7:00 to 8:30, my a$$

[fox]

so it ran closer to two hours than an hour and a half. 'tever. conversation practice, easy questions, handwriting drills -- utter review for someone like me; this is the stuff i haven't forgotten since i took russian six and a half years ago.

but! i did teach a wee college boy to roll his R's! poor kid couldn't seem to do the russian R and kept defaulting to the french R instead of the plain english one. i suggested that he say "butter" like eighteen times fast, and then "gutter," and then go from "gutter" into "gorbachev" without pausing for breath -- and damn if he didn't flap that R just like a native russian speaker. and he was so pleased! big beaming smile, high-fives, the words "you're going to be awesome as a teacher, dude! kick ass!", and much repetition of "gorbachev" in the "gutter-bachev" fashion.

in other news, we're told that russian V, Z, ZH, B, G, and D devoice word-finally (becoming F, S, SH, P, K, and T), but listening to our afternoon instructor, a native speaker, i don't entirely believe it in the case of the fricatives. the morning instructor, a second-language learner, quite carefully said "chekoff", but the afternoon instructor really sounded to me like she was saying "chekovf" -- not a V, but not a pure F either. also "garazhsh" (garage) and "jazs" (jazz). she was sure she was pronouncing it with an F, but she admitted that of course she was sure, and who knows, i could be right. i might try to hunt up some more native speakers and hook them up to a spectrogram, and see if i can't get a paper out of that. ellen_fremedon? any phonology-like thoughts?

Comments

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

it's more like "gudr," really, but think about it -- isn't that how you'd pronounce "gutter," if you said it really fast? flap the T, and the E almost disappears. and since a rolled R, if you don't roll it for very long, is basically a flap and an ordinary R more or less simultaneously, this seemed like a way to get a close approximation of the sound we were after. i was pretty pleased with myself for thinking of it, actually. [g]

anyway, yes, i'll say it next time i'm up. which could be this weekend. my friend C from high school is coming to visit, and we're heading DC-ward because there's damn little, comparatively, to keep a person down here. talk to rami. :-)