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Show Find Russian Tough? Expert Says It's Easy Can you pronounce Zhitomir, No-vogrod-Volynski, Lwow, Orel, Veli-kie Veli-kie Luki or Novosokolniki? It's as simple as a, b, c in fact, simpler to pronounce these Russian war cities, according to Father Kon-stantine Kon-stantine Auroroff, part-time instructor instruc-tor in Russian at Pennsylvania Stale college. "Russian is an easy language. Anyone can learn to read it in two or three hours," declares Father Auroroff. Au-roroff. "In English there are some 60 sounds. In Russian there are 32 and only two or three of them are not used in English." To begin with, he stresses, Russian Rus-sian is a phonetic language. There aren't three or four different sounds for the letter a, for instance, as there are in English; a in Russian is always pronounced as in "bar." Other Russian letters represent the English sounds of b, d, long e, f, g (as in go), k, or c, 1, m, n, long o, p, r (with a trill), s, t, long u, v, and z. Combinations of English letters, such as ye, ooo. ch, sh, and ya, are used as one character in Russian. Some of the sounds unfamiliar un-familiar to English ears are an h pronounced as "hoch," a zh sound like the French j, and a ts combination combina-tion as in "nuts." |