# calling Soyuz (spacecraft) "Soyez" in English



## Delvo

I never ran into this before, but just in the last few years. I first noticed it in the movie "Gravity" starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. This type of spacecraft is referred to by name many times in that movie, mostly by Clooney, and he switches back and forth between "Soyuz" and "Soyez". I couldn't tell what made it come out one way in one line and the other way in another line. I supposed that he or his character might know something I don't know about the word having different forms in different grammatical roles.

Just a couple of days ago, I was reminded of it again by a radio interview with an American astronaut. The interviewer only named this spacecraft a few times, but it was "Soyez" each time, never "Soyuz".

I can't tell where this idea could have come from. Switching "u" to "e" definitely isn't a current English trend, so it's hard to picture how separate English speakers came up with the same change. I thought it might be a Russian case/number indicator, but the Russian Wikipedia article contains only "Союз", not anything that looks like an alternative version like "Соез" or "Сойэз". (And even if there are any such forms, that only creates a new mystery: why some English speakers would actually use them, which normally doesn't happen with any other imported words.)

So where did these guys get the idea of saying "Soyez" from?


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## ahvalj

The Russian form of the Nominative Singular is [sa'juz], in other cases the word looks like [sa'juza], [sa'juzu] etc.; no _e_ ever appears anywhere. I guess, the Americans shift the stress to the first syllable and then reduce the unstressed vowel as they regularly do, hence ['sojuz] > ['sojəz]. That's actually not the worst of what may happen: I have heard McCain pronounce Putin as [putn], so at least the spacecraft hasn't become [sojz].


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## Stoggler

The /uz/ sounds at the end of a word is not usually found in English, especially if it's an unstressed syllable, and the standard way of dealing with such an ending is to reduce the vowel sound to a schwa, as ahvalj says.  You may find people pronouncing it as /uz/ on occasion as they try to stick to the original Russian (if they're aware of that original pronunciation) but most English speakers will pronounce it /əz/.


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## ahvalj

Stoggler said:


> The /uz/ sounds at the end of a word is not usually found in English


_re-use, abuse, confuse_


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## Stoggler

ahvalj said:


> _re-use, abuse, confuse_



As soon as I posted my message, I just knew someone would come up with examples...!  Wish my brain worked quicker these days!

I'll keep quiet in future.  Less chance of making a fool of myself then!


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## PersoLatin

ahvalj said:


> re-use, abuse, confuse


surely, the /e at the end of these words, makes a difference between the pronunciations, which should get Stoggler off the hook. The last /u in 'prospectus' is pronounced as /e.


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## Delvo

ahvalj said:


> ...then reduce the unstressed vowel as they regularly do, hence ['sojuz] > ['sojəz].





Stoggler said:


> ...to reduce the vowel sound to a schwa, as ahvalj says... most English speakers will pronounce it /əz/.


I wouldn't have wondered about "Soyəz". That's not a pronunciation I've ever heard, and it's not the one that made me wonder. I wondered why they're doing something that's distinctly thoroughly different from a schwa.



PersoLatin said:


> The last /u in 'prospectus' is pronounced as /e.


Surely you must have meant ə.


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## ahvalj

Delvo said:


> I wouldn't have wondered about "Soyəz". That's not a pronunciation I've ever heard, and it's not the one that made me wonder. I wondered why they're doing something that's distinctly thoroughly different from a schwa.


That's puzzling then.


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## bibax

IMHO the z at the end is pronounced devoiced in Russian (it is common in the Slavic languages). So the convenient pattern for the English pronunciation could be e.g. the noun _abuse_: Soyuz [sə'ju:s, or w/o reduction sa'ju:s].


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## Sobakus

Delvo said:


> I wondered why they're doing something that's distinctly thoroughly different from a schwa.


Wait, so what's the IPA sound that the /e/ of "soyez" stands for then, and which IPA sound did you expect for "soyuz"?


