# Pronunciation of plural genitive -ОВ



## Interprete

Hello,

Does the 'ov' sound in masculine plural genitives sometimes get pronounced only slightly to the point that it is almost silent?
I've just heard this (модельер) and this (набор), and was wondering if this is something I should get used to (i.e. simply NOT hearing the 'ov' ending) in informal or fast speech.

Thanks!


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## Rosett

It is pronounced like any other unstressed syllables.


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## Interprete

Thank you. I guess my question is: is it normal that in the recordings above, I actually hear модельер and набор, and that only grammar tells me that they should be written модельеров and наборов? Because I really don't hear them at all. Does a native actually hear the 'OV' sound (and not just guess it from grammar)?


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## Vovan

Interprete said:


> Does a native actually hear the 'OV' sound (and not just guess it from grammar)?


There _is_ a tremendous reduction in the phonemes' quality.
But they can still be heard.

I'll make a phonetics guess: when we pronounce "моделье*ров*" and "набо*ров*", we may indeed reduce the bolded parts and make the preceding stressed vowel a bit longer (as compared with "модельер" and "набор").


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## Q-cumber

Strange. I hear "модельеров".


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## Vadim K

I also hear "_модельер*ов*_" and "_набор*ов*_".

But in my opinion it doesn't strange that you can't still hear these sounds. People often can't hear for quite a long time some sounds which don't exist in their native language. For example, I can't distinguish some sounds in French because there are some vowels in French which don't exist in Russian. Not to mention the differences between some vowels which I can't distinguish, particularly in a fast speech. I am sure that if you continue to listen to Russian, eventually you will start distinguishing this ending.


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## uress

This all is right but there is another thing to mention here: the opposite is right, too: natives very often "hear" something that is not there, just because they know that it should be there.


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## Sobakus

She does swallow the /в/ which happens all over the place in Russian, not just in endings, but this still leaves a clear schwa following the stem consonant. If you don't hear that, that's probably because French has vocalic release of consonants (often parodied because speakers of other languages hear it as adding a vowel), but Russian doesn't. A properly Russian final /р/ would be slightly rolled and devoiced but have no schwa after it, so we know it isn't final. And of course what uress mentioned above.


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## Interprete

Thanks everyone, well at least it's always good to know that there is a sound I can't hear yet and that I should be looking out for...


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> She does swallow the /в/ which happens all over the place in Russian, not just in endings.


We do not swallow /в/, but at the end it is always reduced to /ф/. (It would disappear in French, as if in "clef", not in Russian; an example for comparison with Russian "в" is смирновская vodka "Smirnо́ff", sold in Paris). Altogether, this unstressed "ов" in "модельеров" and "наборов" becomes /аф/.


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> We do not swallow /в/, but at the end it is always reduced to /ф/. (It would disappear in French, as if in "clef", not in Russian; an example for comparison with Russian "в" is смирновская vodka "Smirnо́ff", sold in Paris). Altogether, this unstressed "ов" in "модельеров" and "наборов" becomes /аф/.


Have you had a listen to the recordings? _We_ might not swallow it, but _she_ does – that's the whole premise of this topic.


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> Have you had a listen to the recordings? _We_ might not swallow it, but _she_ does – that's the whole premise of this topic.


I listened to the recordings a few times and could not find anything wrong with /аф/ at the end of those respective OP words.


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## Particle

Uress said right. We know this is plural because лучших is plural. Singular will be от лучшего модельера. We have to listen and hear not only every word, but both words at once (от лучших модельеров).


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## Rosett

Particle said:


> Uress said right. We know this is plural because лучших is plural. Singular will be от лучшего модельера. We have to listen and hear not only every word, but both words at once (от лучших модельеров).


The sound corresponding to "-о-в" is there: you may want to check visually the running voice diagram under the box, or use a voice recorder that provides a better tool for sound analysis.


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## Awwal12

Interprete said:


> Hello,
> 
> Does the 'ov' sound in masculine plural genitives sometimes get pronounced only slightly to the point that it is almost silent?
> I've just heard this (модельер) and this (набор), and was wondering if this is something I should get used to (i.e. simply NOT hearing the 'ov' ending) in informal or fast speech.


The final syllables here appear strongly reduced in all the aspects - quality, length and intensity (> loudness). Still, my Russian ear perfectly hears and recognizes them (because she still does pronounce those syllables). Probably you should get used to HEAR them too. 

Generally I'd say that Russians shout the stressed syllables out, somehow manage to pronounce the pre-tonic ones, and mumble the rest. And the final syllable after the stressed one indeed tends to undergo the strongest reduction - because, well, the speaker is just out of breath and is already preparing to end the word anyway.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Generally I'd say that Russians shout the stressed syllables out, somehow manage to pronounce the pre-tonic ones, and mumble the rest. And the final syllable after the stressed one indeed tends to undergo the strongest reduction - because, well, the speaker is just out of breath and is already preparing to end the word anyway.


