# How to pronounce денёк?



## JONO.

Where is the stress? On the first or second syllable ? 


Is it like, /den-*YOK*/ or /*DYE*-nok/ or perhaps /dye-*NOK*/ or /*DEH*-nyok/

- *Bold *= Stress


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## Anatoli

[dʲeˈnʲok] or dye*NYOK* - both "d" and "n" are palatalised (softened) and the stress is on the 2nd syllable.


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## JONO.

I see, thank you very much


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## PoliglotESSE

JONO,
Just a tiny thing. *ё* is always stressed. So if you know for sure that there's *ё* in a word, you can be sure about accents


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## JONO.

Oh that's terrific! Thanks a lot for mentioning this!


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## Ptak

Actually it's d*ee*nyok, not d*ye*nyok. Unstressed е becomes и in Russian.


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## Sobakus

Anatoli said:


> [dʲeˈnʲok] or dye*NYOK*



Are these superlinear Js and Ys meant to mark palatalization? Cause it's usually marked with "`"  and I've heared people actually pronounce the abovementioned letters as [j], especially in American movies >_>


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## PoliglotESSE

Sobakus,
At school we learn that palatalization is marked with apostrophe but I think it's just not to confuse pupils. In fact letter e sounds like [йэ] and the previous consonant is palatalised indeed by й [j]. So in more serious transcription if we need to express the pronunciation more correct we'd write the way as Anatoli did. 
Moreover, if we use apostrophes for palatalization as well as for accenting it can be quite confusable.

If I'm wrong for Anatoli's intentions, I beg a pardon


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## Outsider

Ptak said:


> Actually it's d*ee*nyok, not d*ye*nyok. Unstressed е becomes и in Russian.


"Dinyok", then? I believe unstressed и is pronounced more or less like the "i" in "sit", in Russian. (Palatalization notwithstanding.)


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## PoliglotESSE

I'd like to say that there's no *ee* or *i* when *e* is unstressed. It sounds more like *[ə]*, without any special articulation effort.


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## vox05

PoliglotESSE said:


> I'd like to say that there's no *ee* or *i* when *e* is unstressed. It sounds more like *[ə]*, without any special articulation effort.



No. [ə] is for 'а' and 'о'  - unstressed and not in the syllable right before the stressed.


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## PoliglotESSE

Could you please make a reference to any phonetic article saying that there's no [ə] right before the stressed syllable? Sorry, it just mismatches the information I have. 
[ə] can also be for unstressed "e", not only for "a" and "o".
_ means more tense in articulation though when we pronounce unstressed "e" in the word we don't make any special effort at this point._


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## Anatoli

Ptak said:


> Actually it's d*ee*nyok, not d*ye*nyok. Unstressed е becomes и in Russian.


Yes, there is a reduction. But unlike о/а, it's not mandatory, though and the quality of the reduced vowel can be like a sound something between "e" and "i" but not  [ə] (just to confirm what was said before).

Fixing my previous post, in IPA notation:
[dʲeˈnʲok] or [dʲiˈnʲok], depending how much reduction you want to have on the unstressed vowel.



> *ё* is always stressed


Good point, I forgot to say it!



> Are these superlinear Js and Ys meant to mark palatalization? Cause it's usually marked with "`" and I've heared people actually pronounce the abovementioned letters as [j], especially in American movies


I used IPA notation. Unfortunately, there are too many ways to render the same thing. IPA is the most standardised and unambiguous but not many people are familiar with it and entering it is not easy either (I had to copy symbols).
Perhaps, there should be a standard adopted here for romanisation of Russian at Word Reference? Then again, it depends how strict and how accurate you want to go? Symbol ' (single quote) is used for both stress and palatalisation. In most cases, when not using IPA, the palatalisation is ignored, so if one romanises "денёк" as "deny*o*k", then it's assuming people already know about the palatalisation and vowel reduction rules.

Letter j is often used to render я, ю, е, ё (ja, ju, je, jo), which may be confusing again for English, French or Spanish speakers who would use ya, yu, ye and yo instead. There is also difficulty in distinguishing the [j] sound and just the palatalisation - e.g. брюки in IPA notation: [ˈbrʲuki] but can be romanised as brj*u*ki, bry*u*ki or br'*u*ki. So, there must an agreement on how to transliterate Russian, so that the learner could understand it unambiguously.


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## vox05

PoliglotESSE said:


> Could you please make a reference to any phonetic article saying that there's no [ə] right before the stressed syllable? Sorry, it just mismatches the information I have.


'Russian phonology' article on wikipedia. classical example - 'молоко'. the first and the second are not the same vowels.


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## Ptak

For example, *полежу* and *полижу* sound identical. The difference can be noticed in a very very distinct pronunciation. Definitely not in quick colloquial speech.


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## Anatoli

Ptak said:


> For example, *полежу* and *полижу* sound identical. The difference can be noticed in a very very distinct pronunciation. Definitely not in quick colloquial speech.


That's correct. If *денёк* were spelled *динёк*, the pronunciation would be identical. Still, a very distinct pronunciation of the single word as [dʲeˈnʲok] will not sound too unnatural for денёк, different from pronouncing "молоко" with okanye (with articulated unstressed "о"). Suffice to say that vowel reduction is very common and standard in Russian.


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