# Ваша and ваше (pronunciation)



## James Bates

Is there any _audible _difference between the pronunciation of ваша (feminine) and that of ваше (neuter)?


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## Awwal12

James Bates said:


> Is there any _audible _difference between the pronunciation of ваша (feminine) and that of ваше (neuter)?


In standard Russian - no, there is not.


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## learnerr

For reference I'll say this: to write things like "ваше собака" is not a possible spelling mistake.
As for whether there is any audible difference, I don't know.


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## ahvalj

This has been already discussed to death elsewhere in this forum. In St. Petersburg, at least, the difference is quite perceptible.


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## green_light

It all depends on fluency and on sentence stress. We, natives, can distinguish these words at almost any fluency level and it doesn't matter whether they are stressed or not. I suppose that if somebody say one of these words slowly and stressing it out, you'll be able to distinguish them with ease. Neverthesess, with fluency increase, you'll barely recognise these words just aurally due to the reduction of the last consonant. At this point you'll need to judge from the context.


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## James Bates

Thank you!


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## Awwal12

green_light said:


> It all depends on fluency and on sentence stress. We, natives, can distinguish these words at almost any fluency level and it doesn't matter whether they are stressed or not. I suppose that if somebody say one of these words slowly and stressing it out, you'll be able to distinguish them with ease. Neverthesess, with fluency increase, you'll barely recognise these words just aurally due to the reduction of the last consonant. At this point you'll need to judge from the context.


If one doesn't intend to syllabicate a word, then (in standard Russian) these forms are pronounced identically anyway. A syllable following the stressed one is a position of the strongest reduction even in slow speech, and there both /e/ and /a/ that follow hard consonants are reduced to plain schwas. And I don't even mention the fast relaxed speech, where virtually all vowels preceded by hard consonants may become indistinguishable in this position.


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## igusarov

Hm... I tried pronouncing the phrases with the same surrounding syllables and the same stress pattern: "ваша собака", "ваше собрание", "ваш собор". If I trim the audio record down to "ваш* соб", I really cannot hear any difference between the first two.

Yet for some reason, the endings "-а́ша / -а́ше" are not good rhymes. "Ваша каше" looks really poor. "Ваша каша" and "вашей кашей" sound way better. So I think that at least in some cases these endings do differ in pronounciation.


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## ahvalj

I recall at least two discussions of this or a similar topic on this forum in the last year, so going directly to the conclusions: there seems to be a difference between the way people pronounce the endings in Moscow (what Awwal12 calls "standard Russian") and in St. Petersburg (what *I* would call standard Russian). Muscovites do reduce the unstressed vowels perceptibly stronger (e. g. «старательный» becomes almost «старатьный»), and that irritates me when listening many of them on the radio. Speaking of the endings, in my normal speech all the three vowels are more or less distinct in open final endings: a kind of "a" («ваша собака»), a kind of "e" («ваше море») and a kind of "i" («ваши души»). In particular «ваша/ваше/ваши» or «дыня/дыне/дыни» are phonetically different.


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## learnerr

igusarov said:


> Hm... I tried pronouncing the phrases with the same surrounding syllables and the same stress pattern: "ваша собака", "ваше собрание", "ваш собор". If I trim the audio record down to "ваш* соб", I really cannot hear any difference between the first two.


And what about ваша организация, ваше организаторство, ваш организатор?
I think that when writing we mentally don't _syllabicate_ words, but we _lexicate_ sentences, thinking of words as if they're pronounced alone. So, to write ваше собака instead of ваша собака is impossible, but сабака can get out; while собако cannot, maybe because we know well and on the intuitive level the endings of words.


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## Esgaleth

Interestingly, I was sure the endings should be clearly pronounced but then it struck me that I would probaby expect different /ш/ sounds before 'а','е' and 'и', even if the vowels are not physically pronounced. (It somehow seems ridiculous to imagine all of them being reduced to one and the same sound but without special equipment, how would you know?)


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## Maroseika

Esgaleth said:


> (It somehow seems ridiculous to imagine all of them being reduced to one and the same sound but without special equipment, how would you know?)



You may check it here (§ 27: Позиционные изменения гласных в заударных слогах).


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## igusarov

learnerr said:


> And what about ваша организация, ваше организаторство, ваш*и* организа*ции*?


The way I speak and hear it, the difference is next to zero.


learnerr said:


> So, to  write ваше собака instead of ваша собака is impossible, but сабака can  get out; while собако cannot, maybe because we know well and on the  intuitive level the endings of words.


