _(which doesn't change the pronunciation but apparently makes the word look more authentic and genuinely foreign). Conversely, people forget to add _Y_ when transcribing the Russian _е_ word-initially or after vowels, hence _Ekaterina,_ _Dostoevsky, Bologoe_ and countless other horrors.

_Ji_ has indeed lost its _j_ in Russian in the course of the last centuries: the yod only survives after consonants e. g. in _соловьи, воробьи, гостьи._ The etymological _йих, йими,_ _мойи, твойих, стойит _still can be heard from some old people, but this pronunciation seems to be on the verge of extinction.

In _следующий_ this loss of a syllable seems to be lexical, as explained above, though I'd say both pronunciations still exist ['slʲeduɕ:ij] and ['slʲeduüɕ:ij]. In proper participles this _ü_ is stable ['trʲebuüɕ:ij], not **['trʲebuɕ:ij]. 

P. S. Concerning the transliteration of _е_ as _e,_ recommended in the English practice. The Russian _е_ is actually a letter of the same kind as _я, ё, ю_ — that is, the one additionally denoting yotation or palatalization — and it has to be treated accordingly, so that, properly speaking, something like _перемещение_ has to be transliterated as _pyeryemyescheniye _(compare the regular _ie_ in Polish in similar cases).


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## Rosett

ahvalj said:


> Conversely, people forget to add _Y_ when transcribing the Russian _е_ word-initially or after vowels


Это зависит от метода транслитерации: немецкий, французский, милицейский, фонетический (и комбинации перечисленного), чьи результаты могут  разительно отличаться.


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## ahvalj

Rosett said:


> Это зависит от метода транслитерации: немецкий, французский, милицейский, фонетический (и комбинации перечисленного), чьи результаты могут  разительно отличаться.


Я согласен, только (а) 99,(9)% пишущих свои или чужие имена и фамилии понятия не имеют о существовании каких бы то ни было правил, (б) правила эти все более или менее ущербны (я отчасти написал об этом в постскриптуме): например, в наиболее распространённой ныне английской транслитерации игрек используется для трёх разных вещей: ï, j и ʲ — как, например, в слове _пятый / pyatyy_ [pʲatïj]… Одного моего старшего коллегу не пустили за границу в начале 90-х, поскольку приглашение пришло на _Zhilin,_ а в паспорте он был _Jiline_ (тогда транслитерировали по-французски).


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## Rosett

ahvalj said:


> (а) 99,(9)% пишущих свои или чужие имена и фамилии понятия не имеют о существовании каких бы то ни было правил, (б) правила эти все более или менее ущербны


Интернет кишит такими примерами, так что они скорее стали новой, сильно разветвлённой парадигмой, чем совокупностью исключений из старых правил. Уезжавший в конце 80-х Кушнир обнаружил свою фамилию в паспорте как _Couchnir_, а в водительском удостоверении стояло _Kushnir_. Пришлось ему, жертве лингвистики, заново сдавать экзамены на права. Над английской транслитерацией со многих русских фамилий в белорусских паспортах можно только рыдать, периодически всхлипывая. Хорошо ещё, что французскую к тому времени отменили.


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## Nikined

ahvalj said:


> в паспорте он был _Jiline_ (тогда транслитерировали по-французски).


Интересно, а почему не _Giline? _



Rosett said:


> Над английской транслитерацией со многих русских фамилий в белорусских паспортах можно только рыдать


Так у нас/них не английская транслитерация, а какая-то сборная из разных языков, от английской там, наверное, только "ш" и "ч"


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## Rosett

Nikined said:


> Интересно, а почему не _Giline? _


Тогда было бы _Гилин._


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## Nikined

Rosett said:


> Тогда было бы _Гилин._


По-французски было бы как раз Жилин. Вот _Guiline - _это Гилин.


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## Rosett

Nikined said:


> Интересно, а почему не _Giline? _
> 
> 
> Так у нас/них не английская транслитерация, а какая-то сборная из разных языков, от английской там, наверное, только "ш" и "ч"


В нынешней всё неоправданно усложнили, а неоднозначность прочтения осталась. Французская не была громоздкой, кроме букв _щ, ч, ю._


Nikined said:


> По-французски было бы как раз Жилин. Вот _Guiline - _это Гилин.


Это только, если читать по правилам французского языка. Но вся суть состояла в том, что правила чтения были другие. Именно так записывалась бы фамилия _Гилин_. Так, как написали вы, вообще в паспорте том быть не могло.
Вот как писалось по-советски на _французский манер:_
А - A, a
Б - B, b
В - V, v
Г - G, g
Д - D, d
Е, Ё - E, e
Ж - J, j
З - Z, z
И, Й - I, i
К - K, k
Л - L, l
М - M, m
Н - N, n
О - O, o
П - P, p
Р - R, r
С - S, s
Т - T, t
У - Ou, ou
Ф - F, f
Х - Kh, kh
Ц - Ts, ts
Ч - Tch, tch
Ш - Ch, ch
Щ - Chtch, chtch
Ы - Y, y
Э - E, e
Ю - Iou, iou
Я - Ia, ia
…
то есть, страдали только буквы _ё_, _э_, _й_, да после мужских фамилий на_ -ин_ дописывалось в конце _e_ (французское нечитаемое).
После этого меняли ещё дважды и каждый раз становилось всё хуже и хуже.


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## Nikined

Rosett said:


> только, если читать по правилам французского языка. Но вся суть состояла в том, что читать - одно, а понимать - другое. Именно так записывалась бы фамилия _Гилин_. Так, как написали вы, было бы в гражданском паспорте _Гуилин._


Буква "е" на конце явно намекает на соответствие правилам французского языка, а не чтению "как хочу"


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## Rosett

Nikined said:


> Буква "е" на конце явно намекает на соответствие правилам французского языка, а не чтению "как хочу"


Не только буква _e_ намекает, но и буква _j, ou, ch, tch_. С другой стороны, _Шацкий_ не отличался от _Шатского_, нивелировалась не только _ё_, но и _й_, и _э, _буквы_ е, я _и_ ю _оказывались неравноправными (_Ekaterina_, но _Iana, Iouliia_).


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## hardliner_77

Sobakus said:


> A - /vjanvarʲe/ (the pronunciation of unstressed /ja/ may vary).
> 
> One way to think of this is there's an invisible hard sign at the end of all words that end in a hard consonant, which was written in the pre-revolutionary orthography: въ январѣ. This hard sign is now written only after prefixes and in most other compound words: въезд, объяснить, подъязычный, трёхъязычный... but not иняз (< факультет иностранных языков), which is pronounced as инъяз /injaz/, not /inʲaz/ - because what logic? The hyphen results in the same pronunciation as the hard sign: плод-ягода /plodjagoda/.
> On practice, the contrast between _вьй_ /vʲj/ and _въй_ /vj/ isn't strict and you will hear both pronunciations, especially if the consonant isn't dental - but never with л: пол-яблока = полъяблока != польяблока.
> When _и_ follows a hard consonant, it's always pronounced as _ы_ and spelled like that in compound words: безынтересный.
> To pronounce /vynvarʲe/ or /vinvarʲe/ the initial /j/ needs to disappear, and this never happens. /j/ is only relaxed/elided between vowels (ая, ие etc).


anyways you need to pronounce the letter Я, I can't remember any word where you skip the letter Я
v yanvare


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## Rosett

hardliner_77 said:


> anyways you need to pronounce the letter Я, I can't remember any word where you skip the letter Я
> v yanvare


Actually, it sounds like _вйинваре._


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