this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Okay, help me out here. What is the little letter after н and before и? I learned to read Cyrillic from Serbian and they didn't use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Заполярный? Ы. If you pronounce it as e/i you can get "cute"(мило) instead of "soap"(мыло).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

How is it normally pronounced? Both e and i in English can be pronounced in a lot of different ways, so is it like the sound in "way" or more like "tree"? I'm used to и being the "tree" sound

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

So it's sort of an ü? That's what my brain hears in the video.

Checking against the ipa given on Wikipedia, I get that ы is the close central unrounded vowel while ü is the close front unrounded vowel. Listening to the audio samples on those pages, I literally cannot hear the difference.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

~~There is small difference, but close enough.~~ Yes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah, I can feel the difference when I say it, but... Well, suffice to say it's not a sound in any of the languages I speak well.

Thanks for indulging a curious language nerd.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

so is it like the sound in "way" or more like "tree"?

Neither. But 'й' sounds like 'y' in "way“.