Any person lives in a world of sounds. He hears the murmur of a stream, the rustling of tires, the howling of the wind, the singing of birds, the barking of dogs, the gurgling of water in a teapot, the twisting of meat in a pan, singing, speech and much, much more. A person is so accustomed to these irritants that he often goes crazy, finding himself in absolute silence.
The first thing that starts learning a language at school is phonetics, that is, the science of the sounds of speech. Usually this section of linguistics is not liked by students, although in fact it can be very interesting! Studying the vowels and
consonants of the Russian language, students learn that there are 42 sounds per 33 letters of the alphabet: 6 vowels and exactly 6 times more consonants. There are letters that correspond to two sounds, but there are those that do not indicate any sound.
The same predominance of consonants is observed in most languages of the world. Philologists also know such unique languages as the now dead Ubykh, which was spoken by the last representatives of a small people living on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus in the Sochi region back in the 90s of the last century. The Ubykh language is famous for the fact that there were 84 consonants in 2 vowels (long and short [a])! In his sister Abkhazian, 3 vowels account for about 60 consonants. Such languages are called consonant.
In the same languages that are commonly called vocal (French, Finnish), the number of vowels rarely exceeds the number of consonants. Although there are exceptions. In Danish, there are 26 vowels for 20 consonants.
Absolutely in all languages of the planet there is a vowel sound [a]. This is the most popular, but not necessarily the most frequent vowel sound. For example, in English, the sound [e] is used more often than others.
Interestingly, the vowels of the Russian language are formed "on exhalation." The only exception is the interjection "Aaaaa", expressing fear, which is pronounced on inspiration. How does a vowel sound come about? Air from the lungs enters the
respiratory throat and encounters an obstruction in the form of
vocal cords on the way
. They range from a stream of exhaled air and create a tone (voice). Then the air enters the oral cavity.
When we pronounce vowel sounds, lips, teeth, tongue do not interfere with the air flow, therefore, additional noise is not formed. Thus, a vowel sound consists of one tone (voice) - that's why it is called that. The louder you need to pronounce a vowel, the wider you have to open your mouth.
Differences between vowels from each other are related to the form we give to the oral cavity. If you round your lips, you get sounds [y] or [o]. The tongue does not interfere with the exhaled air so much as to create noise, but its position in the oral cavity changes slightly when pronouncing different vowels. The tongue can slightly rise up or fall down, as well as move back and forth. These small movements lead to the formation of different vowels.
But that is not all. A characteristic feature of the Russian language is the difference in the pronunciation of stressed and unstressed vowels. In the shock position, we really hear [a], [o], [y], [s], [u], [e] - this is the so-called strong position. In an unstressed position (in a weak position), sounds behave differently.
Vowels [a], [o], [e] after
solid consonants denote something similar to [a], but greatly weakened. Students traditionally define this sound as [a], but philologists have a separate icon []. After soft consonants, these same sounds tend to be similar to [and] (philologists call this sound “and with the sound of e” - [ie]). Such phenomena are observed in pre-stressed syllables (except for the absolute beginning of the word).
It is this feature of the “great and mighty” that makes it difficult not only for foreigners, but also for native speakers. The spelling of unstressed vowels has to be checked or memorized.