You would think so, but hearing multiples examples of Russian spoken with an English accent (all of them very respectable otherwise) will change your mind on that. There are idiolects like hers where unstressed syllables have greatly reduced loudness compared to stressed ones, esp. among central-southern Russian/Ukrainian females (usually with prominent secondary stress), but nothing compared to English levels of reduction.


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## Awwal12

English also has strong levels of reduction, no doubt in that (although the exact patterns of reduction are obviously different, and that must be taken into consideration).
The OP, however, is a French speaker, as far as I get it.


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## Interprete

Awwal12 said:


> English also has strong levels of reduction, no doubt in that (although the exact patterns of reduction are obviously different, and that must be taken into consideration).
> The OP, however, is a French speaker, as far as I get it.


Indeed, although I do know a thing or two about how English is pronounced 
Very interesting exchange at any rate, albeit slightly discouraging... I guess I should have started Russian younger when my ear was a bit more sensitive.


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## uress

No, no, just keep on, you can learn it, just go on and make exercises every day, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, but try everyday and listen to real natives, videos, movies, radio, etc.


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## Sobakus

Interprete said:


> Indeed, although I do know a thing or two about how English is pronounced
> Very interesting exchange at any rate, albeit slightly discouraging... I guess I should have started Russian younger when my ear was a bit more sensitive.


It's not as much about the sensitivity of one's hearing as it is about one's brain picking up on _morhpemes_, not _sounds_. Since in your native language a schwa following a consonant doesn't constitute a phoneme (instead being the result of the aformentioned vocalic release), you don't hear anything else following the consonant. In Russian, on the other hand, final vowels can not only be reduced to a short schwa but completely devoiced as well (esp. after voiceless consonants), so that even though the articulation is there, you barely hear it. So what signals no syllable in French signals a syllable in Russian. I heard that French devoices its vowels as well though (can't confirm myself).


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> I heard that French devoices its vowels as well though (can't confirm myself).


It doesn't at all.
There is (just) a couple of words in French itself, that would end properly on "-ov", but due to tense articulation in French the ending is pronounced strictly /о́в/.
That's why, maybe, a native French speaker expecting /о́в/ won't recognize a regular unstressed Russian /аф/ in the same place.


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## Interprete

That sounds very interesting Sobakus but sadly it's wasted on me because I don't know what a shwa is exactly, nor do I know what you mean by vocalic release. Would you mind giving a concrete example to help me understand your explanation?


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## Sobakus

Interprete said:


> That sounds very interesting Sobakus but sadly it's wasted on me because I don't know what a shwa is exactly, nor do I know what you mean by vocalic release. Would you mind giving a concrete example to help me understand your explanation?


Here's the article on the schwa – the most neutral vowel (recording). This vowel, although pretty short, follows all final non-fricative consonants in languages such as French and Italian by default – this is called vocalic release. In most languages final consonants aren't released with voicing, but in those languages they are, and everybody else hears this as adding a vowel. Think of a stereotypical Italian accent in English. With French it's not as strong, but still pretty obvious to us.

Conversely, when you add a schwa after a final consonant in Russian you get a syllable, but a French or Italian speaker don't hear that extra syllable. To them, that schwa belongs to the consonant.


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## uress

Schwa is the sound which you can hear very often on tv when people don't know what to say. Yes, yes, this eeeeöööoooaaaaeeee, it's hard to describe it but I'm quite sure you have heard it already a lot of times...


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> Here's the article on the schwa – the most neutral vowel. This vowel, although pretty short, follows all final non-fricative consonants in languages such as French and Italian by default – this is called vocalic release. In most languages final consonants aren't released with voicing, but in those languages they are, and everybody else hears this as adding a vowel. Think of a stereotypical Italian accent in English. With French it's not as strong, but still pretty obvious to us.
> 
> Conversely, when you add a schwa after a final consonant in Russian you get a syllable, but a French or Italian speaker don't hear that extra syllable. To them, that schwa belongs to the consonant.


A sort of French schwa is rendered in French by so-called "e caduc," but it can be found elsewhere only and does not apply to the unstressed Russian "-ов" in OP.


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> It doesn't at all.
> There is (just) a couple of words in French itself, that would end properly on "-ov", but due to tense articulation in French the ending is pronounced strictly /о́в/.
> That's why, maybe, a native French speaker expecting /о́в/ won't recognize a regular unstressed Russian /аф/ in the same place.


Here's what I meant by vowel devoicing in French.

As for the schwa in French, a perfect example would be the word _ce_.

Concerning final *v* vs. *f*, the former normally comes with vocalic release (which in Russian would count as a syllable), and the latter without it, so truly final. I think this applies to all fricative final consonants – voiced with vocalic release, voiceless without it (but often double-long to my ear, especially with *s*). So in this respect French has final devoicing just as Russian does, if on a somewhat more underlying level.


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> Here's what I meant by vowel devoicing in French.
> 
> As for the schwa in French, a perfect example would be the word _ce_. Concerning final *v* vs. *f*, the former always comes with vocalic release (which in Russian would count as a syllable), and the latter without it, so truly final. I think this applies to all final consonants – voiced always with vocalic release, voiceless with or without it. So in this respect French has final devoicing just as Russian does.


