Re: [phoNet] Re: Lithuanian/Russian

Juozas wrote:

>

face="Lucida Sans Unicode">This is of course correct but in everyday "city" language the

> contrast is actually lost: vЂ ГЅrЂ Еі

and vЂ ГЅru are exact

> homophones. Mr Ambrazas and other

Lithuanian philologists articulate very clearly

> and urge everyone to do

this, however, the real life corrects

> phonetics in its own way. Yet if

the loss of contrast leads to any

> kind of dangerous ambiguity, both

syllables are stressed in

> vЂ ГЅrЂ Еі, thus making

it possible to pronounce the last vowel as a long one.

> >From the practical point of view, the long "e" in "Petras" is quite
>

different from "Ђ С'Ї" in Ђ РїС'ЇС'ўС'¬ because a kind of "j" sound

> (the "y" in "yacht") can be barely heard in the beginning of

the

> "Ђ С'Ї".
> This may be hardly spottable in Russian

itself but when a Russian

> says "Petras" he instinctively substitutes

"Ђ С'Ї" for "e" and

> "Pyatras" comes out (analogously, a

Lithuanian instinctively

> pronounces Ђ РїС'ЇС'ўС'¬ as

[pe:t']).

>

Someting has happened to both Lithuanian and Cyrillic characters, but to the extent the text can be reconstructed I can note that:
1. All the works on Lithuanian experimental phonetics I have had a chance to look through state that some kind of phonetical opposition do exist, whether realized by a native speaker itself or not.
2. As for the [j] onglide in Russian, that's exactly what I meant and it's undoubtedly present (and the reason here is of course not historical nor even phonological: it's purely phonetic), but Urban's question had an important reservation: the NUCLEUS was mentioned. Clear the Russian sound from glides, consider the positions I mentioned and listen! :)

Sergei