Stress is the gremlin of all non-native Russian speakers. It's a seemingly
minor point which makes everyone's life difficult. It is often the first
give-away that you are not native - a certain disadvantage when buying tickets
in
Note: Do to the vagaries of HTML, accents work in Internet Explorer, but not in Netscape. Thus, I will mark stress with both an accent and a different color, just so everyone is happy – although until I fix the problem, IE is recommended.
If you are seeing the word for the first time, there is, at least not until you are much more familiar with roots and endings (some roots and afixes like to be stressed, some hate to be stressed - but you have to learn these individually) no way of knowing where the stress is - so learn it along with the word itself. Once you know where the stress is, more often than not, you will be correct in assuming it does not move. But not much more. Here is some shorthand I will use to identify stress patterns as we go along:
SS: stress on the stem in both singular and plural
SE: stress on the stem in the singular and on the ending in the plural
ES: stress on the ending in the singular and on the ending in the plural
EE or End Stressed: the stress is always on the final syllable of the word (with the exception of instrumental plural, but don't worry about that)
Note: If there is not ending on the word, the stress jumps to the last syllable.
Knowing where the stress is the first step to correct pronunciation. All stressed vowels will be pronounced as marked on our alphabet chart or ÁÚÂÕËÁ (from the names for the first two letters of the Old Russian alphabet, ÁÚß and ÂÕËÙ - much like alphabet is from the Greek alpha and beta). Where it gets tricky is with the unstressed vowels. Vowels reduce to one of three sounds depending on their position in the word, and whether they are a front or back vowel (see previous page).
This first kind involves the letter O in pretonic or initial position, that is in the syllable right before the stress, or is the very first letter (and unstressed). Pretonic O is pronounced as an á. Thus the word ÏËÎḮ [window] is prononounced [ÁËÎÏ] and ÏÎÔÏÌÏÇÉÑ [ontology] is pronounced [ÁÎÔÁÌÏÇØ'ß]
The second kind involves unstressed front vowels. When å, ü and é Áre unstressed, the are reduced to a sound much like the English 'eh' pronounced very short. Note that 'eh' is also a front vowel. Remember, however, that the 'y' sound in å does not disappear, so it turns into something like "yeh".
For purposes of phonetic transcription (written beween brackets, as above), Russians co-opt some of their own letters. They use the soft sign, ø to represent this 'eh' sound. Thus, whenever you see the soft sign between brackets, it is this reduced vowel, and not an indicator of palatalization. We won't use this often, though. So, ÒÅËÁ́ [river] is pronounced [ÒØËÁ]
The final type involves unstressed O when not pretonic or initial, and unstressed A, ñ and ›. These back vowels all reduce to another back vowel, something like an 'uh'. Again, the short É sound (called a yod - see next page) remains when ñ is reduced. The phonetic symbol for this is the hard sign - ÿ. So ðÌÏÈÏ [bad] - [ðÌÏÈß]
Historical note: In Old Russian, the ø and ÿ were actually vowels (called front and back jers [yers], respectively) pronounced these same ways.
Note that õ and à do not reduce and that ³ (with the two dots) is always stressed - which when combined with Russian's wacky stress leads to another topic which we will put off until later.
Examples:
For the time being it will probably be easier to simply pronounce Russian words the way your teacher does, but in the long run these are very useful to know.