Help:IPA/Russian
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Russian pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
Russian distinguishes hard (unpalatalized or plain) and soft (palatalized) consonants (both phonetically and orthographically). Soft consonants, most of which are denoted by a superscript ⟨ʲ⟩, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, like the articulation of the y sound in yes. In native words, /j, ɕː, tɕ/ are always soft, whereas /ʐ, ʂ, ts/ are always hard.
See Russian phonology and Russian alphabet for a more thorough look at the sounds of Russian.
Consonants | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hard | Soft | |||||
IPA | Examples | English approximation | IPA | Examples | English approximation | |
b | ; апде́йт | boot | bʲ | , | beautiful | |
d | ; | do | dʲ | ; ; | media | |
dʐ | jug | dʑ | начди́в; | jig | ||
dz | lads | dzʲ | дзюдо́ | lad's young | ||
f | ; ; | fool | fʲ | ; ; | few | |
ɡ | ; | good | ɡʲ | argue | ||
ɣ | ; ; Бог даст; дух бодр | loch (Scottish) but voiced | ɣʲ | двухдверный | Loch Ewe (Scottish) but voiced | |
— | j | [je-]; [jɵ-]; [ju-]; [ja]; | yes | |||
k | ; ; | scar | kʲ | ; секью́рити | skew | |
l | pill | lʲ | ; | failure | ||
m | moot | mʲ | ; | mute | ||
n | noon | nʲ | ; ; | vinyard | ||
p | ; ; | span | pʲ | ; ; | spew | |
r | American atom | rʲ | ; | American catty | ||
s | ; ; | soup | sʲ | ; ; ; ; | assume (RP) | |
ʂ | ; ; ; | rush | ɕː | ; ; | wish sheep | |
t | ; ; | stand | tʲ | ; ; ; | stew (RP) | |
ts | ; | cats | tsʲ | Цю́рих | cat's young | |
tʂ | chop | tɕ | ; | chip | ||
v | ; его́; афга́н | voodoo | vʲ | ; | view | |
x | ; | loch (Scottish); ugh | xʲ | ; Хью́стон; | huge (for some dialects) | |
z | ; | zoo | zʲ | ; резьба́; ; | presume (RP) | |
ʐ | ; кешбэ́к | pleasure | ʑː | ; вещдо́к | prestige genre | |
Stressed vowels | ||||||
[-soft] | [+soft] | |||||
IPA | Examples | English approximation | IPA | Examples | English approximation | |
a | father (Australian English) | æ | ; | pat | ||
ɛ | ; | met | e | ; | mace | |
ɨ | ; ; с и́грами | roses (for some dialects) | i | ; | meet | |
o | ; | chore | ɵ | ; | foot | |
u | cool | ʉ | ; | choose | ||
Unstressed vowels | ||||||
[-soft] | [+soft] | |||||
IPA | Examples | English approximation | IPA | Examples | English approximation | |
ə | ; ; ; | about | ə | ; ; | lasagna | |
ɐ | ; ; ; | bud | ɪ | ; ; ; ; | bit | |
ɛ | тетра́эдр; поэте́сса | met | ||||
ɨ | ; ; ; ; к Ива́ну | roses (for some dialects) | ||||
o | ; поэте́сса | chore | ɵ | ма́чо; сёрфинги́ст | foot | |
ʊ | pull | ʉ | ; | youth | ||
Suprasegmental | ||||||
IPA | Example | Explanation | ||||
ˈ | [tɕɪˈtɨrʲɪ] | stress mark, placed before the stressed syllable | ||||
ː | [ˈzːadʲɪ] | consonant length mark, placed after the geminated consonant |
- Even though /ts/ and its voicing [dz] are considered to be exclusively hard consonants, they may be palatalized in certain words of foreign origin.
- Consonants in consonant clusters are assimilated in voicing if the final consonant in the sequence is an obstruent (except [v, vʲ]). All consonants become voiceless if the final consonant is voiceless or voiced if the final consonant is voiced (Halle 1959:31).
