5

The Russian language and my own language have something in common - they are very rich and nuanced lexically, but not rich phonetically at all. There are even numerous parodies making fun of the Russian phonology because of that (e.g., this one).

I am curious as to whether the Russian language has always been that poor phonetically or got phonetically simplified over time. Languages indeed can get phonetically simplified: for example, the Turkish language had the voiced counterpart of the 'h' sound and has the corresponding letter, ğ, which nowadays has no own sound, and the English language is predicted to lose the 'th' sound by 2066.

My question is this: Are there any extinct Russian phonetic sounds? If so, what are some examples?

I will now make a few remarks to make my question more specific.

First of all, I am interested in sounds that ceased to exist rather than changed over time to survive as modified variants. For example, if people stopped pronouncing a certain sound in all words containing it, as happened with the Turkish ğ, then it is an extinct sound. Also, a sound is extinct if it got replaced in all words containing it by a different sound that had already been existing in the language as a separate sound. But if a sound just evolved, always staying as a separate sound and not becoming indistinguishable from any other sound of the language, then what it was in the past is not an extinct sound for the purposes of my question.

In other words, please consider sounds as evolutionists consider animal species. If an animal species evolved into something existing today, it is not extinct, even if it now looks very differently from how it looked before. But if it truly ceased to exist at a certain point of time, then it is extinct.

Second, I feel I need to define the Russian language, because there have been various Slavic ethnic groups living in what is now Russia. For the purposes of my question, let us define the Russian language as the language spoken by people who formed a linguistically uniform group living in the past thousand years in and around what is now Moscow, as well as by their ancestors, wherever they migrated to what is now Moscow from. In other words, just consider the Muscovite version of the language and trace back its history.

Third, I feel I should specify the history time frame, but instead I would like to ask you to just trace things back to the point at which you can find extinct sounds. My question is thus not a broad request for all extinct sounds; I just want some examples. The later the sound disappeared the better.

Finally, to illustrate what I am looking for, I would like to give a few examples of sounds absent in the Russian language:

  • th in English as well as dh and th in Albanian, i.e., voiced and voiceless interdental consonants,

  • ğ in Old Turkish, i.e., the voiced counterpart of h (звонкая аналогия русского звука х),

  • c in Turkish, i.e., the voiced counterpart of the Russian sound ч.

I want something like this, that is, something absent in modern Russian (albeit not necessarily sounding like any of the sounds listed above), but with evidence of previous existence in Russian.

