Russian Science Grammar PDF
Preview Russian Science Grammar
Russian Science Grammar BY A. G. WARING P E R G A M ON PRESS OXFORD · LONDON · EDINBURGH · NEW YORK TORONTO · SYDNEY · PARIS · BRAUNSCHWEIG Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford 4 & 5 Fitzroy Square, London W. 1 Pergamon Press (Scotland) Ltd., 2 & 3 Teviot Place, Edinburgh 1 Pergamon Press Inc., 44-01 21st Street, Long Island City, New York 11101 Pergamon of Canada, Ltd., 6 Adelaide Street East, Toronto, Ontario Pergamon Press (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 20-22 Margaret Street, Sydney, New South Wales Pergamon Press S.A.R.L., 24 rue des Écoles, Paris 5C Vieweg & Sohn GmbH, Burgplatz 1, Braunschweig Copyright © 1967 Pergamon Press Ltd. First edition 1967 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 66-22727 Printed in Great Britain by Spottiswoode, Ballon true & Co. Ltd., London and Colchester This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. (2363/67) The Russian Alphabet Russian English Printed Written name transliteration A a α a a Β 6 6 63 b Β Β β B3 V Γ r ζ Γ3 g Α Ά ?à Λ3 d Ε e e H3 ye Ë ë ë HO yo 3Κ HC HC3 zh 3 3 33 ζ Η Η U H i ίϊ Η Ü H KpâTKOe j Κ κ Κ Ka k JI ji Λ 3JI 1 Μ Μ M 3M m Η Η H 3H η Ο ο 0 Ο ο Π π η Π3 Ρ Ρ ρ Ρ 3p Γ C c c 3C s Τ τ m T3 t y y y y u φ φ φ 3φ f Χ χ X xa kh H U3 ts ^ Η H H3 ch vii Vlll THE RUSSIAN ALPHABET ΙΠ in IU rua sh m m Uf ma shch h OTßeJIHTeJILHLIH 3HaK H hi bl bl y h h b ΜΗΓΚΗΗ 3HaK 3 3 1 3 OÔOpOTHOe e Κ) ίο W iiy yu Ά Ά H iia ya The above transliteration system is unambiguous and will en- able a person knowing no Russian to reconstitute the original Cyrillic, which is all a transliteration system can be expected to do. It is not possible to devise a workable system which will give an accurate idea of the pronunciation (see unstressed vowels and voiced and unvoiced consonants). Anyone interested specifically in reproducing Russian sounds should avail himself of the Inter- national Phonetic Alphabet. Note: y could be underlined: y when it means M. Given the fre- quency of the vowel e and the relative rarity of 3, e could be trans- literated e instead of ye, and e used for 3. CHAPTER 1 The Alphabet and Sounds 1. The Russian sound system has two distinctive features: 2. Stress In Russian, as in English, the effort of pronunciation of a word with more than one syllable is unequally distributed so that one syllable is emphasized at the expense of the other syllable or syl- lables, e.g. in yHHBepcHTéT "university", only the final syllable is heard distinctly and the other four are slurred. Stress varies not only from word to word, but often between different forms of the same word where it changes in declension or conjugation. As, moreover, Russian is written without stress marks, correct stress is a major difficulty in acquisition of the spoken language. For the purpose of reading in Russian, of course, knowledge of stress is not required, but as the reader must inevitably form for himself some idea of the sound of words he encounters, he is well advised to pay some attention to stress, determining as it does the whole "physiognomy" of a word, and to this end stress is indicated in this book. 3. "Hard" and "soft" consonants Most Russian consonants have, beside their normal (hard) sound, a higher pitched (soft) articulation involving an additional movement of the tongue towards the hard palate. English, too, has soft consonants in front of the vowel w, especially in British as opposed to American speech, e.g. èeauty, dew, /?ure. In Russian soft consonants occur much more often: they may stand before 1* 1 2 RUSSIAN SCIENCE GRAMMAR all vowels except bi and also before consonants and at the end of words. 4. Vowels The vowels are a, 3, H, BI, O, y. These vowel letters, unlike English, have each only one sound which, however, is heard fully only when stressed. a is somewhere between a in "farther" and in "hat": 4>aKT "fact". 