The Russian accent

English and Russian are very different in many important aspects. In particular the
grammar systems show significant variations. English has a fairly fixed word order. Meaning is
expressed through the addition of words (for example auxiliaries) and movement of words within
limited boundaries. Russian, on the other hand, conveys meaning largely through changes in the
composition of words (e.g., by inflections or the addition of prefixes and suffixes). Its word order
is very fluid. Because of these differences Russians often find learning English a serious
challenge.

Russian is part of the Slavonic branch of the Indo-European languages, while English is a
Romanic language. While English share a lot in common with languages like Spanish and
Italian, Russian is a lot closer to other Slav languages like Polish and Czech.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, some letters from which share similarities with the
Latin alphabet used in English. Those new characters, though, will likely be the first hurdle when
it comes to reading and writing in Russian for second-language learners.

Due to differences in the phonological systems, it is relatively difficult for Russians to

acquire native-speaker-like standards of pronunciation and intonation. Russian consists of 5
vowel sounds, with no differentation between short and long vowels. This contrasts with English
which has 12 vowel sounds (5 long, 7 short), plus 8 diphthongs. Possibly the most significant
vowel difficulty for Russians is the sound in her / cur. This sound seems to cause especial
difficulties in words beginning with /w/, such as were / work / worth. Other vowel problems
include the failure to discriminate between the sounds in sat / set or sit / seat.

Grammar.
Russian grammar encompasses a highly synthetic morphology and syntax. English
grammar has minimal inflection. Russian and English convey meaning through the verb systems
in different ways.
The Russian system is based in the concept of aspect: actions are either completed or not
completed. This is shown by appending affixes to the verb stem. There are few auxiliary verbs.
This contrasts with English, which has progressive and perfect tense forms, and avoids the need
for affixation or inflection by the extensive use of auxiliaries.

The Russian language has 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, and six cases:
nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional. This means that there
are different endings for adjectives and nouns depending on whether words are singular or plural,
and also on the case and the gender of the noun.
English nouns have four genders: masculine, feminine, neuter and common gender.
English has subjective case, objective case, genitive case, determinative genitive pronouns and
nominal genitive pronouns.

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 There are also differences in rules for pluralization. In English to indicate a plural number
of the noun there is always the same rule (aside from a few exceptions) -s/es ending. But in
Russian language, the way they indicate “more than one” depends on how many items they are
talking about as well as on the gender of the items.

Sentence: Russian tends to use a lot of negative words, constructions with the negation and
double negation; the method of expressing the thought “from the reverse” is frequent. While in
English, affirmative sentences prevail, negative structures are rare, double negation is extremely
rare.

Russian sentences are longer than English ones, the reason is that Russian syllables and words
are approximately 30-50% longer in Russian and Russians are fond of long and colorful
phrases.The English text is composed of comparatively short sentences and brief structures.

In Russian language, the order of words ina sentence plays a greatsemantic role, the
mostimportant word stands at the beginning. While the word order isfixed, semantic shades
ofmeaning are expressed byother means. In Englishthere can be one variant.

In Russian language, a lot of sentences begin not with thesubject but, an object, and the
rhematic information stands at theend of the sentence. In English language, the sentence begins
with the subject as a rule and the rheumatic information is placed at the beginning of the
sentence.

Russian has a similar number of consonants to English, but their sounds do not fully
overlap. The /θ/ and /ð/ sounds do not exist in Russian, so words such
as thin, then and clothes are predictably difficult. As with many other learners of English, the /w/
and /v/ sounds are troublesome, west being pronounced vest, for example, or vice versa.
The ng sound at the end of words like sing or thinking is difficult for Russian learners to produce
accurately. Such words often end up as sin or thinkin.

Russian has variable stress patterns, as English. However Russian learners may give
undue prominence to words that English native speakers would swallow; for
example as and has in the following sentences: He's as strong as an ox / She has 3
brothers. Russian learners may ask questions with falling instead of rising intonation, which does
not sound polite to English native speakers.

Russian has a more complex consonant inventory and a much smaller and simpler
phonemic vowel inventory than English. On average, words in Russian have more syllables,
more varied stress patterns, and more articulatorily complex consonant segments than those in
English.

Russian is a largely phonetic language. This means that a word's pronunciation can be
predicted from its spelling and its spelling from its pronunciation. This is certainly not the case in
English, and usually causes Russian learners serious difficulty and frustration.

