Russian phonology


This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect. For an overview of dialects in the Russian language, see Russian dialects. Most descriptions of Russian describe it as having five vowel phonemes, though there is some dispute over whether a sixth vowel,, is separate from. Russian has 34 consonants, which can be divided into two types:
Russian also distinguishes hard consonants from soft consonants and from consonants followed by, making four sets in total:, although in native words appears only at morpheme boundaries. Russian also preserves palatalized consonants that are followed by another consonant more often than other Slavic languages do. Like Polish, it has both hard postalveolars and soft ones.
Russian has vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. This feature also occurs in a minority of other Slavic languages like Belarusian and Bulgarian, and is also found in English, but not in most other Slavic languages, such as Czech, Polish and most varieties of Serbo-Croatian.

Vowels

Russian has five to six vowels in stressed syllables, and in some analyses, but in most cases these vowels have merged to only two to four vowels when unstressed: after hard consonants and after soft ones.
A long-standing dispute among linguists is whether Russian has five vowel phonemes or six; that is, scholars disagree as to whether constitutes an allophone of or if there is an independent phoneme. The five-vowel analysis, taken up by the Moscow school, rests on the complementary distribution of and, with the former occurring after hard consonants and elsewhere. The allophony of the stressed variant of the open is largely the same, yet no scholar considers and to be separate phonemes.
The six-vowel view, held by the Saint-Petersburg phonology school, points to several phenomena to make its case:
The most popular view among linguists is that of the Moscow school, though Russian pedagogy has typically taught that there are six vowels.
Reconstructions of Proto-Slavic show that *i and *y were separate phonemes. On the other hand, numerous alternations between the two sounds in Russian indicate clearly that at one point the two sounds were reanalyzed as allophones of each other.

Allophony

Russian vowels are subject to considerable allophony, subject to both stress and the palatalization of neighboring consonants. In most unstressed positions, in fact, only three phonemes are distinguished after hard consonants, and only two after soft consonants. Unstressed and have merged to ; unstressed and have merged to ; and all four unstressed vowels have merged after soft consonants, except in the absolute final position in a word. None of these mergers are represented in writing.

Front vowels

When a preceding consonant is hard, is retracted to. Formant studies in demonstrate that is better characterized as slightly diphthongized from the velarization of the preceding consonant, implying that a phonological pattern of using velarization to enhance perceptual distinctiveness between hard and soft consonants is strongest before. When unstressed, becomes near-close; that is, following a hard consonant and in most other environments. Between soft consonants, stressed is raised, as in пить . When preceded and followed by coronal or dorsal consonants, is fronted to. After a cluster of a labial and, is retracted, as in плыть ; it is also slightly diphthongized to.
In native words, only follows unpaired and soft consonants. After soft consonants, it is a mid vowel , while a following soft consonant raises it to close-mid. Another allophone, an open-mid occurs word-initially and between hard consonants. Preceding hard consonants retract to and so that жест and цель are pronounced and respectively.
In words borrowed from other languages, rarely follows soft consonants; this foreign pronunciation often persists in Russian for many years until the word is more fully adopted into Russian. For instance, шофёр was pronounced in the early twentieth century, but is now pronounced. On the other hand, the pronunciations of words such as отель retain the hard consonants despite a long presence in the language.

Back vowels

Between soft consonants, becomes, as in пять . When not following a soft consonant, is retracted to before as in палка .
For most speakers, is a mid vowel, but it can be a more open for some speakers. Following a soft consonant, is centralized and raised to as in тётя .
As with the other back vowels, is centralized to between soft consonants, as in чуть . When unstressed, becomes near-close; central between soft consonants, centralized back in other positions.