3 is like e in "get": 3pr "erg". ο is like aw in "dawn": TOH "tone" (tawn). y is like oo in "moon": nymcr "point" (pöonkt). H and Η are really the same vowel pronounced in different parts of the mouth, H is like ee in "geese" ; hi does not exist in English— to produce it the mouth is held as for H but the tongue is moved backwards, H and u are as distinct as are the vowels in English "seat" and "sit"; H sounds further back in the mouth than the English short /, however, somewhere between / in "s/t" and the indistinct vowel a in "mica". Before H consonants except in, ac, η are always soft. 5. The so-called "soft" vowels When a, 3, o, y are preceded by a soft consonant they are writ- ten a, e, ë, ίο respectively. For example, in the sentence τοκ τέκ "the current flowed", the τ of the first word is hard, so ο is written o; in the second word the τ is soft, so the ο is written ë, to show that the τ is soft (approximate pronunciation: tawk tyawk). Where there is no consonant written before a, e, ë, ίο, i.e. when they stand alone as in the alphabet, begin words or follow vowels or the hard and soft signs, they denote a, 3, o, y, preceded by the consonant which sounds like English y in ">>ou", but which has a letter of its own only when following vowels—the letter ii (it should be remembered that the way the sounds of a language are THE ALPHABET AND SOUNDS 3 written is entirely conventional—H, e, ë, ίο could just as well have been written Ha, ifo, HO, öy, and in fact in a few foreign words this happens, e.g. ιίο,α "iodine" (German jod)). After the soft sign (b) Η is also preceded by a H: craTbH "articles", sounds stat'yee. Notes: (i) the vowel ë is frequently written without the which makes it indistinguishable from e; (ii) since 3, like H, is pro- nounced in the front of the mouth the only hard consonants which can precede it are those without a soft variant, namely ac, in, u, and even so, the convention is to write e, not 3. Thus 3 is found only as e after consonants. 6. Unstressed vowels Stress has little effect on consonants; all unstressed vowels, however, sound more or less indistinctly. In unstressed positions y(io), bi and H are merely shortened and weakened. Unstressed e and H sound like a weak H, as does a after H and in,: cepeôpo "silver", sounds seereebraw, wpo "nucleus", sounds yeedräw, nacbi "clock, watch", sounds cheesy. Unstressed a and ο sound like a weak a before the stress: BOjxk "water", sounds vadà; after the stress they sound like a weak bi (or a in "mica"): cnjia "force", sounds seek, Teno "body", sounds tyélfl. 7. Diphthongs Russian has only one kind of diphthong, namely any vowel in combination with a following H sound (cf. English diphthongs of the type "may, say"). The H sound is spelt H at the end of words and before consonants: CJIOH "layer", GajiajiaÜKa "balalaika". 4 RUSSIAN SCIENCE GRAMMAR Before vowels it is denoted by the soft spelling of the following vowel: MOÂ "my" (feminine) (i.e. MOM), MOO "my" (neuter) (i.e. Μοίίό); cf. the masculine MOH. Where a vowel is followed by a "hard" vowel, no diphthong is formed: Hayica "science" (pronounced na-ooka), BâicyyM "vacuum" (pronounced vakoo-oom). The diphthongs are: aft (HH), 3H (en), HH, ΜΗ, OH (en), yn (IOH); 3H and ιοίί are rare. aii is like i in "lzke": Man "May", sounds like "my", en is like ey in "they": Kjieii "glue", sounds like "clay". HH and tin are so narrow as to be hardly distinguishable from Η and BI. OH is like oy in "boy" : CJIOH "layer", yn is like oo-ee: 6yö "buoy". Diphthongs undergo the same reduction as vowels when un- stressed. 