Final "v" in French you can find only in the loanwords, but there is never any added vocal release after *v*, otherwise it would be *ve*. If you want to compare final *v* vs. *f*, please consider that in proper French it's always -*ve* vs. -*f*. Final *-ve* is another perfect example of French _schwa_, due to the same final *-e* as if in *ce*, that is very similar functionally to the lost *ъ* in Russian which used to be a vowel.


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> Final "v" in French you can find only in the loanwords, but there is never any added vocal release after *v*, otherwise it would be *ve*. If you want to compare final *v* vs. *f*, please consider that in proper French it's always -*ve* vs. -*f*. Final *-ve* is another perfect example of French _schwa_, due to the same final *-e* as if in *ce*, that is very similar functionally to the lost *ъ* in Russian which used to be a vowel.


But final -e is mute in French, isn't it? That's what all the descriptions of the French orthography say – and since French has phrase-final stress, a post-stress schwa is impossible. To get an actual final -e, the word should end in a consonant (aside from sandhi such as _élit*e* de_). Listen to the recordings of _olive_ I provided: the first one has near to no schwa, the rest do. Here's_ finale_ where 2 have none and 1 has a clear Italian-style schwa.

The fact that you hear it as a vowel is a testament to the fact that you interpret phonemes in terms of your native language.


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> But final -e is mute in French, isn't it? That's what all the descriptions of the French orthography say – and since French has phrase-final stress, a post-stress schwa is impossible. To get an actual final -e, the word should end in a consonant (aside from sandhi such as _élit*e* de_). Listen to the recordings of _olive_ I provided: the first one has near to no schwa, the rest do. Here's_ finale_ where 2 have none and 1 has a clear Italian-style schwa.
> 
> The fact that you hear it as a vowel is a testament to the fact that you interpret phonemes in terms of your native language.


In French, there's quite a few dialects, some of which feature a fully voiced *e* that would be mute otherwise. However, French "-le" is not a suitable example, since we are looking into "-ve" vs. "-f".


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> In French, there's quite a few dialects, some of which feature a fully voiced *e* that would be mute otherwise. However, French "-le" is not a suitable example, since we are looking into "-ve" vs. "-f".


We're discussing Standard French (and its recordings) which has voicalic release which results, after final consonants – whether *v, d, l, n* or anything else voiced and at times even voiceless, – in a schwa that doesn't make up a syllable which leads the OP to not hear a syllable in Russian words with very reduced final syllables.

If there's a particular sound we're looking into, it's the Russian *r* of _модельер_ and _набор_, and the sound closest to it in French is the *l *(both consonants are _liquids_), so it's far more relevant than any other.

If you have any way to prove that the recordings provided are non-standard French, please do so.


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> We're discussing Standard French (and its recordings) which has voicalic release which results, after final consonants – whether *v, d, l, n* or anything else voiced and at times even voiceless, – in a schwa that doesn't make up a syllable which leads the OP to not hear a syllable in Russian words with very reduced final syllables.
> 
> If there's a particular sound we're looking into, it's the Russian *r* of _модельер_ and _набор_, and the sound closest to it in French is the *l *(both consonants are _liquids_), so it's far more relevant than any other.
> 
> If you have any way to prove that the recordings provided are non-standard French, please do so.


I would like to hear rather "molotov" and "kalachnikov" in Standard French. It's the only two words in French that can be compared with "модельеров" and "наборов" in Russian for the given purpose.


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> I would like to hear rather "molotov" and "kalachnikov" in Standard French. It's the only two words in French that can be compared with "модельеров" and "наборов" in Russian for the given purpose.


The problem we're discussing in this thread is Interprete not hearing anything after the consonant *R* in those words. In French that has no currently productive vowel reduction (only the historic one), and especially given that it has last-syllable stress, it's quite obvious that final -*ov* cannot be reduced.

What we need is to take a word with already present – historic – vowel reduction/deletion after a liquid consonant (and French only has one, the *L*) and see if we can't hear a vowel where French speakers don't.

I think I've found exactly that in _finale_, and you as a neutral third party were there to confirm that you hear a vowel (and not only there).


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## Interprete

Thanks to your explanations! 
I'm of two minds regarding this schwa, as I would pronounce it at the end of 'olive' (like in the recording), if asked to pronounce it clearly. However it certainly goes out the window in daily speech, if I had to say "Où est l'huile d'olive ???" there would be no schwa. The recording is standard in that it reflects the 'received' pronunciation, but not the way it may be really pronounced.
I also can't think of other examples where the schwa would be pronounced, for example "belle" definitely has no shwa, unless you pronounce the double L, something that absolutely no one does in normal speech.
We also have the word "bol" for example, and there is no shwa even for someone who would pronounce it slowly like in a recording.
All in all Sobakus I think your points are very interesting but I'm not sure they fully explain why i don't hear any sound after the R (although I do hear the shwa at the end of olive in the recording... how come?).

Thanks again, all very interesting!


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## rusita preciosa

Mod note: The topic is fully discussed, the thread is now closed.


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