Unstressed vowels

Russian unstressed vowels have lower intensity and lower energy. They are typically shorter than stressed vowels, and in most unstressed positions tend to undergo mergers for most dialects:
The merger of unstressed and in particular is less universal in the pretonic position than that of unstressed and. For example, speakers of some rural dialects as well as the "Old Petersburgian" pronunciation may have the latter but not the former merger, distinguishing between лиса́ and леса́, but not between валы́ and волы́. The distinction in some loanwords between unstressed and, or and is codified in some pronunciation dictionaries, for example, фо́рте and ве́то.
As a result, in most unstressed positions, only three vowel phonemes are distinguished after hard consonants, and only two after soft consonants. For the most part, Russian orthography does not reflect vowel reduction. This can be seen in Russian as opposed to Belarusian "sky", both of which can be phonemically analyzed as.
Vowel mergers
In terms of actual pronunciation, there are at least two different levels of vowel reduction: vowels are less reduced when a syllable immediately precedes the stressed one, and more reduced in other positions. This is particularly visible in the realization of unstressed and, where a less-reduced allophone appears alongside a more-reduced allophone.
The pronunciation of unstressed is as follows:
  1. appears in the following positions:
  2. * In the syllable immediately before the stress, when a hard consonant precedes: паро́м , трава́ .
  3. * In absolute word-initial position.
  4. * In hiatus, when the vowel occurs twice without a consonant between; this is written,,, or : сообража́ть .
  5. appears elsewhere, when a hard consonant precedes: о́блако .
  6. When a soft consonant or precedes, both and merge with and are pronounced as. Example: язы́к 'tongue'). is written as in these positions.
  7. * This merger also tends to occur after formerly soft consonants now pronounced hard, where the pronunciation occurs. This always occurs when the spelling uses the soft vowel variants, e.g. жена́ , with underlying. However, it also occurs in a few word roots where the spelling writes a hard. Examples:
  8. ** жал- 'regret': e.g. жале́ть , к сожале́нию .
  9. ** ло́шадь 'horse', e.g. лошаде́й, .
  10. ** -дцать- in numbers: e.g. двадцати́ , тридцатью́ .
  11. ** ржано́й .
  12. ** жасми́н .
  13. These processes occur even across word boundaries as in под морем .
The pronunciation of unstressed is after soft consonants and, and word-initially, but after hard consonants.
There are a number of exceptions to the above vowel-reduction rules:
Unstressed is generally pronounced as a lax , e.g. мужчи́на . Between soft consonants, it becomes centralized to, as in юти́ться .
Note a spelling irregularity in of the reflexive suffix -ся: with a preceding -т- in third-person present and a -ть- in infinitive, it is pronounced as, i.e. hard instead of with its soft counterpart, since, normally spelled with, is traditionally always hard. In other forms both pronunciations and alternate for a speaker with some usual form-dependent preferences: in the outdated dialects, reflexive imperative verbs may be pronounced with instead of modern .
In weakly stressed positions, vowels may become voiceless between two voiceless consonants: вы́ставка , потому́ что . This may also happen in cases where only the following consonant is voiceless: че́реп .
Phonemic analysis
Because of mergers of different phonemes in unstressed position, the assignment of a particular phone to a phoneme requires phonological analysis. There have been different approaches to this problem:
Russian diphthongs all end in a non-syllabic, an allophone of and the only semivowel in Russian. In all contexts other than after a vowel, is considered an approximant consonant. Phonological descriptions of may also classify it as a consonant even in the coda. In such descriptions, Russian has no diphthongs.
The first part of diphthongs are subject to the same allophony as their constituent vowels. Examples of words with diphthongs: , ей , де́йственный ., written or, is a common inflexional affix of adjectives, participles, and nouns, where it is often unstressed; at normal conversational speed, such unstressed endings may be monophthongized to.

Consonants

denotes palatalization, meaning the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. Phonemes that have at different times been disputed are enclosed in parentheses.
; Notes
There is some dispute over the phonemicity of soft velar consonants. Typically, the soft–hard distinction is allophonic for velar consonants: they become soft before front vowels, as in , unless there is a word boundary, in which case they are hard. Hard variants occur everywhere else. Exceptions are represented mostly by:
The rare native examples are fairly new, as most them were coined in the last century:
In the mid-twentieth century, a small number of reductionist approaches made by structuralists put forth that palatalized consonants occur as the result of a phonological processes involving , so that there were no underlying palatalized consonants. Despite such proposals, linguists have long agreed that the underlying structure of Russian is closer to that of its acoustic properties, namely that soft consonants are separate phonemes in their own right.

