# Second names ending with -OB



## panagiotis

I 've noticed that most of the russian second names end with -OB or -EB. I've also noticed that people sometimes pronounce it as "ov / ev" and sometimes as "of / ef". 

I asked a friend, who told me that possibly it has to do with the origin of the speaker (ie accent of SPb is different than of Sakhalin). Even if this answer is correct (which I'm not certain about), is there any standard rule?


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## tolmachka

Grammar says that it is right to pronounce as of\ef. But really the russians can spell it in a different ways, depending on the origin of the speaker.


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## gregilez

Greetings,

Some Russian consonants are characterized as hard (literaly in Russian, звонкий 'ringing') and soft (literally in Russian, глухой 'deaf'), and form pairs reciprocating each other . There is a general tendency in Russian that a hard consonant at the end of a word, when not followed by a vowel, gets soft. Thus, Cyrillic 'Б' (Latin B) is pronounced as 'P' (Latin P), Cyrillic 'B' is pronounced as 'Ф' (Latin F), etc. When Cyrillic 'B' is followed by Cyrillic 'A' (the corresponding sound is a vowel), this "deafening" does not happen. 

BTW, the tendency is even stronger in German; for the Russian ear, Germans don't use hard consonants at all making no difference between 'b" and 'p' or 'd' and 't'.  Sometimes Russian writers distort proper Russian spelling to emulate Russian speech of a person of German origin.

Among other difficulties of speaking English, Russians have a particular difficulty in emphasizing (for them - intentional "hardening") of even hard consonants at the end of English words, so the word "had" sounds more like "hat". I suspect, Germans do the same when speaking English.

Sometimes in Russian the difference in the pronunciation of a hard and the corresponding soft consonants affects the meaning (I cannot come up with a really good example, when two words differ only in their last consonants, one being hard and the other soft, at this late time so I will give a not so good but still a valid one: the word ГРОБ pronounced as "grob" means "coffin" or "casket" in English while if pronounced as ГРОП (grop) has no meaning at all. Native Russian speakers would never pronounce it like ГРОП; that would be a sign of the German or, maybe, Baltic origin of the speaker.

Softening of consonants is very common in endings, like OV/EV in Russian last names. However, a foreign speaker of Russian will be perfectly understood if he or she pronounces Russian B (Latin V) hard, so don't worry. 

Finally, there still exists some regional variability in Russian pronunciation, but it is disappearing due to centralized radio and TV broadcasting.  Some differences are more stubborn than others but softening of the ending sounds is omnipresent.


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## Kolan

I will have to add that only a century ago the Russian had a different orthography which did not allow for softening of the final consonant in the most cases. However, by that time the rules were already obsolete, and the Soviet power abolished many of them, including use of letters and even a few original cyrillic letters themselves, thus simplifying the writing and bringing it closer to the  pronunciation. (It was already a second reform).

Particularly, all these masculine last names had in writing a final *ъ* (*-овъ, -евъ*) which used to represent, in fact, a reduced vowel, therefore not allowing for softening of the last consonants, very similar to a French *e* muet. This letter (*ъ*) survived the reform, but finally was left over only in a few particular positions inside words, not longer at the end, and became the least used, but still necessary letter of the Russian alphabet.


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## tkekte

Why do you say "hard" and "soft" instead of "voiced" and "voiceless"... ? In Russian (similar to many European languages, but different from English), at the end of a word, a voiced consonant becomes devoiced unless it's a sonorant (n m l r).


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## Maroseika

gregilez said:


> Sometimes in Russian the difference in the pronunciation of a hard and the corresponding soft consonants affects the meaning (I cannot come up with a really good example, when two words differ only in their last consonants, one being hard and the other soft


Here are some examples:
столп/столб
рот/род
пот/под
порок/порог
полоз/полос (нерекомендуемое мн. род. от "полоса")
бек/бег
червяк/червяг (мн. род. от "червяга")
and many others; but each pair is pronounced absolutely equally so that the due sense is clear only from the context.


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## Maroseika

Kolan said:


> I will have to add that only a century ago the Russian had a different orthography which did not allow for softening of the final consonant in the most cases. However, by that time the rules were already obsolete, and the Soviet power abolished many of them, including use of letters and even a few original cyrillic letters themselves, thus simplifying the writing and bringing it closer to the pronunciation. (It was already a second reform).
> 
> Particularly, all these masculine last names had in writing a final *ъ* (*-овъ, -евъ*) which used to represent, in fact, a reduced vowel, therefore not allowing for softening of the last consonants, very similar to a French *e* muet. This letter (*ъ*) survived the reform, but finally was left over only in a few particular positions inside words, not longer at the end, and became the least used, but still necessary letter of the Russian alphabet.


As far as I know, ъ-ending had nothing to do with the way to pronounce the words in the last centuries before the GOR. And this discrepancy between the orthography and phonetics was exactly the reason to abolish it, and by the way this reform was prepared yet in the very beginning of the 20-th century but was deferred due to muddle events of that epoch in Russia.
Bolsheviks were only those who had accomplished this reform.


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## Maroseika

panagiotis said:


> I 've noticed that most of the russian second names end with -OB or -EB. I've also noticed that people sometimes pronounce it as "ov / ev" and sometimes as "of / ef".
> 
> I asked a friend, who told me that possibly it has to do with the origin of the speaker (ie accent of SPb is different than of Sakhalin). Even if this answer is correct (which I'm not certain about), is there any standard rule?