I understand what you are trying to say. My first intention was the same - these are different words and we never mistake "ваша" for "ваше". But then, out of curiosity, I turned the mic on and was surprised to find that in fact I cannot _hear_ the difference.


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## ahvalj

You are discussing this as if it were just one of many features of the language, but in fact this indistinction is an extremely malignant tendency since it destroys the very technique of the Russian grammar. Most nominal endings in Russian consist of a pure vowel. We already do not distinguish between unstressed "a" and "o", which causes problems in understanding, but this muscovite tendency of further merging the unstressed vowels, if it becomes a part of the national standard, will lead to the homonymy of too many declension forms. Well, there are enough end-stressed nouns to prevent the declension system from collapsing, at least in the foreseeable future, but it will create a tension that will be resolved in an unpredictable way. Hopefully, this indistinction will not penetrate the standard language and will be reversed in the next generations, like it happened with some other muscovite phonetic peculiarities («высокый, шыгать, сделалса»).


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## Esgaleth

Maroseika said:


> You may check it here (§ 27: Позиционные изменения гласных в заударных слогах).


Thank you for the reference. 
I was only trying to say how I, as a native speaker, perceive/hear/pronounce those endings and that without sound recording, it's all very personal. In a certain situation, I'd probably skip the vowels altogether, but then my /ш/ sounds before different vowels are very different to my ear. I would appreciate any information to what extent such change in the /ш/ sound could be typical of a native speaker.


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## Maroseika

Esgaleth said:


> I would appreciate any information to what extent such change in the /ш/ sound could be typical of a native speaker.



As we can see from the same link (§ 28: Позиционные изменения согласных звуков) consonants do not change depending on the next vowels. Probably, what you are hearing is something individual or maybe just seeming. At least I cannot notice any difference.


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## learnerr

I think this point is obvious and probably already considered by those who participate here, but nevertheless I'll add it for completeness of discussion. The truth of nature is that no sound is the same if repeated two times. When pronouncing it, what gets out is casual and depends on about everything including whether the speaker has received an SMS recently; however, there must be tendencies that depend on the phonetic environment as well, which tendencies may or may not feel as something important to the listeners. Of course, tendencies are not exact laws, probably most of it is statistical. I said that to point out that to say something really true, positive and definite about pronunciation is close to impossible, so we have to enjoy approximate descriptions. For a learner it means that he or she has to learn all or some of these intricacies the natural way rather then relying on descriptions, descriptions being merely guides.

The casual mood of pronunciation is especially well noticed when one listens to a foreign language: what is described as the same phoneme (like [æ] in English or like the consonant in what -ci-/-ce- is pronounced in Italian) may sound so different from the same people that one could not believe these sounds make the same to anybody.


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## ahvalj

The question lies not in the degree of variation allowed for each sound but whether or not these phonemes remain distinguishable in every position, and which consequences this may have as to the vocabulary and especially the grammar. I think it is pretty obvious that the phonetic evolution in some speakers (and, what is worse, in an influential kind of speakers) has reached the stage when it starts ruining the declension itself. It is very, very serious indeed. Much more serious than the 99 percent of complaints we hear from time to time about various particular aspects of the language usage.


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## Esgaleth

Maroseika said:


> As we can see from the same link (§ 28:   Позиционные изменения согласных звуков) consonants do not change   depending on the next vowels. Probably, what you are hearing is   something individual or maybe just seeming. At least I cannot notice any   difference.



Thank you for your professional reply. Admittedly, I have no knowledge   of Russian other than that of a native speaker, but as as linguist, I am  aware of how subjective it could be what one hears or thinks s/he hears  for that matter.


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## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> there seems to be a difference between the way people pronounce the endings in Moscow (what Awwal12 calls "standard Russian") and in St. Petersburg (what *I* would call standard Russian).


I'm afraid that the works in Russian phonetics and orthoepy are mostly oriented towards the Moscow norms of the mid XX century, and hence it is exactly what supposed to be a Standard Russian pronunciation.

And yes, numerous elisions of consonants that are inherent to the modern Moscow pronunciation are NOT considered the features of Standard Russian. Not yet, at least. On the other hand, the Standard Russian orthoepy (according to Rosenthal) includes some _possible_ features that are totally absent in the modern Moscow speech, including many additional cases of the consonant assimilation by softness (свеча -> /с'в'ьча́/ as well as /св'ьча́/, Тверь -> /т'в'эр'/ as well as /тв'эр'/, etc.).