Mitsuko
  • 391
  • 3
  • 9
  • in proto-Slavic there indeed were such sounds, some of them survived in modern Slavic languages, like nasal sounds in Polish in words where Russian in particular doesn't have them, but proto-Slavic isn't Russian, i believe one such sound of the Old Russian is H, which has survived in two other Eastern Slavic languages and in Russian regional pronunciations – Баян Купи-ка Jul 02 '19 at 21:39
  • 6
    I don't understand why you say that Russian is "not rich phonetically at all" - typically it's analyzed as having 5 vowels and 34 consonants. – Mark Beadles Jul 02 '19 at 21:40
  • 4
    A good overview of the phonological history of Russian can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Russian_language#Internal_history – Mark Beadles Jul 02 '19 at 21:45
  • 4
    a lot of things has changed phonetically, this question is too broad in my opinion (and also provides no evidence of research of any kind) - but let's see what linguistics mods will say. also, honestly, avoid groundless and opinionated claims like "language X is not rich phonetically at all" - while some languages indeed have smaller set of phonemes compared to others - Russian is hardly phonetically simple. – shabunc Jul 02 '19 at 21:47
  • 1
    @MarkBeadles : Rich is a relative thing, and Russian is definitely not among the phonetically richest languages of the world. I have heard there are languages with ~80 sounds. There are also tone languages such as Thai. Russian does not have a number of sounds found in Turkish, Albanian, English, and so on. I listed some of them, and I can add ö and ü in Turkish, for example. Subjectively, the Russian phonology is perceived to be pretty simple. – Mitsuko Jul 02 '19 at 21:48
  • 6
    Regarding the relative richness of phonemic inventories, I encourage you to check out the World Atlas of Language Structures, http://wals.info. That is an excellent resource where language features can be compared statistically based on real-world data. For example, WALS Feature 1a is "Consonant inventories", where Russian is rated as "Moderately large" and Turkish as "Average". Feature 2 is "Vowel quality inventories", where Russian is rated as "Average" and Turkish as "Large". So, looking across languages as a whole, both Turkish and Russian have above average-sized phonetic "richness". – Mark Beadles Jul 02 '19 at 22:27
  • The Q is an oxymoron. They are thre, or they are extinct, but not both at the same time. – vectory Jul 02 '19 at 23:39
  • 2
    @Mitsuko I have to disagree with your first sentence. You seem to often make derogatory comments, which are delivered in subtle ways, especially about other countries. –  Jul 03 '19 at 03:18
  • 2
    I disagree that Russian is not rich phonetically. – Anixx Jul 03 '19 at 11:48
  • "and I can add ö and ü in Turkish, for example" - Russian has them, they are denoted usually with ё and ю letters respectively. It is just that the scholars prefere attribute the phonemic values to the preceding consonants rather than vowels. But it can be done the opposite way as well. – Anixx Jul 03 '19 at 11:50
  • Regarding your other examples, I agree that standard Russian lacks these sounds, but the last two examples would perfectly fit Russian phonetic system. The voiced velar fricative ("ğ" in your example) is even used in some Russian words and expressions, such as in the word "Бог", "Господи", "ага", "гы" in certain contexts. – Anixx Jul 03 '19 at 12:05
  • @MarkBeadles : Thanks a lot for the link, and I found it very interesting to browse the statistics on that website. And the statistics on the website seem to confirm my view. Russian is rated as "Moderately large" in the nomination "Consonant inventories" and "Average" in "Vowel quality inventories". So Russian is average, and average is not rich. This is precisely what I meant to say: Russian is not phonetically rich. It is just average. – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:07
  • Here are the ratings of Russian in some other nominations. Uvular Consonants: None. Glottalized Consonants: None. The Velar Nasal: No velar nasal. Vowel Nasalization: Contrast absent. Front Rounded Vowels: None. Tone: No tones. Presence of Uncommon Consonants: None. – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:08
  • As a learner of both English and Russian, I can subjectively say that the English phonology is more challenging to me. In English I have to be much more careful with sounds and also to properly play with the intonation in order to sound normally. Russian is much more phonetically straightforward. In Russian I can afford making pauses between words and speaking without any intonation. In English I can't. English speech is a continuous flow with varying intonation, like a song. It requires a more focused and determined state of mind. – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:10
