I have been learning the hauntingly beautiful Russian language for some years now, though only since quite recently with some dedication. A wonderful aspect of the language is that it's almost phonetic. Even though my vocabulary is very limited, I can already pronounce almost every word reasonably well, if given the location of the stress. Such a thing would be completely impossible in English, were it takes years to master this seemingly arbitrary chaos.
I say "almost" because there's a small problem. Apparently, most Russians fail to write the dots on the letter ё. To an educated reader, most of the time the meaning is clear from the context. However, as I am still learning, this makes things quite confusing or even ambiguous sometimes. Of course, I recognise еще as ещё, but все and всё are both valid words with a very similar meaning, respectively "everyone" and "everything". It's also amusing if not painful that English speaking people have incorrectly transliterated Хрущёв to Khrushchev, a mistake which hasn't been made in Dutch, where he is known as Chroesjtsjov.
A peculiar feature is that the letter ё is always stressed. That makes it not clear whether it's a real letter or not. Some people think it's just another way of pronouncing the е. I like to think of it backwards. Maybe it just so happens that an unstressed ё sounds exactly the same as an unstressed е, almost like the о and the а. As argumentation consider for example the endings of the verbs of the е-conjugation, (-у), -ешь, -ет, -ем, -ете, (-ут) or some of the instrumental case (-ем, -ей). All of these е's become ё's when they are stressed. However, this would also require writing the dots on unstressed ё's, which would lead to even more confusion. Nor do I really know whether we could even tell whether an е which is always unstressed might actually be a ё in disguise.
In any case, I try to always write the dots. I was told ё only appeared in children's book and teaching material but during my stay in St. Petersburg I was pleasantly surprised by all the ё's in advertising and packing. The hilarious webshow This is Хорошо also uses them.
Let's hope for a revival!
I say "almost" because there's a small problem. Apparently, most Russians fail to write the dots on the letter ё. To an educated reader, most of the time the meaning is clear from the context. However, as I am still learning, this makes things quite confusing or even ambiguous sometimes. Of course, I recognise еще as ещё, but все and всё are both valid words with a very similar meaning, respectively "everyone" and "everything". It's also amusing if not painful that English speaking people have incorrectly transliterated Хрущёв to Khrushchev, a mistake which hasn't been made in Dutch, where he is known as Chroesjtsjov.
A peculiar feature is that the letter ё is always stressed. That makes it not clear whether it's a real letter or not. Some people think it's just another way of pronouncing the е. I like to think of it backwards. Maybe it just so happens that an unstressed ё sounds exactly the same as an unstressed е, almost like the о and the а. As argumentation consider for example the endings of the verbs of the е-conjugation, (-у), -ешь, -ет, -ем, -ете, (-ут) or some of the instrumental case (-ем, -ей). All of these е's become ё's when they are stressed. However, this would also require writing the dots on unstressed ё's, which would lead to even more confusion. Nor do I really know whether we could even tell whether an е which is always unstressed might actually be a ё in disguise.
In any case, I try to always write the dots. I was told ё only appeared in children's book and teaching material but during my stay in St. Petersburg I was pleasantly surprised by all the ё's in advertising and packing. The hilarious webshow This is Хорошо also uses them.
Let's hope for a revival!
