25 Comments
Are there any grammatical rules at play here that make the annunciation of the "б" in "хлеб" sound more like "хлеп?"
It seems to me that I am hearing more of a hard "p" than a hard "b". Like Pick versus criB.
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A phonetic rule, rather than a grammatical one. Russian devoices voiced consonants at the end of words, like in Polish, Dutch, German etc. So д, г, ж, etc. are said т, к, ш etc. as well.
When it's inflected so there's a vowel after the root, like хлебы (plural) or хлеба (genitive), the б is voiced.
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gosh there should be a lesson on the change in pronunciations of words depending on their spelling .. just so we can hear it at least
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There is - it's explained in the notes although! Unfortunately only on the PC version. It shouldn't be the end of the world if you do keep voicing consonants at the ends of words: your accent will just sound a bit strange.
It's a bit like how the letter "l" in most English accents has a different pronunciation at the end of a word, but most natives don't notice, and nor does it impair intelligibility to use just one "l" sound, as many second language learners do.
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Just tossing this out in the hopes someone can do this... It'd be really nice if the notes were accessible via the app!
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Could this also mean "This bread." in another context, but the answer has been narrowed down just to "That's bread." and "This is bread." due to contextual sakes?
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Are voiced stops (б, д, г) devoiced (п, т, к) when they're at the end of a word like in German? I could swear that I'm hearing this pronounced as хлеп, and that I'm hearing город being pronounced like горот. This would be a really easy thing for me to remember, because I'm already used to voiced stops behaving this way in German, but I just want to know if it's really doing that, or if it's all in my head.
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Yes, that's correct. It applies to all consonants though; not just stops. More detailed answer under smithdesmondm!
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Thanks! And sorry that I somehow managed to miss that comment. The one time I didn't read the other comments first, and it's already there. xD
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"The bread" is just "(этот) хлеб". Usually articles do not translate into Russian.
It is very helpful to read this https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11536858 about "это" :)
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quite robotic audio that maybe ist shortening or cutting off the pronunciation..
It is just so weird to say: this is bread. because you know already what bread is.