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## Delvo

Expected: /u/

Actually pronounced by the radio interviewer and (sometimes) Clooney: /ɛ/


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> The Russian form of the Nominative Singular is [sa'juz]


Not [s*ɐ*'ju*s*]?


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Not [s*ɐ*'ju*s*]?


Yes, of course, I didn't want to confuse the original poster.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Yes, of course, I didn't want to confuse the original poster.


I see.


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## Sobakus

Delvo said:


> Expected: /u/
> 
> Actually pronounced by the radio interviewer and (sometimes) Clooney: /ɛ/


Well, the dominant AE pronunciation for the long u of _do_ is actually [ɯˑ] – in BE it's fronted as far as [ʉː]. Correspondingly, the short u of _foot_ is [ɵ] or thereabouts – and that's the sound I would expect in an unstressed position (long u doesn't fare too well even when stressed in English). I'm struggling to come up with instances of unstressed English [jə] (a proper syllabic one), but it wouldn't be surprising if the yod caused it to be fronted into the range of the /ɛ/ phoneme.


berndf said:


> Not [s*ɐ*'ju*s*]?


Unlike in German, final devoicing is allophonic in Russian and is typically absent in the South.


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## ahvalj

Sobakus said:


> Unlike in German, final devoicing is allophonic in Russian and is typically absent in the South.


Among some Ukrainians.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> Unlike in German, final devoicing is allophonic in Russian...


In German it is allophonic as well and like in Russian phonemically neutralizing where and only where it occurs, i.e. _bun*t*_ and _Bun*d*_ are homophone but _bun*t*es_ and _Bun*d*es_ are not.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> In German it is allophonic as well and like in Russian phonemically neutralizing where and only where it occurs, i.e. _bun*t*_ and _Bun*d*_ are homophone but _bun*t*es_ and _Bun*d*es_ are not.


But in compounds it remains devoiced both before vowels and voiced consonants, while in Russian it voices even across word boundaries, at least in case of a following stop (before vowels, liquids and nasals it's rather optional).


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> But in compounds it remains devoiced both before vowels and voiced consonants, while in Russian it voices even between word boundaries, at least in case of a following consonant (before vowels it's rather optional).


This only means that allophone rules are different in German and Russian, not that in one language devoicing is allophonic and the other it isn't.

For all allophone rules, not only this one, compounds are treated like separate words. This is also true for the diminutive suffix _-chen _(e.g. in _Kuchen, cake_, <ch> is [x] and in _Kuhchen, little cow_, <ch> is [ç]).


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> This only means that allophone rules are different in German and Russian, not that in one language devoicing is allophonic and the other it isn't.
> 
> For all allophone rules, not only this one, compounds are treated like separate words. This is also true for the diminutive suffix _-chen _(e.g. in _Kuchen, cake_, <ch> is [x] and in _Kuhchen, little cow_, <ch> is [ç]).


Can you think of a German dialect/pronunciation where finals aren't devoiced? How does it sound if you pronounce it without devoicing? My gut feeling tells me that final devoicing is obligatory in German, and that's what I contrast with "allophonic". I'm not saying that the /d/ in _Bund and Bundes_ aren't allophones of the same sound.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> Can you think of a German dialect/pronunciation where finals aren't devoiced?


No.


Sobakus said:


> My gut feeling tells me that final devoicing is obligatory in German, and that's what I contrast with "allophonic".


Allophonic variation *is* obligatory. It seems you mean _free variation_ and not _allophony_.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Allophonic variation *is* obligatory. It seems you mean _free variation_ and not _allophony_.


Right, this seems to be the reason for our disagreement then. I'll be sure to keep this difference in mind.


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## ahvalj

Here is how this word is pronounced in Russian: союз pronunciation: How to pronounce союз in Russian, Tatar, Bashkir


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## Angelo di fuoco

Devoiced in the Russian speaker's version, but voiced in both Tatar & Bashkir. At least that's the way I hear it.


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## berndf

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Devoiced in the Russian speaker's version, but voiced in both Tatar & Bashkir. At least that's the way I hear it.


I hear all three devoiced.


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