2.4. Comparing the sound systems of English and Russian

Wе can now make an attempt at comparing the sound systems of two languages, English and Russian. The contrastive method will help us reveal systemic, distributional and realizational characteristics of each particular sound system, their common features and their distinguishing features.

Systemic differences will reveal which sounds are contrastive in either language or dialect and what features these contrasts are based on, which contrasts are more powerful than the others. Thus we will learn the relations between the elements of the system; an important point is the number of contrastive elements, phonemes, in the inventory and the ways they maybe modified in various phonetic contexts. The vowel system of RP, for example, consists of 20 phonemes, while in American English and Scot­tish Standard English there are only 15-16 vowel phonemes. American English lacks /d/ as in stop, box and a few diphthongs. Scottish English does not distinguish /u:/ and /u/ in fool, full and /ae/ and /a:/ in bat, bath and also lacks centering diphthongs on account of/r/ preservation as in here, beer which are pronounced as /hir/, /bir/.

Distributional differences will show how certain sounds are distributed over the lexicon (lexical distribution) and which of them are allowed at the beginning or at the end of a word or a syllable (structural distribution). For example, American English and British English have both /ae/ and /a:/ phonemes but in American English /ae/ is used not only in the words like cat, badbut also in words like ask, dance in which British English has /a:/ phoneme. The sounds, therefore, have different lexical distribution. Structural difference may be illustrated by the use of/r/ sound: in British English r can be found only before a vowel like in rye, bread but not after a vowel where it is vocalized as in beer, car. In American English r is not vocalized, or vocalized only partially, and we can hear [bir], [kar] with [r] at the end of a word or a syllable.

Realizational differences are differences in phonetic detail which demonstrate how similar sounds in two languages or dialects may share one feature but differ in the other(s). In the pronunciation of American [r] the tongue is curled back, it is retroflex, while in Scottish English it is trilled, like in Russian [P]. Practise the word right, try in two ways and you will feel the difference.

We will now see how similar distinctions can be found in comparing English and Russian systems of phonemes.

2.4.1. Consonants: systemic differences

Let us start by looking at the phonemic inventories of English and Russian:

Table 4 Phoneme Inventories in English and Russian

	English	Russian
Vowels	20	5(6)
Consonants	24	34

The first observation we can make will be concerned with the number of phonemes in the two systems: English appears to belong to the vocalic type with a highly elaborate system of vowel phonemes, while Russian can be referred to the consonantal type of language because it has a large number of contrasts in the system of consonants.

However, when we start comparing the inventories of consonants of English and Russian we discover a number of consonants which can be found only in English. They are: one (bi)labial /w/, two (inter)dental fricatives, one voiceless and one voiced, /0/ and /3/, one nasal velar /g/ and one glottal voiceless fricative /h/. In Russian there is only one sound, a velar voiceless fricative /x/ which is not to be found in English.

Which sounds, then, constitute the exceeding number of the Russian consonant inventory? These are palatalized counterparts of all Russian non-palatalized consonants. It shows that palatalization is phonemic in Russian, it is a distinguishing feature of Russian as compared with English. Compare: сел, съел — [s'el], [sjel] with the English sell [sel].

In English, as we have already seen, palatalized consonants may occur in onsets of syllables before front vowels, such as a clear [1], for example, but they do not create a phonemic contrast with any non-palatalized allophones. A "clear", palatalized [1] and a "dark", non-palatalized [i] are in complementary distribution: the former appears before front vowels and the latter in all the other positions. For example, in the words little, label, lull the first [1] is palatalized and the second is non-palatalized: [lift], [leiM], [Ы]. If you pronounce a clear [1] at the end of the words, it may give you a French accent or an Irish accent but the meaning of words will not be changed.

In Russian palatalized and non-palatalized sounds are different phonemes because they distinguish words; both palatalized and non-palatalized phonemes may occur at the beginning and at the end of words: был — бил, пыл — пил, ныл — Нил, мыл — мил, пол — Поль, мол — моль, гол — голь.

Thus palatalization is phonemic in Russian and allophonic (non-phonemic) in English.