The Phonetics of Russian

by Daniel Jones, Dennis Ward

The Phonetics of Russian is intended to help those studying Russian to pronounce the language well, and to give students of general phonetics a knowledge of the phonetic system of Russian. In addition it serves as a reference book on Russian pronunciation. On its publication in 1969 it replaced The Pronunciation of Russian by Trofimov and Jones. The book provides a straightforward outline of the necessary general phonetic theory and the system of transcription and contains a precise description of the way in which the sounds of Russian are articulated, and how they are affected by the neighbouring sounds. The fundamentals of Russian intonation are described and there is a chapter of passages for practice in Russian pronunciation in which the phonetic transcriptions include accents marking both tone and stress. The Russian text and the English translation of the passages are provided. Throughout the book constant attention is paid to the problems of the learner and advice given for mastering the sounds.

324 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1969

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Daniel Jones was a British phonetician.

Reviews

[Emperador Spock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a bit of a curiosity as it is probably the last work to have been (partially) written by Daniel Jones. Apart from this, it is a mixed bag of exhaustiveness on the given topic and the fact the the book is quite old.

On the one hand, a comprehensive account of segmental and suprasegmental features of Russian phonetics is provided, and the authors include thorough and practical advice aimed at (British) English native speakers on how to achieve acceptable pronunciation of Russian speech sounds and avoid common errors.

On the other hand, while most of the information in the book is valid today, some of it is clearly outdated. Sometimes the authors show awareness of certain (new back then) trends in pronunciation and make a mention of of it (e.g. in /ˈdʲvʲerʲ/ vs. /ˈdvʲerʲ/, the former variant is said to be the standard one, and the latter is said to be increasingly common among young speakers, even though I don't think the former is used today by native speakers at all). However, they also write about things that are simply incorrect in today's language, for example describing /tʃ/ as apical, even though it's mainly dorsal (the apical variant is limited to regional varieties), or saying that /ŋ/ does not exist in any way in Russian speech, although it actually appears as an allophone of /n̪/ before velar stops.

Thus, if you plan to use this work for its intended purpose, make sure it is to complement a more modern textbook on Russian phonetics.