# про́чее = прочие



## j-Adore

проч*ий* = проч*ей  *[ˈprot͡ɕɪj]

проч*ее* = проч*ие  *[ˈprot͡ɕɪje]


Hi. Are the pronunciations in bold identical, despite the different letters?


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## Vovan

No, "прочие" doesn't have anything close to [е] at the end. The word sounds as [про́чии].


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## Maroseika

j-Adore said:


> Are the pronunciations in bold identical, despite the different letters?


Yes, pronunciation is identical.
Unstressed endings *-ее* and *-ие* after soft pair consonants and ч are also almost very close to -ая, when pronounced in normal speech. But to avoid possible misunderstanding, these endings use to be slightly "intensified" to show exact vowel.


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## Sobakus

Vovan said:


> No, "прочие" doesn't have anything close to [е] at the end. The word sounds as [про́чии].


Actually, these are two of the closest vowels in the IPA: [ɪ], [e] (minus the obvious American-style diphthongisation in the latter recording). I certainly wouldn't venture to state which one of them occurs as the last vowel in прочее.

_Прочее_ does not sound like _прочие_ for me: the latter has something like [i:], so /прочии/, and the former a more open vowel, i.e. either of the two above or an [ɪe], more or less like in the first two recordings here: прочее on forvo. For any of the natives doubting this, try saying /и всё прочии/ - it sounds unmistakably wrong.

Also note that the intervocalic [j] that PogrebnojAlexandroff's recording has is highly unnatural - it doesn't occur between front vowels in Russian.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Actually, these are two of the closest vowels in the IPA: [ɪ], [e] (minus the obvious American-style diphthongisation in the latter recording). I certainly wouldn't venture to state which one of them occurs as the last vowel in прочее.


A good half of vowels are very close. Yet in the first place this vowel is strongly reduced (and actual [e] hardly exists in Russian at all; the actual comparison is difficult due to Russian consonants having annoyingly unstable articulation). It isn't even [ɪ] (which takes place chiefly in pre-tonic positions), it's closer to [ɘ] (and from more phonological approach it can be safely described just as [ə] after the soft consonant, with unavoidable changes in the initial moments of articulation). It's the position where all vowel phonemes minus /u/ merge, mind you.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> A good half of vowels are very close. Yet in the first place this vowel is strongly reduced (and actual [e] hardly exists in Russian at all; the actual comparison is difficult due to Russian consonants having annoyingly unstable articulation). It isn't even [ɪ] (which takes place chiefly in pre-tonic positions), it's closer to [ɘ] (and from more phonological approach it can be safely described just as [ə] after the soft consonant, with unavoidable changes in the initial moments of articulation). It's the position where all vowel phonemes minus /u/ merge, mind you.


I find this analysis quite bewildering. /a~o/ isn't even close to merging with /и/ and /е/ in unstressed position outside of adjectival endings. _Вася _contrasts with _Васи_, _папа _with _папы_. For some (many? most?) speakers, even _поле_, _Поля _and _Поли _contrast, for others _поле _merges with either of the other two (or better to say, the endings are replaced: ['polʲə], [bʲis'polʲə], ['fpolʲɪ]), but never do all three merge. Nobody will confuse "Он у Поля" and "Он у Поли" so the two endings contrast, even though it's not impossible to reduce both to the point of them being indistinguishable. _Внимание _ends in the same as _прочее _but both cannot be pronounced with an /ии/ because this is the Prep. Sg. nominal and Nom. Pl. adjectival ending (even though spelt -ие in the latter case: _синие_, _прочие, мнении_).

/Внимании внимании, гаварит Германии/


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> I find this analysis quite bewildering. /a~o/ isn't even close to merging with /и/ and /е/ in unstressed position outside of adjectival endings.


As a matter of fact, after the soft consonants they merge in all unstressed syllables. (To be precise, in the St.Petersburg orthoepic pronunciation /и/ remains not merged with /э-а-о/ in the first pre-tonic syllable, but otherwise they all merge anyway, and they do so in all unstressed positions after the soft consonants according to the Moscow standard). In "пяток" the first vowel is positively identical to the first vowel in "биток" or "летать" (etymologically it's /o/ in the latter word, by the way; of course, our writing system is not etymological). And regarding post-tonic positions, "метит" and "метят" also sound absolutely identically. That's the basics of Russian phonology.

After hard consonants the situation is much more complicated, but we aren't speaking about such positions now.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> As a matter of fact, after soft consonants they merge in all unstressed syllables. (To be precise, in the St.Petersburg orthoepic pronunciation /и/ remains not merged with /э-а-о/ in the first pre-tonic syllable, but otherwise they all merge anyway, and they do so in all unstressed positions after soft consonants according to the Moscow standard). In "пяток" the first vowel is positively identical to the first vowel in "биток" or "летать" (etymologically it's /o/ in the latter word, by the way). That's the basics of Russian phonology.