Phonological processes

Final devoicing

Voiced consonants are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent. г also represents voiceless word-finally in some words, such as . This is related to the use of the marginal phoneme in some religious words.

Voicing

Russian features general regressive assimilation of voicing and palatalization. In longer clusters, this means that multiple consonants may be soft despite their underlyingly being hard. The process of voicing assimilation applies across word-boundaries when there is no pause between words.
Within a morpheme, voicing is not distinctive before obstruents. The voicing or devoicing is determined by that of the final obstruent in the sequence: просьба , водка . In foreign borrowings, this isn't always the case for, as in Адольф Гитлер and граф болеет. and are unusual in that they seem transparent to voicing assimilation; in the syllable onset, both voiced and voiceless consonants may appear before :
When precedes and follows obstruents, the voicing of the cluster is governed by that of the final segment so that voiceless obstruents that precede are voiced if is followed by a voiced obstruent while a voiceless obstruent will devoice all segments.
,, and have voiced allophones before voiced obstruents, as in дочь бы and плацдарм .
Other than and, nasals and liquids devoice between voiceless consonants or a voiceless consonant and a pause: контрфорс ).

Palatalization

Before, paired consonants are normally soft as in пью 'I drink' and бью 'I hit'. However, the last consonant of prefixes and parts of compound words generally remains hard in the standard language: отъезд 'departure', Минюст 'Min Just'; when the prefix ends in or there may be an optional softening: съездить .
Paired consonants preceding are also soft; although there are exceptions from loanwords, alternations across morpheme boundaries are the norm. The following examples show some of the morphological alternations between a hard consonant and its soft counterpart:
hardsoft

Velar consonants are soft when preceding, and never occur before within a word.
Before hard dental consonants,, labial and dental consonants are hard: орла .

Assimilative palatalization

Paired consonants preceding another consonant often inherit softness from it. This phenomenon in literary language has complicated and evolving rules with many exceptions, depending on what these consonants are, in what morphemic position they meet and to what style of speech the word belongs. In old Moscow pronunciation, softening was more widespread and regular; nowadays some cases that were once normative have become low colloquial or archaic. In fact, consonants can be softened to very different extent, become semi-hard or semi-soft.
The more similar the consonants are, the more they tend to soften each other. Also, some consonants tend to be softened less, such as labials and.
Softening is stronger inside the word root and between root and suffix; it is weaker between prefix and root and weak or absent between a preposition and the word following.
In addition to this, dental fricatives conform to the place of articulation . In careful speech, this does not occur across word boundaries.
Russian has the rare feature of nasals not typically being assimilated in place of articulation. Both and appear before retroflex consonants: деньжонки ) and ханжой ). In the same context, other coronal consonants are always hard.

Consonant clusters

As a Slavic language, Russian has fewer phonotactic restrictions on consonants than many other languages, allowing for clusters that would be difficult for English speakers; this is especially so at the beginning of a syllable, where Russian speakers make no sonority distinctions between fricatives and stops. These reduced restrictions begin at the morphological level; outside of two morphemes that contain clusters of four consonants: встрет-/встреч- 'meet', and чёрств-/черств- 'stale', native Russian morphemes have a maximum consonant cluster size of three:
RussianIPA/AudioTranslation
CCLскрыва́ть'to hide'
CCC*ствол'tree trunk'
LCLверблю́д'camel'
LCCто́лстый'thick'

For speakers who pronounce instead of, words like общий also constitute clusters of this type.
RussianIPA/AudioTranslation
CCкость'bone'
LCсмерть'death'
CLслепо́й'blind'
LLго́рло'throat'
CJстатья́'article'
LJрья́ный'zealous'

