Any person lives in the 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 kettle, the sizzling of meat in a pan, singing, speech, and much, much more. A person gets so used to these stimuli that he often goes crazy when he finds himself in absolute silence.
The first thing they start learning a language at school is phonetics, that is, the science of speech sounds. Usually this section of linguistics is not loved 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 for 33 letters of the alphabet: 6 vowels and exactly 6 times more consonants. There are letters that correspond to two sounds, and there are those that do not represent any sound.
The same prevalence of consonants is observed in most languages of the world. Philologists also know such unique languages as the now dead Ubykh, which back in the 90s of the last century was spoken by the last representatives of a small people living on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus in the Sochi region. The Ubykh language is famous for the fact that for 2 vowel sounds (long and short [a]) it had84 consonants! In Abkhazian, which is related to it, there are about 60 consonants per 3 vowels. Such languages are called consonantal.
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. There are 26 vowels for every 20 consonants in Danish.
Absolutely in all languages of the planet there is a vowel sound [a]. It is the most popular, however, not necessarily the most frequent vowel. For example, in English, the sound [e] is used more often than others.
It is interesting that the vowel sounds of the Russian language are formed "on the exhale". The only exception is the interjection "Aaaa", expressing fear, which is pronounced on inspiration. How is a vowel produced? Air from the lungs enters the windpipe and meets an obstacle in the way in the form of vocal cords. They vibrate from the jet of exhaled air and create a tone (voice). The air then enters the mouth.
When we pronounce vowel sounds, lips, teeth, tongue do not interfere with the air flow, so additional noise is not generated. Thus, the vowel sound consists of one tone (voice) - that's why it is called so. The louder you need to pronounce the vowel, the wider you have to open your mouth.
The differences between vowel sounds are related to the shape we give to the oral cavity. If the lips are rounded, the sounds [y] or [o] will turn out. The tongue does not interfere with the exhaled air so much as to create noise, but its position in the oral cavitychanges slightly when pronouncing different vowel sounds. 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 vowel sounds.
But that's not all. A characteristic feature of the Russian language is the difference in the pronunciation of stressed and unstressed vowels. In the stress position, we really hear [a], [o], [y], [s], , [e] - this is the so-called strong position. In an unstressed position (in a weak position), the sounds behave differently.
The vowels [a], [o], [e] after solid consonants denote something similar to [a], but greatly weakened. Schoolchildren traditionally define this sound as [a], but philologists have a separate icon [˄]. After soft consonants, these same sounds tend to be like [and] (philologists call such a sound “and with an overtone e” - [ie]). Such phenomena are observed in prestressed syllables (except for the absolute beginning of a 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.
