Russians and their palates was Re: [CONLANG] Palatalized uvular stop

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 09:12:35AM -0400, Outo Otus wrote:

> "I aksed a question quite recently about whether languages make a
> distinction between plain consonant + palatal glide, and palatalized
> consonant + palatal glide. I have been told that Russian does make this
> distinction, but I'm still not convinced because it would be hard to make a
> distinction like that, without the consonant becoming at least slightly
> palatalized before the glide.
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 10:55:27AM -0400, Trebor Jung wrote:

> Yeah, I read that thread, and I'm not convinced, either.
Oh, for crying out loud.  Would you two like me to send you copies of
the pronunciation tapes from my college Russian texts? :)

It's simple.  In a word like "ob#jasnit'", where # is the hard sign
(which means "don't palatalize this") and ' is the soft sign (which means
"palatalize this"), the /b/ is held - swallowed almost - and the breath
stream stops completely.  It's almost a pause.  Then the word starts
back up with the /j/.

I think the /b/ has no release at all.

Amanda

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