To say the truth, I've never noticed anything like that. It's very strange for me that anybody can pronounce last "в" voicedly. It would sound quite unnatural, as if a speaker is not a native. 
And besides, there is no phonetic difference between West and East (Petersburg and Sakhalin). Russian patoises differ from North to South. In particular, the only way to pronounce -ов surnmaes is "оу" (with reduced "у" in the end) like in Ukraine. This is a feature of the south pronunciation.


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## gregilez

tkekte said:


> Why do you say "hard" and "soft" instead of "voiced" and "voiceless"... ? In Russian (similar to many European languages, but different from English), at the end of a word, a voiced consonant becomes devoiced unless it's a sonorant (n m l r).


 
Not being a professional in the field, I didn't know the proper English terms and just picked up some used on a certain Web site for students of Russian.  I have realized then that there may be confusion with the use of the "soft sign" and the "hard sign" (again, the names may be incorrect but you understand what I mean) but it was too late.  Of course, "voiced" and "devoiced" make a lot more sense.


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## gregilez

Maroseika said:


> To say the truth, I've never noticed anything like that. It's very strange for me that anybody can pronounce last "в" voicedly. It would sound quite unnatural, as if a speaker is not a native.
> And besides, there is no phonetic difference between West and East (Petersburg and Sakhalin). Russian patoises differ from North to South. In particular, the only way to pronounce -ов surnmaes is "оу" (with reduced "у" in the end) like in Ukraine. This is a feature of the south pronunciation.


 
I would say that there is (was) at least some difference in the West-East direction. For instance, people from the Urals spoke differently from those from St. Petersburg, both "dialect-wise" - "cho" instead of "chto" (SPb) or "shto" (Moscow) - and purely phonetically: their "R's" were a lot more expressed, with much stronger trilling. When I told a friend from Yekaterinburg about that, he replied with a laughter that to his ear there were no R's in my speach at all.


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## Kolan

Maroseika said:


> As far as I know, ъ-ending had nothing to do with the way to pronounce the words in the last centuries before the GOR.


*ъ* is a vowel, that's why the final consonants were originally soundful. It is interesting to compare with French, where feminine -ve is replaced by -f in masculine form, vi*ve* - vi*f*, brè*ve* - bre*f*, etc. The final *e* is mute as well as the old Russian *ъ*, but spelling of each respective form reflects the pronuncation [v] - [f].


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## gregilez

Kolan said:


> *ъ* is a vowel, that's why the final consonants were originally soundful. It is interesting to compare with French, where feminine -ve is replaced by -f in masculine form, vi*ve* - vi*f*, brè*ve* - bre*f*, etc. The final *e* is mute as well as the old Russian *ъ*, but spelling of each respective form reflects the pronuncation [v] - [f].


 
Are you confusing *ъ* (the "hard sign", 'er') and the old letter *Ѣ *(yat') by any chance?  I never heard that *ъ *is a vowel.  Vowels can by sung, *ъ *cannot*.*


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## Q-cumber

*gregilez*



> *Ъ*
> Ъ, буква ер, твердая полугласная *(semivowel)*, а ныне безгласная; у нас 27-я, а в церк. 30-я по порядку; встарь ставилась и посреди слов, за согласною, чтобы придать ей легкий, неясный гласный звук (съвет, вместо совет и пр.), а ныне только перед мягкою гласною, чтобы согласная оставалась твердою, но переходила в и (съежиться, съедать, съюлить и пр.), либо перед и, обращая его в ы, которое и состоит из ъ, и и затем, в конце слова, по твердой согласной притупляя ее. Как мы постепенно выкинули ер из средины слов, так точно оно могло бы быть откинуто и в конце, а оставлено только перед согласными, в средине, где оно нужно для произношенья.


*Dahl's Russian Dictionary*


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## Maroseika

gregilez said:


> Are you confusing *ъ* (the "hard sign", 'er') and the old letter *Ѣ *(yat') by any chance? I never heard that *ъ *is a vowel. Vowels can by sung, *ъ *cannot*.*


Originally, in Old-Slavonic Ъ was a vowel pronounced like reduced "e". But by the 12th century, in the result of so-called "падение редуцированных" (I don't know due Englisg term, something like "falling of the reduced vowels) such reduced vowels ceased to be pronounced.
Other reduced vowels were: ь, ы, и.
In the weak position these vowels disappeared at all, and in the strong position ъ and ь convereted into [o] and [e], ы and и - into [y] and _.
However long after that orthography remained the same. By the way this helped to ascertain the fact of this event in the language: copyists after the 12th century made a lot of mistakes becuase they did not hear these vowels anymore in the words they copied. 
Most often they mistaked in the end of the words, because reduced vowels were their in absolutely weak positions. This is one of two reasons why ъ in the end of the words remained so long - till 1918: for the copyists it was easier to remember the rule that the last consonant is accompanied with ъ or ь. 
Another reason was that these 2 vowels marked the border of words (words were not divided then with the gaps like now)._


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## gregilez

I am afraid we have deviated back in time way to far from answering a practical question about contemporary Russian pronunciation.

Besides, I was taught that both vowels and consonants are *sounds*, not *letters*.


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## Kolan

gregilez said:


> I am afraid we have deviated back in time way to far from answering a practical question about contemporary Russian pronunciation.


Well, practically we always pronounce *[-of, -ef]* and never *[-ov, -ev]* unless you have to spell it over the phone to someone who does not speak Russian. Older official transcription of the Russian family names reflected this fact (e.g., vodka *Smirnoff*).

But if you want to know why, you should remember about *ъ*.


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