[ɪ] is the pretonic allophone of the phonemes /я/, /e/ and /и/ in the most common pronunciation (for some the pretonic allophone of /я/ is [e], for others in Southern Russia - [ɐ]). In other positions, the unstressed allophone of /я/ is [ə] or [ɪ] except in nominal (but not verbal!) endings where it can only be [ə]. [ə] is never an allophone of /и/, so nobody at all will ever confuse Вася and Васи. The Russian phonology is separate from the people who describe it, and those people don't always have the best hearing.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Nobody will confuse "Он у Поля" and "Он у Поли"


Actually in the quick speach they are identical as well. In the slow speech, however, morphology typically "overpowers" the phonetic laws, in the manner which Maroseika noted above. However, usually it does so only as long as we speak about /и/ vs. /э-о-а/ (that is, preventing the full reduction of /и/). "Поле" and "Поля" cannot be distinguished in any normal speech of the absolute majority.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> [ɪ] is the pretonic allophone of the phonemes /я/, /e/ and /и/ in the most common pronunciation (for some the pretonic allophone of /я/ is [e], for others in Southern Russia - [ɐ]). In other positions, the unstressed allophone of /я/ is [ə] or [ɪ] except in nominal (but not verbal!) endings where it can only be [ə]. [ə] is never an allophone of /и/, so nobody at all will ever confuse Вася and Васи. The Russian phonology is separate from the people who describe it, and those people don't always have the best hearing.


There are no such phonemes as /я/ or /е/, to start with. Russian has 5 (or, arguably, 6) vowel phonemes: /а/, /и/ (+ /ы/, although it's marginal and generally can be treated as /и/), /э/, /о/ and /у/.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> There are no such phonemes as /я/ or /е/, to start with. Russian has 5 (or, arguably, 6) vowel phonemes: /а/, /и/ (+ /ы/, although it's marginal and generally can be treated as /и/), /э/, /о/ and /у/.


Interpret those as "/а/ after soft consonant" etc. The preceding consonant determines the behaviour of the vowel, so simply writing /a/, /э/ etc. would be incorrect.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> [ə] is never an allophone of /и/


Once again. "Полит" and "полят" are normally indestinguishable, I hope you won't argue. But in the same time the last vowel there is quite easy to distinguish from the first vowel in "пилот" (where it's undoubtedly a much less reduced [ɪ]). As for the noun inflections, I have nothing to add to Maroseika's notion (except maybe academic citations).


Sobakus said:


> The preceding consonant determines the behaviour of the vowel, so simply writing /a/, /э/ etc. would be incorrect.


I believe that the correct way of spelling phonemes is to spell them correctly. Their phonetic realization is a totally different story.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Once again. "Полит" and "полят" are normally indestinguishable, I hope you won't argue. But in the same time the last vowel there is quite easy to distinguish from the first vowel in "пилот" (where it's undoubtedly a much less reduced [ɪ]).


Yes, this is true, the sound in the two verbal endings in the same.


> As for the noun inflections, I have nothing to add to Maroseika's notion (except maybe academic citations).


As I've already implied in my explanation,* -ие *stands for two different phonetic endings:
1) the nominal Nominative Sg. /ийэ/ (внимание) where it = *-ия* (Германия)
2) the nominal Prepositional Sg. and the adjectival Nom. Pl. /ии/ (синие, мнении)

The two endings are phonetically distinct and at least /ии/ is exclusive, so saying something like /фс'о прочии/ immediately sounds wrong to me, as does /фс'э прочээ/. [ɡʲɪrˈmanʲɪ.ɪ] for Германия is likewise impossible while it is the only possible pronunciation of Германии. I doubt academic citations could help change what my ears are telling me, especially as I've had good success trusting my ears in phonetic matters and am inclined to continue doing so.


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## Sobakus

Sobakus said:


> [ɡʲɪrˈmanʲɪ.ɪ]...is the only possible pronunciation of Германии.


Oops, fell into the same trap - I meant [ɡʲɪrˈmanʲi.i], [ɡʲɪrˈmanʲi.ɪ] or whatever that close vowel maps to. The point is, it's a close vowel clearly distinct from the one in the Nom. Sg. of the same word.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> As I've already implied in my explanation,* -ие *stands for two different phonetic endings


Phonological, I'd say. The roots of "-ие" depicting /-ии/ are somewhere in the Church Slavonic orthography and the Old Russian language (its late north-eastern dialects, that is).
However, the point is that the distinction happens only in the last vowels of the particular inflections and in apparently happens for purely morphological reasons; to put it simple, from phonological point of view it shouldn't be happening at all.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Phonological, I'd say. The roots of "-ие" depicting /-ии/ are somewhere in the Church Slavonic orthography and the Old Russian language (its late north-eastern dialects, that is).
> However, the point is that the distinction happens only in the last vowels of the particular inflections and in apparently happens for purely morphological reasons; to put it simple, from phonological point of view it shouldn't be happening at all.


Depends on how far from reality one's phonological point of view is.  The desire to organise reality into nice and well-defined tables and categories following pre-set rules (Exceptions? Oh, they only prove the rule!) is natural for every one of us, _especially_ to those of a scientific frame of mind, but we should also remember that the real world, and language as a phenomenon in particular, doesn't work like that.


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## Rosett

Besides all, we have a stable expression that certainly reflects the underlying pronunciation: «... и проч*ая*(, и проч*ая*(, и проч*ая*))», instead of anticipated «проч*ее*».

«Прочее» in the OP is often heard as «прочая» - at least, in Moscow - which in line with Maroseika’s statement in #3, as quoted below:



Maroseika said:


> Unstressed endings *-ее* and *-ие* after soft pair consonants and ч are also almost very close to -ая, when pronounced in normal speech.


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## Awwal12

Rosett said:


> Besides all, we have a stable expression that certainly reflects the underlying pronunciation: «... и проч*ая*(, и проч*ая*(, и проч*ая*))», instead of anticipated «проч*ее*».


No it doesn't. It's Church Slavonic, plain and simple (the neuter plural form).


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