# Pronunciation of English



## vox05

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php...unciations_of_English&oldid=143985384#Russian

The article about most common pronunciation errors of English by Russian natives existed on Wikipedia, but was removed ( with most of all other sections ) due to lack of references ( the link that contains Russian section is an archived version ). Is there an article, book or any scientific work ( not necessary available online ) that can count as a reference to statements by the link? ( mostly self-evident like  "There is no /w/ in Russian; speakers typically substitute [v] and will have trouble perceiving the difference between the two" )


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## Duya

{{cite journal
|url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00683.x
|title=         Foreign Accents Revisited: The English Pronunciation of Russian Immigrants
|last=Thompson 
|first=irene
|year=1991
|journal=Language Learning 
|volume=41 
|issue=2
|pages=177–204.     
|doi=10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00683.x
|issn=0023-8333}}

Now, you just have to pay mere $29 to see what it really says 

Other than that, I found http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1russian.html, but I doubt it qualifies as a "reliable source" by Wikipedia standards.


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## vox05

Duya said:


> Now, you just have to pay mere $29 to see what it really says
> [/SIZE]
> Other than that, I found  /url/ , but I doubt it qualifies as a "reliable source" by Wikipedia standards.



Thanks. I hope it's not a court and let the burden of the proof be on other side. The second link, indeed, looks like citing that wikipedia article itself.


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## tkekte

That article uses some weird terminology.

Also it didn't even list the pronunciation (and confusion) of /r/ and intervocal /t/, /d/ as a problem. Russian-speakers pronounce the English /r/ (which is a sound kinda like /w/) like the Russian /r/ (a tap) and they pronounce intervocal /t/ and /d/ normally, while it should be an alveolar tap (I think), somewhat like the Russian /r/. 

To me, the English word "dream" sounds kinda like джуиим.
true - чву
trap - чуэп



Also it's strange that to speakers of English the Russian /l/ sounds like /r/. I've seen that before, some people were making fun of the Russian accent, and they wrote "stealing" as "stearing".


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## Outsider

tkekte said:


> [...] and they pronounce intervocal /t/ and /d/ normally, while it should be an alveolar tap (I think), somewhat like the Russian /r/.


But many English speakers do that, too. Intervocalic alveolar flapping is an American phenomenon.


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## tkekte

In UK English, though, many people (as it sounds to me) drop intervocal /t/,/d/ altogether.  butter -> bu'er (sounds a bit like "bottle")

Oh well. English is evil.  It's one of the hardest languages to pronounce IMO. (third place after Arabic and Chinese)


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## Outsider

tkekte said:


> In UK English, though, many people (as it sounds to me) drop intervocal /t/,/d/ altogether.  butter -> bu'er (sounds a bit like "bottle")


T-glottalization is common in England, but it's not regarded as standard.


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## sound shift

When speaking English, Russians pronounce the /A/ as if it were an /E/: "I em very heppy", but so do Germans, Italians and many others. It seems to be a difficult sound.


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## Outsider

I've wondered why so many people do that, when the "a" in "happy" is so clearly different from the "e" in "egg". There must be some difference in the way the English [a] is articulated, which makes them perceive it as an [E].


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## papillon

sound shift said:


> When speaking English, Russians pronounce the /A/ as if it were an /E/: "I em very heppy",


...and so did the Queen of England in the 60s -just listen to some old recordings. I believe she doesn't do that anymore.

As for Russians, the English open a - I believe it's [ae] (?) is situated between the two sounds existing in the Russian language: [а] and [э]~e. If you have to make a choice, you either pronounce h*a*ppy, with *a* as in s*o*me, or h*e*ppy, the more popular option. Additionally, speakers of Russian don't make a difference between the vowels in _lag_ and _leg_.


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## Outsider

papillon said:


> ...and so did the Queen of England in the 60s -just listen to some old recordings.


No, I believe that was an [æ].


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## papillon

...but the worst perhaps is the i sounds. The phonetic difference between sick and seek, bitch and beech is ever so elusive.


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## papillon

Outsider said:


> No, I believe that was an [æ].


And now? Because they're definitely different vowels.


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## Outsider

papillon said:


> And now?


I've seen native speakers here in the forum say that it's an [a] in most of England. And yet it still sounds a bit different from the continental [a] (or perhaps just the Romance [a]). I'm not sure what this means, but I suspect that one of the sounds is made more to the back of the mouth than the other. 

P.S. See the Phonetics of _can_ vs. _can't_.


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## Outsider

papillon said:


> ...but the worst perhaps is the i sounds. The phonetic difference between sick and seek, bitch and beech is ever so elusive.


Yet it seems the [I] sound exists in Russian, at least as an allophone.


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## papillon

Outsider said:


> Yet it seems the [I] sound exists in Russian, at least as an allophone.


True. The sound corresponding to letter ы is not that far from i in sick, though the former it is more open. Somehow people have been conditioned to make the equivalence between the letter "i" and the Russian letter и, not the closer-sounding ы...


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