# All Slavic languages: phonemic vs. etymological orthography



## VLAD1234

I was wondering how phonetic slavic languages are?
I know serbian is 100% phonetic but what about Bulgarian, Russian, Czech,Polish?


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## Anicetus

Er, what's a "phonetic language"?  Did you perhaps want to ask if they used phonemic orthography?


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## VLAD1234

in this case I mean can you read the language the same way you write it?


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## trosheniorasi

Bulgarian is phonetic for the most part. There are some exceptions like not fully pronouncing the definite articles (saying: *часа* while writing *часът*).


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## Anicetus

VLAD1234 said:


> in this case I mean can you read the language the same way you write it?



Yep, that's what I suggested, orthography = the way you write a language. 

In general, I think most other Slavic languages have less phonemic orthographies than Serbian, but they're still fairly predictable. It's certain that none of them is as inconsistent in spelling as English.

Technically, Serbian isn't really 100% phonemic either. Morphophonological alternations in a word which are caused by an another word are not marked; for example, _s bratom_ is read as /zbratom/, _opet ću_ as /opeću/. This happens in some compound words as well, so _jedanput_ is /jedamput/. Not to mention that tone and vowel length aren't represented at all in standard orthography.

Croatian orthography is mostly the same as Serbian. However, foreign names coming from a language using the Latin script are not phoneticised. Reflex of the long yat is _ije_ in script although it's mostly pronounced as /je:/. The infinitive and the enclitic forming the Future I tense are always spelled separately (_bit ću_ /biću/, _krast ću_ /krašću/) and it's allowed to keep some consonants which are lost in speech for clarity, such as _šeststo_ /šesto/ or _redci_ /reci/ as N pl. of _redak_.

Bosnian has the same policy with foreign names (when written in the Latin script, which is most of the time) and reflex of the long yat as Croatian, I'm not sure about the other things.

Now, I believe other Slavic languages don't mark phonological assimilation in script, like BCMS N _vra*b*ac_ but G _vra*p*ca_. If I'm not mistaken, all Slavic languages languages other than BCMS devoice voiced consonants at the end of words, but ignore it in writing (Czech _dub_ /dup/). And none of them that use the Latin script phoneticise foreign names.

Other than that, Slovene uses _e_ for /e/, /ɛ/ as well as /ə/ and _o_ for both /o/ and /ɔ/, _l_, _u_ and _v_ are pronounced as /w/ under some circumcstances.

Czech, Slovak and Polish have different ways of representing some phonemes. For example, Czech and Slovak maintain _y_ although its pronunciation has merged with _i_. They do however, unlike BCMS, observe vowel length in script.

Russian is probably the least phonemic of Slavic orthographies. Vowels are reduced if unstressed and seem to change when after palatals, and none of this is reflected orthographically. Unstressed _a_ and _o_ are merged, just like _e_ and _i_. Feminine nouns ending in a consonant are always added the soft sign ь, even if their final consonant is soft on its own.


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## LilianaB

I agree with Anicetus. Polish is mostly a phonetic language, although it has a certain way of representing certain single phonemes by letter clusters. Russian is the Slavic language in which the pronunciation differs the most from the written form. By the way, _phonetic language_ is the right term in linguistics: this is one of the ways how languages are classified.


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## bibax

The Czech orthography is mostly etymological or even historical. Only simple (non-derived/composed) words like voda, žena, etc. are written phonetically. The derived words are written phonetically only by accident.

For example:

Srb is pronounced the same way like srp (sickle), srbský is pronouced [srpski:], Srbové (phonetically);
kdy (when?) is pronounced [gdy], leckdy [ledzgdy, dz is an affricate];
psi (nom. pl.), psy (acc. instr. pl.);
bílý, bílí, býlí, all pronounced the same way [bi:li:];

It is quite easy to read Czech (for the Czechs, of course), but it is difficult to write Czech without knowledge of the etymology and word forming. The Czech orthography is a nightmare for the Czech children.

On the other side, for me it is quite unnatural to write: sladak - slatki, srpski - Srbovi, etc.


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## Anicetus

LilianaB said:


> By the way, _phonetic language_ is the right term in linguistics: this is one of the ways how languages are classified.



Very well. I presume that's a way of classifying *standard* languages because it's purely a matter of orthography. Anyway, the thread title was originally "Slavic Phonetics", so the question wasn't very clear. 




bibax said:


> The Czech orthography is mostly etymological or even historical. Only simple (non-derived/composed) words like voda, žena, etc. are written phonetically. The derived words are written phonetically only by accident.
> 
> For example:
> 
> Srb is pronounced the same way like srp (sickle), srbský is pronouced [srpski:], Srbové (phonetically);
> kdy (when?) is pronounced [gdy], leckdy [ledzgdy, dz is an affricate];
> psi (nom. pl.), psy (acc. instr. pl.);
> bílý, bílí, býlí, all pronounced the same way [bi:li:];
> 
> It is quite easy to read Czech (for the Czechs, of course), but it is difficult to write Czech without knowledge of the etymology and word forming. The Czech orthography is a nightmare for the Czech children.
> 
> On the other side, for me it is quite unnatural to write: sladak - slatki, srpski - Srbovi, etc.