Maroseika said:


> As we can see from the same link (§ 28:  Позиционные изменения согласных звуков) consonants do not change  depending on the next vowels.


I'm sorry, but they do change, even if those changes are phonemically irrelevant and aren't even percieved by native speakers. That, for instance, includes possible labialization before rounded vowels, and surrounding vowels also tend to influence the degree of velarization of hard consonants. I'd try to seek for some academic works, if you are interested.


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## learnerr

Awwal12 said:


> I'm sorry, but they do change, even if those changes are phonemically irrelevant and aren't even percieved by native speakers.


If so, then a correction: not by all, but by some of them, as we have seen.


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## Esgaleth

Awwal12 said:


> а́а́
> I'm sorry, but they do change, even if those changes are phonemically irrelevant and aren't even percieved by native speakers. That, for instance, includes possible labialization before rounded vowels, and surrounding vowels also tend to influence the degree of velarization of hard consonants. I'd try to seek for some academic works, if you are interested.


Ah! It warms the cockles of my heart to hear real stuff, no 'ghost strories' so far.  
On a more serious note, if words are so-to-say strings of sounds shaped by stress (or any lack thereof), rhythm and intonation, then how could those sounds possibly remain unchanged? And, when you come to think about how commony relaxed, if not merely lazy, modern people are in casual utterances, I think we (teachers&leaners) should be looking for sounds that are still present in their original length and quality. 

ps. I am happy to believe you, so no need in supporting references, however, would be grateful for a name or two concerning the modern (late 2012 - 2013) situation in the languge.


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## Maroseika

Awwal12 said:


> I'm sorry, but they do change, even if those changes are phonemically irrelevant and aren't even percieved by native speakers.



When speaking of the positional change of sounds, don't we mean only the changes that are percievable? Otherwise the very notion "positional change of sounds" seems to me making no practical sense.


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## learnerr

Maroseika said:


> When speaking of the positional change of sounds, don't we mean only the changes that are percievable? Otherwise the very notion "positional change of sounds" seems to me making no practical sense.


But the talking of only the changes that are perceivable looks to make even less sense! Because people, well, are different. So, for example, your link for Esgaleth was meaningless: all it presumably showed (inadvertently) was the truism that different people may hear how [ш] sounds differently. If it was the case of referring to what is perceivable, these descriptions would be helpful for organising one's thinking, but they would not answer questions like Esgaleth's one, and they would not add knowledge…


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## Maroseika

learnerr said:


> But the talking of only the changes that are perceivable looks to make even less sense! Because people, well, are different. So, for example, your link for Esgaleth was meaningless: all it presumably showed (inadvertently) was the truism that different people may hear how [ш] sounds differently. If it was the case of referring to what is perceivable, these descriptions would be helpful for organising one's thinking, but they would not answer questions like Esgaleth's one, and they would not add knowledge…



I would like to remind that the question of *James Bates* referes to the *audible difference *between ваша and ваше. 
Therefore there is no sense to talk here about indiscernible and inconceivable air vibration, because pronunication is what is heard. Any native immediately notices "something wrong" if the sound changes positionally out of accordance with the local standard: the speech sounds alien or non-native. If natives do not perceive positional change of ш (and they do not, according to РГ-80), there is no change, and in all positions it is pronounced equally.


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## Awwal12

Maroseika said:


> Therefore there is no sense to talk here about indiscernible and inconceivable air vibration, because pronunication is what is heard. Any native immediately notices "something wrong" if the sound changes positionally out of accordance with the local standard: the speech sounds alien or non-native. If natives do not perceive positional change of ш (and they do not, according to РГ-80), there is no change, and in all positions it is pronounced equally.


Just for some clarification: it "can" be pronounced equally (without notice) doesn't still mean it "is" in fact pronounced equally. 
So, labialized and unlabialized voiced velar plosives lie in exactly the same _perceptional cluster_ for a Russian speaker (he percieves both these sound continuums as an identical sound, even if he actually pronounces the both himself), although they definetly will be percieved as different sounds when heard by a speaker of the Kabardian language (in which labialized and unlabialized consonants even form a phonemic opposition).
We just can state that there is no any _relevant difference_ in actual phonetic realization of Russian /ш/ in different positions; not more, not less.


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## Maroseika

Awwal12 said:


> We just can state that there is no any _relevant difference_ in actual phonetic realization of Russian /ш/ in different positions; not more, not less.



Great. I believe this is the only important for the one who learns Russian and exactly what the topicstarter asked.


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