8. The Consonants 6, Β, r, £, 3, κ, ji, Μ, Η, n, c, τ, φ are much the same as the corresponding English consonants b, v, g d, z, k, /, m, n, p, s, t,f. 9 HI is pronounced as sh in "s/mt"; Η as ch in "cAeese"; m as shch in "A.y/zcAurch" ; η as ts in "cato", ac is pronounced as m except that the voice is used (see below, "voiced and unvoiced consonants"), thus it sounds like a vigorous s in "leisure" (French j). χ is imitated by trying to pronounce a k and an h together, hence the appropriate transliteration kh. ρ is always a strongly rolled r and is never silent. Note: in masculine and neuter genitive case endings and also the word ero "him, it, his, its", the r is pronounced as v. THE ALPHABET AND SOUNDS 5 9. Groups of consonants While the individual consonants do not differ greatly from those in English, some of their groupings do: poickBQTh "to rust", pmyjh "mercury", cutKinp "spectrum", CMUCA "sense", ww/eHarja "wheat", ww/âTejiBHHH "painstaking", edeOQ "twofold", MZASL "mist". 10. Soft consonants All the consonants except m, 3κ, u, Η and m have a soft as well as a normal variant. A satisfactory approximation to a soft con- sonant may be attained by pronouncing an English y as in ".you" after the consonant concerned, as in the sentence on page 2: TOR τακ (tawk tyawk); crudely, therefore, one merely reads the transliteration as it stands. More difficult for the English speaker is the pronunciation of soft consonants when they are not fol- lowed by a vowel, i.e. when they end a word or precede a hard consonant. Again, the soft consonant may be imitated on the basis of the English y, this time by making to pronounce a y after the consonant, but stopping before actually doing so ; the inten- tion to pronounce a y after a consonant will have the effect of moving the consonant nearer the part of the mouth where soft consonants are produced. An example will serve as a guide: when pronouncing the word for "mother" MaTb, which ends in a soft τ, it should sound somewhere between, at the one extreme MaT "mate at chess", which has an ordinary τ, and, at the other, MaTH "match" (sport), in which the TH reproduced the English tch. Like- wise, the verb "to drink" nHTb, should sound between the two English words "peat" and "peach". Soft consonants are shown in the written language in two ways : (i) when followed by a vowel—by the written form of the vowel, i.e. the fact that a "soft" vowel follows—or because it is followed by the vowel Η (although Η is a basic vowel, for all practical purposes it can be regarded as a "soft" 6 RUSSIAN SCIENCE GRAMMAR vowel): mm. "ball", Λίβτρ "metre", aqjx "ice", n/zioc "plus", dacK "disc"; (ii) when at the end of a word or before a hard consonant by having written after them the soft sign (b) : yroyzb "coal", nncbMO "letter". Consonants standing before soft consonants are also softened : ece "everyone". m is the soft variant of in, thus being the only consonant sound with separate letters of the alphabet for its two variants. A soft variant of ac also exists, but it has neither a separate letter nor is shown by the soft sign or following vowel. Instead, it is denoted by three consonant groups: aoK, 3)κ, Hc,m>: ΛΡΟΕΟΚΗ "yeast", é3acy "I travel", Aoacflb "rain". 11. The consonants us, o§c, η, ιμ, μ Since in, and η are always hard and H, m always soft, no further indication of the fact is required; as a result certain spell- ing conventions or "rules" have grown up with these consonants which are quite haphazard and can be summarized thus: (i) after in, τκ, Η, in, and υ, a and 10 are never used except in some foreign words and geographical names, e.g. υ,κφηχ, etc.; (ii) bi is never used after in, 3K, H, m, but after ni, HC, U, H is pro- nounced BI: IÜHHK "zinc", sounds ubimc; likewise after the three hard consonants in, and n,, e is pronounced a: ueMéHT "cement", sounds U3MCHT; (iii) although the soft sign is used after these consonants: PO3KB "rye", HOHb "night", it has no significance; (iv) an unstressed ο is never found after these consonants (see declension of nouns and adjectives with stems ending in ac, in, m, H). 12. The consonants κ, ε, χ While having hard and soft variants, the consonants κ, r and χ are never followed by a, K), bi or the soft sign.
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