What you gave examples of in the first two lines are final obstruent devoicing and voicing assimilation. The practice of not presenting such alternations in writing is called _morphophonemic_ principle, I think.

There's nothing "natural" about orthographies, they're all completely made up by people. You're just more used to that way of writing. 

By the way, _Srbovi_ doesn't mean anything in BCMS, _Serbs_ are _Srbi_ in N pl., while N sg. is _Srbin_.


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## Outsider

Ukrainian and Belarussian seem to have particularly phonetic orthographies (one spelling = one sound) among the Slavic languages. I also get the impression that south slavic languages generally have more phonetic orthographies than other Slavic languages...



bibax said:


> Srb is pronounced the same way like srp (sickle), srbský is pronouced [srpski:], Srbové (phonetically);
> kdy (when?) is pronounced [gdy], leckdy [ledzgdy, dz is an affricate];
> psi (nom. pl.), psy (acc. instr. pl.);
> bílý, bílí, býlí, all pronounced the same way [bi:li:];


One might say that such an orthography is phone*m*ic, or morphophonemic (one spelling = one phoneme or morpheme), but not always completely phonetic (one spelling = various sounds).


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## vianie

Anicetus said:


> If I'm not mistaken, all Slavic languages languages other than BCMS devoice voiced consonants at the end of words, but ignore it in writing (Czech _dub_ /dup/).



More strictly taken, the devoiced counterpart of voiced consonant is still the devoiced voiced consonant, not devoiced consonant. The same other way round. One example on behalf all:
prah http://slovniky.korpus.sk/locutio/52/4kvx-prah.ogg
prach http://slovniky.korpus.sk/locutio/14/4bjq-prach.ogg​


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## Sobakus

You don't wanna hear about the Russian orthography. It's not even English, where a word written and pronounced are different entities in your brain, no, Russian is much more decieving than that. It tricks people into thinking it's written as it sounds (most natives will tell you so), but when the unsuspecting victim comes to have a closer look, it smacks them in the face with that ridiculous vowel reduction and numerous exceptions that couldn't make less sense. Add some negligent pronunciation and you end up checking and correcting every single unfamiliar name or term you wrote up on the last lection or asking the lecturer to repeat them 2 times over clearly and without the reduction. About 95% of Russians keep making spelling mistakes throughout their lives, and I don't even want to start about the damned commas...


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## LilianaB

Hello, Outsider. What do you mean by morphemic orthography in Slavic languages, like Chinese? Could you give us some examples of morphemic orthography in Slavic languages? Could you explain the sentence you wrote: "one spelling equals one phoneme or one morpheme."


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## Outsider

Dear Liliana, allow me to reply by commenting on Sobakus' latest post. I hope the two of you don't mind. I've also added a few links that explain the ideas behind my reply better than I believe I could explain them myself. Please take a look at them.



Sobakus said:


> You don't wanna hear about the Russian orthography [...] with that ridiculous vowel reduction and numerous exceptions that couldn't make less sense.


I find nothing illogical about using the same spelling for reduced and unreduced vowels, when they are arguably realisations of the same phoneme. What is more, inflection often changes the stress in a word, turning reduced vowels into unreduced vowels or vice-versa, but at a deeper level the structure remains the same, that is we're still dealing with the same phonemes or morphemes. It's actually a clever way to spell, that strikes a compromise between representing pronunciation and representing the morphological similarity between different forms of the same lexeme. 
Even purely phonetic transcriptions can be more narrow or more broad.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Outsider. I have to digest it.


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## Sobakus

Outsider said:


> Dear Liliana, allow me to reply by commenting on Sobakus' latest post. I hope the two of you don't mind. I've also added a few links that explain the ideas behind my reply better than I believe I could explain them myself. Please take a look at them.
> 
> I find nothing illogical about using the same spelling for reduced and unreduced vowels, when they are arguably realisations of the same phoneme. What is more, inflection often changes the stress in a word, turning reduced vowels into unreduced vowels or vice-versa, but at a deeper level the structure remains the same, that is we're still dealing with the same phonemes or morphemes. It's actually a clever way to spell, that strikes a compromise between representing pronunciation and representing the morphological similarity between different forms of the same lexeme.
> Even purely phonetic transcriptions can be more narrow or more broad.


  There's indeed nothing illogical about it, however your ordinary Joe doesn't care about the scholars' logic. All he cares about is writing down the language without the constant hinderance of having to come up with a paronym to put the doubt-inducing vowel in stressed position. He doesn't need to represent the morphological similarity between стол and стола, as even the dumbest native speaker can spot it right away. This system serves primarily for the scholars' amusement, it helps the speakers of other Slavic languages to understand written Russian, but it hinders the very people who actually use it. The only ones who benefit from it are looked upon as hicks with village accent.


