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I speak Russian and Spanish, and was about to write the same thing. Russian is indeed not strictly phonetic, thought it has a phonemic orthography to a degree.
by maga 12y ago
I speak Russian and Spanish, and was about to write the same thing. Russian is indeed not strictly phonetic, thought it has a phonemic orthography to a degree. Aside from 'v'/'g' sound, there are bigger problems with vowels reduction when non-stressed 'o' most of the time sounds as 'a', omitting 'ё' and so on. After struggling with English and Russian, Spanish is indeed a delight to read/write. Though obligatory accents make writing a bit cumbersome.
- asveikau 12y agoGlad there are other language nerds on HN. The o/a thing is not totally intuitive to my foreign ears but I'm willing to forgive it as a phonetic feature of the language and less to do with spelling. (I'm reminded of how older people in my [American] family used to say words like "potato", or certain northeastern US pronunciations of words like "Florida" - I guess I have little trouble seeing how o/a can be a flexible concept for some.) Similarly I'm sometimes not sure when "e" becomes "je", but after listening to people speak I think I get something of an intuition...
- maga 12y agoThe problem with o/a is that in some dialects they indeed pronounce 'o' instead of 'a'. Pronouncing 'a', or 'akanye', as it's done in Moscow, became the right way and was imposed through the education system throughout the Soviet Union. Hence, not doing so may be perceived as a sign of a low education level/social status.