I go to a school with a lot of people from post USSR countries, and I have a few friends from the aforementioned countries that help me learn Russian. Should I keep in mind if they have some sort of "central Asian" or "Ukrainian" accent or some sort?
Is it any different for those from like Kyrgyzstan that learn later in life at school? (there's people born here but also people who moved here only a few years ago)
Some do, some don't.
Yes, they do
Though if Russian is their first language, they might not have much of an accent, some Kazakh folks I spoke to spoke with pretty much no accent
They might have their regional accents, the younger, the bigger chance they have stronger accents. It shouldn't get in a way of you learning Russian from them.
I'm in a similar situation to you and YES, they generally do. Uzbeks especially. It does depend on the person though.
Uzbeks (and ethnic Tajiks from Uzbekistan) from rural areas for whom Russian is their second or third language have especially obvious accents when they move to major Russian cities for manual labor jobs.
Uzbeks from major cities, especially Tashkent, who attended bilingual schools have very mild or even no accent in Russian.
Local/ethnic accents in Russian are a question of education and class — people expect you to sound standard, whether you're from Rostov-on-Don, Osh, or Kutaisi.
I don't think anyone expects people from Kutaisi to speak Russian with native accent, unless it's very old people or out of ignorance.
That depends on if the conversation happens in Kutaisi or Moscow
Yes, there may be an accent, but not necessarily. I went on vacation to Tashkent and met many people there, including ethnic Uzbeks who speak excellent Russian without an accent. But at the same time, there were many who spoke with a slight or strong accent. So everything is individual.
Ukrainians also have their own accent. Moreover, the accent of the inhabitants of the east of Ukraine differs from the accent of the inhabitants of Odessa. And at the same time, there are people who speak without an accent.
Residents of the Caucasus also have their own accent, but it is more or less common to residents of most Russian regions of the Caucasus and neighboring countries. Only the accent of Azerbaijanis differs more strongly and is more similar to the accent of, for example, native Turkish speakers. If you know Turks, then you probably know what I'm talking about.
I'm curious about the Ukranian and Russian pronunciation of the letter "г". For example I've seen names like Bogdan or Igor romaniced as Bohdan or Ihor in Ukranian. Do they pronounce "г" as an English "h" as in "house"?
They pronounce Г like the German H, hence the German-inspired transliteration. It must be extremely confusing for those who only speak English and Romance languages.
I'm a Spanish speaker and I thought the letter "H" in Ukrainian and other slavic languages like Czech or Croat was pronounced as a Russian "г". Turns out it isn't.
Welp, Ukrainians and Belarusians don't use Latin script, so it's a question of transliteration primarily.
Historically, “H” in Romanized Ukrainian and Belarusian correspond with the “H” in Czech and Slovak, but not with the South “H.” Look up the cognates for город andхолод.
As for pronunciation, when it comes to modern standardized pronunciation, the German H sound as a phoneme is present exclusively in Belarusian and Ukrainian (plus non-standard Southern Russian). Although in pretty much all Slavic languages it's an allophone of [x] in positions before voiced consonants.
I'm a Czech native and anytime you see "H" in Czech it is the Ukrainian "Г". "G" is the Russian "Г"/Ukrainian "Ґ".
"CH" in Czech would be the Russian "Х", but I think that in south Slavic languages that use the latin script (and in Polish) that would be equivalent to just "H".
It is an extremely common mistake when a non Czech/Slovak Slavic native tries learning Czech and it sounds incredibly funny.
Makes sense. The other day I read about Czech scientist, Heyrovsky, and thought it has pronounced as a Russian "г" but I found out I was wrong.
The “Heyr-” part looks so odd for Czech or any Slavic language. Especially the Y and not J. Was he of some Germanic (German, Yiddish Jewish, Dutch, Nordic) language background?
His name was "Jaroslav" and was born in Prague during the Austro-Hungarian Empire era, so I thought he's an ethnic Czech
Many Czechs have Czechified German/other surnames, even just flat out German sometimes.
There were even people who considered themselves Czech but spoke German as a first language before the Czech National Revival.
And for example "Josef Jungmann" (clearly a German surename) from his Wikipedia page:
No, it's pronounced like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2t3iEjAPy8M
The voiced counterpart/allophone of that /h/.
Thanks for the detailed comment. I’d love to hear more about the differences between odessa and eastern Ukrainian dialects of Russian! Do you have examples for us?
Personally, according to my observations, residents of eastern Ukraine are more likely to use хэ instead of г and the prefix за instead of про. In Odessa, it is often used и instead of ы in words such as рыба (риба) or мышь (мишь) but as far as I know, this is not common now.
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you probably meant mother tongue, not thong? 😭😭
Oh man if i hate English
The г is a southern russian dialect thing, hardly limited to Ukraine.
Hardly limited? we got people from lviv saying it, its common from theyr language
That's not what hardly limited means
Hardly limited means "не ограничен только..." or "почти не ограничен. I believe it was meant by both posts you are answering to.
If you think of "hard" restrictions, those would be "strictly limited".
Funny economist clearly misinterpreted that statement as soft g being "limited" (i.e. not being used) in Ukraine
It is a feature of Ukrainian, yes. A feature it shares with Russian’s южнорусское наречие. People from Lviv mostly have Ukrainian as their native language and don’t use Russian much at all in their daily life. I don’t think Ukrainian alone accounts for the г of native Russian speakers in the East and South of Ukraine though.
From my personal experience (which may not be representative, of course): yes, they do - even if sometimes they think they don't. This is especially true for people from the Baltic countries and Ukraine. Kazakhs are an exception, for some reason, as are Belarusians (they all speak Russian even at home, which is rather sad, since Belarusian is a beautiful language).
Yes they do
People in different parts of Russia have different accents too. Also some words are unique to specific regions, especially to Saint Petersburg
Yeah
I wouldn’t say Russian-speaking Ukrainians have a very strong accent - it’s not that noticeable, especially since about half of the population speaks Russian
Well, yes, keep in mind, but don't push it. It is ok for people outside Russia to have some accent. If you are really interested in learning prononciation, add other sources and compare.
everyone has their idiolect and accent either individual and/or regional, some of us even have a few of them. Even TV narrators when they are at home usually speak like a normal person:)
People who speak from childhood (usually those, who attend russian schools) have no accent. Like at all.
Speaking about Tashkent in particular though
It depends on the person's country of origin and how popular the Russian language is in that country. Belarusians and Ukrainians speak Russian without an accent, but their speech style and phonetics may be slightly different; however, this is not an accent, but rather a regional dialect of the Russian language. Kazakhs who speak Russian often also speak without an accent, but with regional peculiarities. In Kazakhstan, Russian is a state language. In other Turkic-speaking countries, most people will speak with an accent. But it also depends heavily on the individual. In the Transcaucasian countries, they spoke with an accent even during the Soviet era (due to the significant differences in languages), and now young people may not know Russian at all (as is the case in the Baltic states).
What are you talking about? The Ukrainian accent of Russian is probably the most famous
I think he means it's an extension of the southern Russian accent