  • Russian speech, in contrast, is rather like a relaxed walk. You can make steps with any pace, stop for a while, think a bit, then continue the sentence. I only had to learn a few new sounds, and that was it. Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку. Ехал Грека через реку, видит Грека - в реке рак; сунул в реку руку Грека, рак за руку Греку - цап. На дворе трава, на траве дрова, не руби дрова на траве двора. A few of months of doing hard exercises like that, and you become second to no Russian in terms of pronunciation. – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:11
  • @shabunc : Your reaction is very interesting. I myself consider my own language phonetically simple, as I wrote in my post, and do not feel bad about it. After all, everything genial is simple, isn't it? Languages get phonetically simplified over time for a reason. I've heard that the phonetically richest languages are some African languages, and do you really envy the speakers of those languages? I do not understand why phonetic complexity of a language is considered a good thing. Could you enlighten me by explaining this? :) – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:13
  • @Patriot : Your reaction is very interesting. I myself consider my own language phonetically simple, as I wrote in my post, and do not feel bad about it. Please read my comment addressed to shabunc. Why do you consider phonetic simplicity of a language a bad thing? – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:14
  • @Anixx : Do you really consider phonetic simplicity of a language a bad thing? Do you consider phonetic complexity of a language as its advantage? Please read my comments above. I cannot understand why many people reacted rather negatively to my statement that Russian is not phonetically rich...If phonetic complexity were an advantage, then some African languages (e.g. with clicking sounds) or some Asian tone languages would be the best languages in the world... – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 14:29
  • 2
    The reaction is because this is not true. For instance, many languages do not distinguish between soft and hard consonants and your examples are minuscule. For instance, when Russian speakers learn Hebrew, the Hebrew words are initially spelt with Russian letters, and they lack only one latter to represent Hebrew phonemes: the one you mentioned as ğ (voiced velar fricative). At the same time, Hebrew lacks a lot of phonemes from Russian, especially if we count the soft-hard distinction. – Anixx Jul 03 '19 at 15:10
  • "I can subjectively say that the English phonology is more challenging to me." - this is not just you, it is the case for many other people, see https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/2829/does-english-language-stand-special-in-terms-of-phonology At the same time, English has less consonant phonemes than Russian (mainly because of no soft-hard distinction). – Anixx Jul 03 '19 at 15:32
  • @Anixx : This is an excellent question of yours. I myself had massive problems with the English phonetics before I realized one important principle, which helped me a lot. I think I will explain this a bit later. – Mitsuko Jul 03 '19 at 15:40
  • @Anixx : I just posted a detailed answer to your question: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/31863/24901 . As a neutral person who learns both English and Russian, I compared these languages from the phonetic standpoint, focusing on the mechanics of speech. I think my answer explains the root cause of your difficulties in perceiving English speech. – Mitsuko Jul 04 '19 at 01:25
  • @Patriot there is no suh thing as "a phonetic language". – LjL Jul 04 '19 at 15:44
  • @LjL Thank you. I did not mean it in a strict, absolute, sense. –  Jul 04 '19 at 16:44
  • 1
    @Mitsuko I think I can explain people’s reaction. Ivan Turgenev once called Russian language “great, mighty, truthful and free” («великий, могучий, правдивый и свободный», see http://www.turgenev.org.ru/e-book/russki_yazyk.htm ), and schoolchildren are made to memorize this “prose poem”. Shortened to “great and mighty”, this idiom entered everyday Russian speech, to the point that if you hear «великий и могучий» without any noun then it’s surely means just Russian language. And here you’re saying that in some aspect Russian is not so great, so this causes a cognitive dissonance and denial. – Neith Jul 04 '19 at 17:13
  • 2
    @Patriot it doesn't really matter whether it's strict or absolute. A writing system can be more or less phonetic or phonemic in either direction, but a language is independent of its writing system, and all languages are "phonetic" in the sense they use sounds (phones), except for sign languages, – LjL Jul 05 '19 at 00:06