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## martinkunev

trosheniorasi said:


> Bulgarian is phonetic for the most part. There are some exceptions like not fully pronouncing the definite articles (saying: часа while writing часът).



Bulgarian alphabet is far from phonetic even though most native speakers and teachers would say it is.

vowel reduction
[ɔ] and  become [o] in unstressed syllables; [a] and [ɤ] become [ɐ] following more complex rules
difference in meaning is not always marked in spoken language (e.g. оказвам and указвам are both [okazvɐm])
difference in meaning is not always marked in written language (e.g. седя can be [sɛdjɐ] or [sɛdja] depending on verb tense and person)

various kinds of assimilation
град [grat], сграда [zgradɐ], от града [od grɐdɐ]

various changes in consonants before some vowels:
unwritten [j] sound in the clusters -ке- -ге- -хе-
the л letter (usually pronounced [l]) becomes [ʎ] before е, и, ю, я and ь (the pronunciation of ю, я and ь also changes)

two letters for the same phoneme - ь and й

final [t] in definite article is usually not pronounced (часът [t͡ʃɐsɐ])

no phonetic marking of unreleased stops (e.g. петно [pɛt̚nɔ])

clustered consonants changes - вестник [vɛsnik], детство [dɛt͡stvo], счупен [ʃt͡ʃupɛn], отвертка [otvɛrkɐ]

воини is pronounced [vɔjni]

there is no reliable rule to predict word stress and the stress is not marked (except in the word "ѝ" to distinguish it from the homonyme word "и")

each of the letters щ, ю and я usually represents a sequence of two sounds

----

That's what I can recall (I'm a native speaker) but I'm sure I've seen more irregularities.

To sum up:
there is not always 1:1 correspondance between written and spoken language
in some cases a letter may represent two sounds or no sound 
a letter can be pronounced in up to 4 different ways
mastering the bulgarian othography requires using semantic or/and morphological clues
the bulgarian alphabet is neither phonetic, nor morphological (there are lots of morphological irregularities)

From my experience russian is less phonetic than bulgarian (mostly because of the hard/soft sound distinction). Macedonian and especially serbian are mostly phonetic. I can't say for the other slavic languages.


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## DarkChild

martinkunev said:


> various changes in consonants before some vowels:
> unwritten [j] sound in the clusters -ке- -ге- -хе-
> 
> 
> no phonetic marking of unreleased stops (e.g. петно [pɛt̚nɔ])



I hadn't noticed those before. Although, I'm not sure if the first one is not a dialectal feature.


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## ahvalj

Well, since the thread is alive again...



Sobakus said:


> it smacks them in the face with that ridiculous vowel reduction


Very figurative if not quite tasteful. I think, the vowel reduction is not an orthographic problem, it is rather a complexity of the language itself that cannot be adequately dealt with by orthographic means. I know only one language that has strong positional variability of its phonemes and a very elaborate orthography to express it: the Avestan. This is a nightmare — to such an extent that linguists have introduced a normalized writing to remove most of the manifestations of this variability. In Slavic, the Belarusian orthography is OK for the (few remaining) natives but it makes mastering this language by a non-Slav much harder; equally problematic is an adequate grammatical description of the language, since the current Belarusian orthography proliferates considerably the amount of paradigms and hides the inner regularities. In Russian, this would be several times more complicated due to a more nuanced vowel reduction. And let's not forget the consonantal assimilations…



Sobakus said:


> and numerous exceptions that couldn't make less sense.


What are they? I cannot imagine many. Well, клещ/вещь is inconsistent phonetically, indeed, but was introduced to distinguish Nom. Sg. of words distributed between two declension types. I personally would prefer the consistently etymological writing (клещь, крышь, мечь, ножь etc.).



Sobakus said:


> Add some negligent pronunciation and you end up checking and correcting every single unfamiliar name or term you wrote up on the last lection or asking the lecturer to repeat them 2 times over clearly and without the reduction.


That's again the complexity of the language. The Russian has a slurred articulation (which makes it one of the least rough sounding on the Slavic average, by the way), so any unfamiliar word will be hard to be perceived properly. The phonetic orthography won't help if one doesn't hear the phonemes to start with. I see no other solution here than to write all the new terms. Any experienced lecturer should be aware of this.

To summarize, I think that the Russian orthography is generally quite adequate for the language it serves. Until 1918 the words were written in more or less the same way as they were in the beginning of the 14th century immediately after the fall of yers and the first changes this caused in the consonantism. Since then, there were no system shifts in phonetics that would require (or even demand) any reforms: both the vowel reduction and consonant assimilations were (and are) automatic and deducible from the forms reflected in orthography. The shapes of words as they exist in the inner structure of the language are close to the orthographic forms, which can be seen e. g. in cases of stress fluctuation: the synonyms may sound quite differently (творога/творога) yet they are unproblematically perceived as variants of the same forms. The same with the derivational grammar: all those vowel reductions and assimilations don't disturb the paradigms for the native speakers.


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