- The affricates [ts], [tɕ], and [tʂ] (and their voiced counterparts [dz], [dʑ], and [dʐ]) are sometimes written with ligature ties: [t͡s], [t͡ɕ], and [t͡ʂ] ([d͡z], [d͡ʑ], and [d͡ʐ]). Ties are not used in transcriptions on Wikipedia (except in phonology articles) because they may not display correctly in all browsers.
- The voiced obstruents /b, bʲ, d, dʲ, ɡ, v, vʲ, z, zʲ, ʐ/ are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent (Halle 1959:22).
- ⟨г⟩ is usually pronounced [ɣ] or (word-finally) [x] in some religious words and colloquial derivatives from them, such as Госпо́дь [ɣɐsˈpotʲ] and [box], and in the interjections , , , , and also in [bʊˈɣaltʲɪr] (Timberlake 2004:23). /ɡ/ devoices and lenites to [x] before voiceless obstruents (dissimilation) in the word roots -мягк- or -мягч-, -легк- or -легч-, -тягч-, and also in the old-fashioned pronunciation of -ногт-, -когт-, кто. Speakers of the Southern Russian dialects may pronounce ⟨г⟩ as [ɣ] (soft [ɣʲ], devoiced [x] and [xʲ]) throughout.
- Intervocalic ⟨г⟩ represents /v/ in certain words (, , итого́ ), and in the genitive suffix -ого/-его (Timberlake 2004:23).
- The soft vowel letters ⟨е, ё, ю, я⟩ represent iotated vowels /je, jo, ju, ja/, except when following a consonant. When these vowels are unstressed (save for ⟨ё⟩, which is always stressed) and follow another vowel letter, the /j/ may not be present. The letter ⟨и⟩ produces iotated sound /ji/ only after ь.
- /l/ is often strongly pharyngealized [ɫ], but that feature is not distinctive (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:187-188).
- Alveolo-palatal consonants are subjected to regressive assimilative palatalization; i.e. they tend to become palatalized in front of other phones with the same place of articulation.
- Most speakers pronounce ⟨ч⟩ in the pronoun что and its derivatives as [ʂ]. All other occurrences of чт cluster stay as affricate and stop.
- ⟨щ⟩ is sometimes pronounced as [ɕː] or [ɕɕ] and sometimes as [ɕtɕ], but no speakers contrast the two pronunciations. This generally includes the other spellings of the sound, but the word счи́тывать sometimes has [ɕtɕ] because of the morpheme boundary between the prefix ⟨с-⟩ and the root ⟨-чит-⟩.
- Geminated [ʐː] is pronounced as soft [ʑː], the voiced counterpart to [ɕː], in a few lexical items (such as дро́жжи or заезжа́ть) by conservative Moscow speakers; such realization is now somewhat obsolete (Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015:224)).
- Vowels are fronted and/or raised in the context of palatalized consonants: /a/ and /u/ become [æ] and [ʉ], respectively between palatalized consonants, /e/ is realized as [e] before and between palatalized consonants and /o/ becomes [ɵ] after and between palatalized consonants.
- Unstressed /a/ and /o/ regularly lose their contrast, being pronounced [ɐ] in word-initial position, as well as when in a sequence, and [ə] in posttonic position (i.e. after the stress); in non-initial pretonic position (i.e. before the stress) they are reduced to [ɐ] only immediately before the stress, being realized [ə] otherwise.
- Only in certain word-final morphemes (Timberlake 2004:48-51).
- Unstressed /a/ is pronounced as [ɪ] after ⟨ч⟩ and ⟨щ⟩ except when word-final.
- In the careful style of pronunciation unstressed /e/ and /o/ in words of foreign origin may be pronounced with little or no reduction.
- Unstressed [ɵ] only occurs in words of foreign origin.
References
- Cubberley, Paul (2002), "The phonology of Modern Russian", Russian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press
- Halle, Morris (1959), Sound Pattern of Russian, MIT Press
- Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Timberlake, Alan (2004), "Sounds", A Reference Grammar of Russian, Cambridge University Press
- Yanushevskaya, Irena; Bunčić, Daniel (2015), "Russian" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45 (2): 221–228, doi:10.1017/S0025100314000395
See also
- Category:Pages with Russian IPA (2,420)
- Template:ru-IPA for the Wiktionary template to automatically generate pronunciation for Russian words