If is considered a consonant in the coda position, then words like айва́ contain semivowel+consonant clusters.
Affixation also creates consonant clusters. Some prefixes, the best known being вз-/вс-, produce long word-initial clusters when they attach to a morpheme beginning with consonant. However, the four-consonant limitation persists in the syllable onset.
Clusters of three or more consonants are frequently simplified, usually through syncope of one of them, especially in casual pronunciation. Various cases of relaxed pronunciation in Russian can be seen here.
All word-initial four-consonant clusters begin with or, followed by a stop, and a liquid:
RussianIPA/AudioTranslation
взбрело ' took it '
взгляд'gaze'
взгромоздиться'to perch'
вздрогнуть'to flinch'
всклокоченный'disheveled'
вскрыть'to unseal'
всплеск'splash'
вспрыгнуть'to jump up'
встлеть'to begin to smolder'
встречать'to meet'
всхлип'whimper'
всхрапывать'to snort'

Because prepositions in Russian act like clitics, the syntactic phrase composed of a preposition and a following word constitutes a phonological word that acts like a single grammatical word. For example, the phrase с друзья́ми is pronounced. In the syllable coda, suffixes that contain no vowels may increase the final consonant cluster of a syllable, theoretically up to seven consonants: *мо́нстрств . There is usually an audible release between these consecutive consonants at word boundaries, the major exception being clusters of homorganic consonants.
Consonant cluster simplification in Russian includes degemination, syncope, dissimilation, and weak vowel insertion. For example, is pronounced, as in расще́лина. There are also a few isolated patterns of apparent cluster reduction arguably the result of historical simplifications. For example, dental stops are dropped between a dental continuant and a dental nasal or lateral: ле́стный 'flattering'. Other examples include:
> чу́вство'feeling'
> со́лнце'sun'
> се́рдце'heart'
> сердчи́шко'heart'
> шотла́ндский'Scottish'
> маркси́стский'Marxist'

The simplifications of consonant clusters are done selectively; bookish-style words and proper nouns are typically pronounced with all consonants even if they fit the pattern. For example, the word голла́ндка is pronounced in a simplified manner for the meaning of 'Dutch oven' and in a full form for 'Dutch woman'.
In certain cases, this syncope produces homophones, e.g. ко́стный and ко́сный, both are pronounced.
Another method of dealing with consonant clusters is inserting an epenthetic vowel,, after most prepositions and prefixes that normally end in a consonant. This includes both historically motivated usage and cases of its modern extrapolations. There are no strict limits when the epenthetic is obligatory, optional, or prohibited. One of the most typical cases of the epenthetic is between a morpheme-final consonant and a cluster starting with the same or similar consonant.

Supplementary notes

There are numerous ways in which Russian spelling does not match pronunciation. The historical transformation of into in genitive case endings and the word for 'him' is not reflected in the modern Russian orthography: the pronoun его 'his/him', and the adjectival declension suffixes -ого and -его. Orthographic г represents in a handful of word roots: легк-/лёгк-/легч- 'easy' and мягк-/мягч- 'soft'. There are a handful of words in which consonants which have long since ceased to be pronounced even in careful pronunciation are still spelled, e.g., the 'l' in солнце .
and are the only consonants that can be geminated within morpheme boundaries. Such gemination does not occur in loanwords.
Between any vowel and , may be dropped: аист and делает .
Stress in Russian may fall on any syllable and words can contrast based just on stress ; stress shifts can even occur within an inflexional paradigm: до́ма vs дома́ . The place of the stress in a word is determined by the interplay between the morphemes it contains, as some morphemes have underlying stress, while others do not. However, other than some compound words, such as морозоустойчивый only one syllable is stressed in a word.
velarizes hard consonants: ты . and velarize and labialize hard consonants and labialize soft consonants: бок , нёс .
Between a hard consonant and, a slight offglide occurs, most noticeably after labial, labio-dental and velar consonants. Similarly, a weak palatal offglide may occur between certain soft consonants and back vowels.