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24 accents – Russian accent analysis (5:15-5:32)
‘ Yuri ! Hello, it’s Nikolai here! I will never forget that time in Moscow
when Mihael stole Dimitri’s vodka, and he started singing Soviet
National anthem. Remember that time in Volgograd? When Dimitri
stole the police motorbike and crashed into ice-cream parlor. ‘

Pronunciation
Russian accent

- Regional/social allophones:

 Vowels :
/i/ - is more accentuated and longer (e.g. Yuri, Nikolai)
/æ/ - more open (e.g. Volgograd - [‘vologræd]
Vowels like /i/ and /u/ are added near others (e.g. vuodkə )
/ ə/ - more open [‘hiələu]
/w/ - substituted with [u] (e.g. [‘moskou])

 Consonants:
/r/ - guttural R, specific to Slav languages

- Rhythm of speech:
Slow, putting an emphasis on the consonants
- Word choice:
typical Russian names (Yuri, Dimitri, Nikolai) and Russian cities (Moscow,
Volgograd) and Russian stereotypes (vodka, “stole the police motorbike”)
- Grammar: simple sentences
- Style: informal
- Subject matter: memories of stealing and causing trouble
- Para/body language: slowly nodding his head and pointing up with his finger – shows
that he’s melancholic about the “old times”
- Social/situational context: talking on the phone with an old friend
- Social distance: close friends, sharing memories

Conclusion: Who is the speaker?

Social status: male, middle aged, poor education, general bad behavior
Geographical background: Russian

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  There is no /w/ in Russian; speakers typically substitute [v]\ or [u].
 Native Russian speakers tend to produce an audible release for final consonants and in
consonant clusters and are likely to transfer this to English speech, creating inappropriate
releases of final bursts that sound overly careful and stilted and even causing native
listeners to perceive extra unstressed syllables.
 There are no dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/) in Russian, and native Russian speakers may
pronounce them as [s] and [z].
 Difficulty with English vowels. Russian speakers may have difficulty
distinguishing /iː/ and /ɪ/, /æ/ and /ɛ/, and /uː/ and /ʊ/; similarly, speakers' pronunciation
of long vowels may sound more like their close counterpart (e.g. /ɑː/ may sound closer
to /æ/)
 Speakers typically realise English /r/ as [r], the native Russian rhotic.
 Likewise, /h/ may be pronounced like its closest Russian equivalent, [x].
 The Russian language had the largest proportional increase from 1990 to 2000 of all the
non-English languages spoken in the US.

1. If you plan on being an astronaut, learning Russian is essential.

Russian is considered to the the international language of space, and in the

event of an emergency instructions are given to astronauts in Russian. Part
of training to become an astronaut (really we should say cosmonaut) even
includes doing a homestay in Moscow to learn local lingo.

2. There are only about 200,000 words in the Russian language.

This number has doubled since the 19th century, when only 50,000-100,000 words were recorded in
dictionaries. This number is very small compared to the English language, which is comprised of over
1,000,000 words. Russians actually use very few of these words, and you will find that due to this
many words have more than one meaning

3. Native Russian speakers are better at distinguishing between different shades of the colour blue
than native English speakers.

This is due to the fact that the Russian language splits the color blue into two completely different
categories- синий (“seeniy” meaning dark blue) and голубой (“goluboy” meaning light blue). In a
study performed on native Russian and native English speakers, it was found that native Russian
speakers are significantly more successful at distinguishing and categorising different shades of blues
in comparison to native English speakers.

4. The word for “German” in Russian is “немецкий” (nemetski) which means “those who can’t speak”.

The root of the word originates in the Russian word meaning “mute”, which incidentally also means
“stupid” and “inarticulate”. Hемецкий was originally the word that was used for all foreigners who
could not speak Russian, however most foreigners at the time were Germans, and the name stuck
with them.

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 Bibliography
• Vizental, Adriana, Phonetics and Phonology: An introduction, Third edition, revised , Editura
Universitatii Aurel Vlaicu, Arad, 2008

• http://lidenz.ru/5-interesting-facts-russian-people-speak/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology
• http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/russian.htm
• https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/differences-between-english-and-russian
• http://www.languagesoftware.net/blog/english-and-russian-similarities-and-differences/
http://petersburgcity.com/for-tourists/phrases-english-russian/basic_phonetic/