3 Answers3

8

Two phonological changes that reduced the phoneme inventory in Russian were the loss of yers (ultra-short vowels) and yuses (nasal vowels). None of these sounds occur in the modern language.

The yers were ъ = *[ŭ] and ь = *[ĭ]. The symbols are still used today but no longer indicate a vowel.

The yuses were ѧ = *[ɛ̃], ѫ = *[ɔ̃], ѩ = *[jɛ̃], ѭ = *[jɔ̃]. These symbols are no longer used, and nasal vowels no longer are found in Russian.

Additionally, there was a vowel ѣ = *[e] which was higher than е = *[ɛ], but those vowels have merged into modern е.

In the consonants, ц may have had a palatalized form [t͡sʲ] (still a marginal phoneme), and double consonants have generally degeminated: [t] < *[tt], [f] < *[ff].

Mark Beadles
  • 6,860
  • 2
  • 24
  • 46
  • 2
    also, the ѣ sound, also - loss of palatalized ц – shabunc Jul 02 '19 at 22:03
  • @shabunc Good points, I will add. – Mark Beadles Jul 02 '19 at 22:06
  • Can you give an example of the phoneme ць? Or what do you mean? – Omar and Lorraine Jul 03 '19 at 08:49
  • @Wilson I don't have a great example - just a reference that it occurs in some dialects "The affricate [ts] has no palatalised counterpart in the system of consonants, and its palatalisation, although evident in some regional accents of Russian, is considered emphatically non-standard." - Yanushevska & Buncic, Illustrations of the IPA: Russian. – Mark Beadles Jul 03 '19 at 10:38
  • @Wilson it's something that Ukrainian still has - like in word паляниця - this ця is extremely hard to pronounce for a Russian monolingual speaker. – shabunc Jul 04 '19 at 08:32
  • @shabunc hmm, not extremely, just a bit hard if not simply unusual. Easily achieved once you've focused and don't forget to palatalize (unlike, for example, the English 'th' or French nasals - much more demanding in terms of training). – tum_ Jul 05 '19 at 07:00
  • @tum_ the trick is to pronounce it that way so that Ukrainian speaker won't recognize you as a Russian speaker - and that's hard. For me it's extremely hard, if it's easy for you than well - you are more gifted than me when it comes to pronouncing palatalized ц ))) – shabunc Jul 05 '19 at 07:51
4

There are plenty of phonemes in the historical antecedent languages, such as Proto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European, which are not found in modern Russian. Establishing a more recent loss of phoneme which is specifically within Russian is much harder to do. For example, there was an East Slavic ʒ/dʒ contrast, and while dʒ is missing in Russian, I don't know of any evidence that it existed in earlier Russian – it may be assumed that it was lost before Russian emerged as a distinct language. The case of *[æ] ("yat") is also unclear, that is, was there still a vowel pronounced something like [æ ~ ɛ] in earlier Russian, distinct from [e]? Is [æ] really extinct (the vowel in пять is pretty much [æ])?

The other problem is that there are dialects of Russian. Southern Russian has [γ] for [g], so [g] is "extinct", but that's not a feature of Russian in general.

user6726
  • 83,066
  • 4
  • 63
  • 181
  • What about /h/, notoriously hard for Russians, did it ever exist in the language? And why does Russian have two j letters, ya and yu? – vectory Jul 02 '19 at 23:56
  • 1
    The distinction between "yat" and E was lost by the 19th century only, in Moscow "yat" used to be pronounced as a kind of /ieː/. – Yellow Sky Jul 03 '19 at 00:04
  • @YellowSky Isn't the distinction still preserved in some dialects? I've heard the recordings of some nothern dialects (Arkhangelsk, Pskov(?) oblast) where you can clearly hear the [ie] in лес and similar words... – tum_ Jul 03 '19 at 16:38
  • @tum_ - It can well be preserved in some dialects, but it's unlikely that if it's true it's distinct from E in all the positions. – Yellow Sky Jul 03 '19 at 17:04
0

Perhaps the most Russian phonemes as well the most Russian phonemic oppositions are

ш /ʂ/ vs. щ /ɕː/

ж /ʐ/ vs. жж /ʑː/

[ɕː] and [ʑː] are correspndingly a voiceless and voiced long (geminated) alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative. It seems like no other Slavic language has such phonemes, neither do other European languages. Well, the Italian /ʃ/ is geminated word-internally, but it does not have a non-geminated contrasting phoneme. In Russian, the pairs are really contrasted:

чаша [ˈtɕäʂə] 'cup' vs. чаща [ˈtɕäɕːə] 'dense forest'

дрожи [ˈdroʐɨ] 'of shivering' (Gen. case) vs. дрожжи [ˈdroʑːi] 'yeast'

The phoneme /ʑː/ is rarely pronounced as alveolo-palatal nowadays, most Russian speakers pronounced it as retroflex [ʐː], but it's still geminated, and it's still a distinct and unique Russian phoneme hardly found in other languages.

Community
  • 1
Yellow Sky
  • 18,268
  • 39
  • 65