Irish–Russian

[pne]

I wonder whether it's easier for a native speaker of Irish to learn Russian phonology (or vice versa) than for a native speaker of English to learn either, what with the whole phonemic velarised/palatalised consonants distinction.

Comments

[edricson.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah (Russian erstwhile learner of Irish here). However, Irish makes up for it with the totally different vowel system and the weird sonorants. Also, the hardest thing was not to pronounce "i" after non-palatalized consonants the Russian way (high central unrounded). This isn't a very big problem with Irish, but with Scottish this can be a serious mistake, since the Russian high central vowel sounds like the Scottish back high unrounded (orthographic "ao"), so that would be serious mix-up.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm actually trying (in fits and starts) to teach a Russian-speaking friend Irish pronunciation by means of Cyrillic respellings. I'll let you know how that goes. My biggest problem so far is with the vowel system. As edricson points out, it's so much more complex than the Russian one that the dozen or so Cyrillic vowel letters are hopelessly insufficient for representing it.