Sometimes it is very difficult to feel where the line is between the sound and the letter. And how do sounds differ from letters in Russian? But, most likely, very many noticed that what we say is sometimes slightly different from what is written. For example, sometimes a letter is not read in a word. Why is this happening? It is especially important to get to know this topic and to understand it for schoolchildren, since it runs a red thread through the Russian language course. There is a difference between the sound and the letter, and it is very big. And let's figure it out.
How are sounds different from letters?
First, find out what is the letter. A letter is what we write. Graphic symbols on a piece of paper. The Russian alphabet consists of thirty-three letters. And the letters have no meaning and cannot be pronounced. What we say is called sound. Someone can argue. But how does everyone learn the alphabet? What are we saying? When a child becomes familiar with the alphabet, he learns the names of letters, but not sounds. For example, the letter B in the alphabet is called "be", the letter G in the alphabet is called "ge", etc. This is the name of these conditional characters that we transfer to paper. When reading a word, we utter sounds. The main difference between sounds and letters is that sounds cannot be recorded, they can only be pronounced. And there are several more sounds than letters.
Sounds have certain characteristics. They may be deaf, voiced, etc. But these characteristics have nothing to do with letters. It is very important for children to learn this difference at the initial stages, because when they encounter this topic at school, it will be very difficult to re-learn the correct option and get rid of the wrong one. The sound may correspond to the written letter. In a letter, the letter denoting sound is enclosed in square brackets: b- [b], c- [c]. Sometimes a single letter can combine several sounds. But more on that later.
What are vowels?
To understand how sounds differ from letters, you need to compare them. In speech, we use only six vowels: [a], [o], [y], [u], [e], [s]. In turn, there are 10 vowels. How does it turn out that there are more letters than sounds? Some letters are indicated by several sounds at once. The vowels a, o, y, u, e, s correspond to the sounds [a], [o], [y], [u], [e], [s]. Vowels I, e, e, u consist of several sounds: I - [y'a], e - [y'e], e - [y'o], u - [y'u].
Vowels are percussive and unstressed. If the sound is stressed, that is, it is highlighted by the voice when pronouncing, then it is written in the same way as it is heard. If the sound is in an unstressed position, then sometimes it can be indicated by a different letter on the letter. An example in the word "scales" after "in" we pronounce the sound [and], although the letter "e" is on the letter in this place.
What are consonants?
It is also necessary to understand how sounds differ from letters in the example of consonants. In addition to ten vowels and two not indicating any sounds, all other letters of the alphabet are consonants.
Consonant sounds are voiced and deaf. It depends on how they are pronounced. Voiced are made up of noise and voice. To understand this, it is better to pronounce them: [b], [c], [d], [d], [h], [g], [l], [m], [n], [r], [th ]. Deaf sounds consist only of noise: [n], [f], [k], [t], [s], [w], [x], [h], [u]. In order to better feel the difference, you can speak in turn first voiced, and then deaf sounds.
In addition, consonants can be hard and soft. They are solid when they are followed by either a consonant sound, or [a], [o], [y], [s], [e], or a solid sign. They become soft when they face a soft sign or the letters i, e, e, u, and. In a letter, softness of sound is indicated as follows: [m ']. For comparison, you can say two words: “soft” and “soap”. In the first word, “m” is followed by “I”, and the sound [m '] is soft, in the second after “m” is followed by “s”, the sound [m] turned out to be solid.
Phonetic parsing
When studying how sounds differ from letters, students always come across phonetic analysis of the word. What it is? In general terms, this is a definition of what sounds a word consists of, that is, how it is pronounced. Phonetics is a branch of science in linguistics that studies the sounds of a language, the stress in words and the division into syllables. Also, sometimes phonetic analysis is called analysis of sounds and letters.
How does phonetic analysis work? Let's draw it on the example of the word "water".
First you need to write out the necessary word - water.
Next, you need to divide the word into syllables and determine which one is stressed - yes. Shock is the last syllable.
Then you need to make a transcription of the word - [in a d a]. It is worth noting that since the vowel in the first syllable is not stressed, when we pronounce a word, we hear a sound [a] at this place.
It is also necessary to characterize separately each sound of the word being analyzed: [c] consonant, voiced, hard, marked with the letter b, [a] vowel, unstressed, marked with the letter o, [e] consonant, solid, voiced, marked with the letter d, [a] - vowel, stressed, marked with the letter a.
And finally, you need to identify the number of sounds and letters in the word and compare them: 4 letters and 4 sounds. Sometimes there is a mismatch, and the number of sounds may be greater than the number of letters, and vice versa. This also needs to be noted and analyzed. Such a phenomenon can occur in words where there is an unpronounceable consonant. In this case, the sound corresponding to a certain letter in the word is not pronounced. The letter is as if skipped when reading the word. It turns out that there is a letter, but no sound. As an example, we can consider the word "sun." Usually when pronouncing the word out loud, the letter l is skipped. Therefore, in this case there will be fewer sounds than letters. A similar situation can arise when a word has a hard or soft sign. It turns out that there are fewer sounds than letters.
Parsing a word by sound is quite simple when it is learned, how the sounds differ from letters, and what characteristics both of them have. It is only necessary to utter a word and listen to it.
This knowledge greatly facilitates the work of parsing the word and helps in the process to avoid various errors.