One of the most difficult sections in the Russian language for schoolchildren and students is phonetics. Quite often, students make mistakes in the phonetic analysis of words, characterization of certain sounds, phonemes. But in many ways, knowledge of phonetics is the key to competent and cultural speech. Therefore, a lot of attention should be paid to such an issue as sounds. Today we are interested in vowel sounds. The letters they represent will also be discussed in our article. We will not ignore the general characteristics of the sound system of our language.
Sounds or letters?
To begin with, let's figure out what exactly we will describe in this article. It is worth noting that many people believe that there are consonants and vowels in the Russian language. Many are even ready to argue and will defend their case with foam at the mouth. But is it?
In fact, in Russian, only sounds lend themselves to such classification. The letters serveonly a graphic designation of a particular phoneme or even a combination of phonemes, and also indicate the peculiarity of the pronunciation of a particular sound. Therefore, one cannot say that letters are vowels or consonants, stressed or unstressed.
General information
Let's proceed directly to the characteristics of vowel phonemes. In Russian, there are six vowel sounds, which in turn are denoted by ten "vowels". When these sounds are formed, a stream of air escapes from the oral cavity, which does not encounter obstacles in its path. Thus, vowel sounds consist only of a voice. Unlike consonants, they can be stretched or sung. These sounds include: [a], [o], [y], [e], , [s].
Vowels have the following main characteristics: row, elevation, stressed or unstressed position. In addition, one can single out such a specific characteristic as labialization.
It is also worth noting that it is vowels that serve as syllable-forming sounds. Remember how in elementary school children are taught to identify the syllables in a word by counting the vowels "letters".
Sound is the smallest part of speech, which serves not only as material for the formation of words, but also helps to distinguish words with a similar sound composition (for example, "fox" and "forest" differ in only one vowel). The science of phonetics studies vowels and consonants.
Let's now take a look at each of the mentioned characteristics.
Stress and unstressedness
Let's start with the simplest and most important, from the pointview of the culture of speech, characteristics. Each vowel can be stressed or unstressed. A vowel in an unstressed position sounds less distinct than in a stressed position. As for writing, then, regardless of the position, they are denoted by the same letters. Stressed vowels in a letter can be distinguished using the stress mark that stands above the letter. This designation is often used in rare, little-used, and dialect words.
It's also worth noting that unstressed vowels sound less distinct and can act as a different phoneme when transcribed. So, the unstressed vowel “o” can sound like “a”, and “i” can sound like “e” in the speech stream, in addition, sometimes the vowel sound can disappear altogether. In this case, the transcription will differ from the usual recording of the word.
For example, the word "milk" in phonetic transcription might look like this:
1. [malak`o] - transcription as part of the school curriculum.
2. [malak`o] - such transcription is often used in higher educational institutions at philological faculties. The sign "b" means that the sound "a" is pronounced very briefly, practically drops out of the word when pronouncing.
Note that unstressed vowels are one of the difficulties of the Russian language. The letters denoting them on the letter are not always similar to the audible sound, which gives rise to a lot of errors. If you are in doubt about the correct spelling of a word, use a spelling dictionary or check the spelling of a word using the rules you know.
Labialization
In the Russian language there are so-called labialized sounds - "o" and "u". In some manuals, they may also be called rounded. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that when they are pronounced, the lips are involved, stretching forward. The remaining vowel sounds of the Russian language do not have this feature.
Letters denoting vowel sounds that have this feature are written in the transcription in the same way as ordinary sounds.
Row
In Russian, according to the position of the tongue in the mouth when pronouncing a sound, three rows are distinguished: front, middle and back.
If the main part of the tongue when pronouncing a sound is in the back of the oral cavity, then it (the sound) belongs to the back row. The front row is characterized by the fact that when pronouncing the vowels related to it, the main part of the tongue is in the front. In the event that the language occupies an intermediate position during pronunciation, the sound belongs to the middle vowels.
Which series do these or those sounds in Russian belong to?
[o], [y] - back row;
[a], [s] - medium;
, [e] - front.
As you can see, these characteristics are quite simple, the main thing is to remember them. Considering that there are not so many vowel sounds in Russian, it will not be difficult to memorize this classification.
Raising
There is also another characteristic of vowels according to the position of the tongue during pronunciation. Here, just as in the classification by series,there are three types of sounds: low, medium and high elevation.
This characteristic takes into account the position of the tongue in relation to the palate. If during pronunciation the language is as close to it as possible, then the sound belongs to the vowels of the upper elevation, but if it is in the most distant position from the palate, then the lower one. If the tongue is in an intermediate position, it refers to the vowels of the middle rise.
Determine which elevation Russian vowels belong to:
[a] - bottom;
[e], [o] - average;
[and], [s], [y] - top.
This characteristic and classification can also be quite easy to remember.
Correspondence of sounds and letters
As already mentioned, there are only six vowels, but in writing they are indicated by ten letters. Let's discuss which vowel letters exist in Russian.
The sound [a] can be transmitted by the following letters: “a”, “ya” (phonetically [ya]). Regarding the phoneme [o], then in writing it is denoted as “o” and “yo” (phonetically [yo]). Labialized [y] can also convey two letters "u" and "yu" (phonetically [yu]). The same can be said about the sound [e]: it can be denoted by the letters "e" and "e" (phonetically [ye]).
The other two sounds and [s] are denoted by just one letter - “i” and “s”, respectively. Here are all the so-called vowels: a, o, u, i, e, u, e, e, i, s.
Transcription order
Many schoolchildren, and university students too, have toface such a task as transcribing words. Consider the algorithm, focusing on the characteristics of vowels.
The order in which tasks of this type are to be completed is as follows:
1. We write down the word in the form in which it is given to you.
2. Next, you should definitely find out which letters are “vowels”, and which of them is stressed. That is, you need to put emphasis.
3. We divide the word into syllables. In this we can use all the same vowel sounds.
4. We write down the phonetic transcription of the word, taking into account the position of both vowels and consonants in the word, their variants (for example, in an unstressed position [o] can sound like [a]).
5. We write down all the letters in a column.
6. We determine which sound or counting of sounds means this or that letter, and write this data in the column opposite.
7. Describe the characteristics of sound. Here we will not dwell on the characteristics of consonants, we will dwell only on vowels. In the school tradition, only the position of the sound relative to the stress is indicated (shocked or unstressed). At universities, at the philological faculties, the series and elevation, as well as the presence of sound labialization, are additionally indicated.
8. The last step is to count the number of letters and sounds in the analyzed word.
As you can see, nothing complicated. If you doubt the transcription, you can always check it using the spelling dictionary.
Conclusions
There are six sounds in Russian, which correspond to ten letters in writingalphabet. These sounds, like other phonemes, are the building blocks of which lexical units are built. It is thanks to sounds that we distinguish words, because changing even one sound can completely change their meaning and turn them into completely different lexemes.
So, we have learned what "letters" are vowels: stressed and unstressed, labialized. We found out that each vowel has such characteristics as row and rise, learned how to make phonetic transcription. In addition, we found out what science studies vowel sounds.
We hope this material will be useful not only for schoolchildren, but also for students of philological faculties.
