Once upon a time in Russian language lessons at school, even in the lower grades, we all carefully articulated under the watchful guidance of a teacher: we rounded or pressed our lips, put our tongue to the sky or pushed their teeth ... We learned to pronounce different sounds correctly . And then other rules from the phonetics section were explained to us. We have grown, the rules are forgotten. Who remembers examples of voicing consonants now and how does it even happen?
What is phonetics
The word "phonetics" comes from the Greek "sound." This is the name of one of the sections of the language that studies sounds, their structure, as well as intonation, stress and syllables. Sounds are important to distinguish from letters - the first there are more than a hundred, the second in the Russian alphabet, as you know, thirty-three. The study of phonetics includes two aspects: articulatory (methods for producing sounds) and acoustic (physical characteristics of each sound).
Phonetics Sections
The discipline consists of five parts:
- Phonetics - studies, as already mentioned, the sounds themselves and their signs.
- Phonology - explores phonemes. A phoneme is a minimal sound unit that allows one word to be distinguished from another (for example, in the words “meadow” and “bow” the phonemes “g” and “k” help to understand the difference between them).
- Orthoepy - studies pronunciation, including the norms of correct literary pronunciation.
- Graphics - explores the ratio of letters and sounds.
- Spelling - studies spelling.
Basic concepts of phonetics of the Russian language
The most important thing in this discipline is sounds. They have no meaning (as opposed to whole words), but they help to distinguish different words and forms of words: singing - drinking, home - home - home, and so on. On paper, square brackets are used to indicate sounds ; this is called transcription.
Sounds are vowels and consonants. There are only ten of them, it is easier to pronounce them than consonants: air calmly penetrates through the mouth. Vowels can be stretched, shouted, sung. When the artists are singing, they are pulling just these sounds. It depends on their number how many syllables in a word. And there are words consisting solely of vowels (for example, conjunctions or prepositions).
There are 21 consonants, when pronouncing them, air encounters an obstacle: either in the form of a gap or in the form of closure. These are two ways of producing consonant sounds. The gap is obtained when the tongue approaches the teeth. So the sounds are pronounced “s”, “h”, “f”, “w”. These are noisy sounds, they emit a hiss or a whistle. The second way is when the lips close. Such sounds cannot be stretched, they are sharp, short. This is “p”, “b”, “d”, “k” and others. But they are very felt.
As well as in hardness and softness, consonants can be pairs in voicing and deafness. It’s easy to distinguish them: voiced are voiced loudly, deaf are muffled. These are pairs such as “b” - voiced, and “p” - deaf; “D” is voiced, and “t” is deaf. There are six such combinations. There are, in addition, five consonants that lack a pair. They always remain voiced. These are “l”, “m”, “n”, “r” and “y”.
Folding into various words, making phrases, sounds acquire many properties. Such, for example, as the voicing and stunning of consonants. How does it happen?
The consonants voicing: examples
The five letters above (th, l, m, n, p) do not possess this property. It is very important to remember this! The finalization of a consonant sound can occur only if this sound is paired.
A deaf consonant can become voiced in pairs in some cases. The main condition is that it should be immediately before the sonorous sound (just before, not after!).
So, the voicing of a deaf consonant happens at the junction of morphemes. A morpheme is a part of a word (there is a root, prefix, suffix, ending; postfixes and prefixes are also distinguished, but they are not so important). Thus, at the junction of the prefix and the root, or the root and the suffix, a process of sounding is possible. There is no such thing between a suffix and an ending, since the ending usually consists of vowels. Examples of voicing consonants in this case are as follows: a transaction (“c” - prefix, muffled sound, the root of “deeds” begins with a sonorous “d”, therefore assimilation, that is, assimilation occurs. Aloud, we pronounce this word as “zdelka”), mowing (the root of “braid” ends with a muffled sound “c” - a soft sign is not taken into account, there is a sonorous suffix “b” - assimilation takes place again, and this word is pronounced as “goat”) and so on.
Words with voiced consonants are also found at the junction of an independent word and a particle (particles are official words: whether, not, not, whether, and so on). If only (pronounced aloud "walk"), as if (pronounced "kagby") and other combinations - these are all cases of voicing.
Finally, examples of voicing consonants can be situations where the necessary sounds are at the junction of an independent word and a preposition (the preposition is the official part of speech, it helps to connect words in sentences: c, c, p, p, p, and others): to the bath (pronounce "Gbane"), from home (say "oddom") and so on.
Stunning Consonants: Examples
As with voicing, stunning only occurs when paired sounds are present. In such a situation, the voiced consonant must be ahead of the deaf.
Usually this happens in the end of the word, if it ends with a consonant: bread ("loaf"), honey ("meth"), bring a lot of chairs ("stool") and so on. Also, stunning occurs if in the middle of a word (as a rule, this is a combination of root and suffix), the combination “voiced plus deaf” occurs. For example: a stew (“bread” is the root, ends in a ringing “b”, “k” is a dull suffix, at the output we say the word “slap”), a fairy tale (the root “kaz” ends in a ringing “z”, “k” - dull suffix, in total we get a "chamfer").
The third option, when there is a
stunning of a consonant , is also at the junction of a word and a preposition: under the ceiling (ceiling), above you (nattoba) and others. This property of the Russian language is especially difficult for schoolchildren who act according to the “we hear and write” method.
How about others?
The most common language in the world - English - has its own characteristics in phonetics, like any other language. The following distinguishes British phonetics from Russian:
- In Russia, vowels are not divided into long and short, but in England they are divided.
- Consonants in English are always pronounced firmly, and in Russian can be softened.
- English consonants are never stunned, because it can change the meaning of a whole word.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a student or an adult, but if you live in Russia, you must be able to correctly express your thoughts and know the features of your native language. After all, our language is our wealth!