Features of Russian affricate production by Native English ...

Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics (TWPL), Volume 38

© 2017 Eduard Sviridenko

Features of Russian affricate production by Native English speakers

Eduard Sviridenko University of Western Ontario Along with the sounds that are characterized by stable

articulation, the languages of the world have complex sounds in

the production of which speech organs gradually change their

position from the one that is peculiar to the production of the

initial element to the position peculiar to the next element or

elements. Phonemic interpretation of affricates is one of the

most difficult phonological issues that goes back to the general

problem of dividing the flow of speech into the minimum

elements. To speak a foreign language, the pronunciation is as

important as the development of vocabulary, grammar, etc.

Native English speakers often assess Russian as a very difficult

language to learn. Does that mean that the acquisition of

Russian affricates will be complex for Native English speakers?

The analysis of the data indicates the tendency to replace

Russian affricates by Native English speakers.

1 Introduction

Along with the sounds that are characterized by stable articulation, the languages of the world have

complex sounds in the production of which speech organs gradually change their position from the one that

is peculiar to the production of the initial element to the position peculiar to the next element or elements.

In the vowel system, the complex sounds are diphthongs and triphthongs, while in the consonant system

these complex sounds are mostly affricates. Phonemic interpretation of affricates is one of the most difficult

phonological issues that goes back to the general problem of dividing the flow of speech into the minimum

elements.

To speak a foreign language, the correct pronunciation is as important as the development of

vocabulary and grammar. After all, the pronunciation makes the speech understandable to native speakers.

Native English speakers often assess Russian as a very difficult language to learn. Does that mean that the

acquisition of Russian affricates will be quite complex for Native English speakers? Paul (1960) pointed

out that bilingual speakers substitute the closest sounds of their native language in place of sounds of a

foreign language. However, as Haugen (1972) rightly observes, the question of what kind of sounds are the

“closest” is still open.

The Russian language has two affricates: voiceless dental/alveolar <ц> /ts/ and voiceless palatal <ч’>

/tʃ/. Russian linguists have conducted a series of studies related to the peculiarities of the production of

affricates: historical changes (Bukrinskaya, Karmakova, Sarkisyan, Golubeva, & Nikolaev, 1994),

normative (literary) production of affricates (Avanesov, 1968; Sokolyansky, 2007; Ayusheeva, 2016),

territorial dialects (Orlova, 1957; Ignatovich, 2010; Punegova, 2012; Yerofeyeva, 2013; Protsukovich,

2015; Morozova, 2015; Lavrentyeva, 2016), and production of Russian affricates by native Armenian and

Chinese speakers (Matveeva & Kiselev, 2012; Sargsyan, 2015; Panov, 2009). However, I have not found

any studies examining the acquisition of Russian affricates by native speakers of European languages, such

as English.

EDUARD SVIRIDENKO

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The aim of my research project is to identify the characteristics of the production of Russian affricates

by Native English speakers in order to further determine the opportunities to overcome the “foreign” accent.

The research in this study will attempt to answer the following three questions:

1. Are the affricates of the Russian language that are complex in their composition difficult to acquire

by Native English speakers?

2. What are the most common deviations from the rules of the Russian language pronunciation norms

in the use of affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/, if any?

3. Due to the fact that in recent years many Anglo-American borrowings have appeared in the Russian

vocabulary, will the pronunciation of affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/ be different in Anglo-Americanisms in

comparison with native Russian words?

This study has seven sections. In section two, I will provide a literature overview of a foreign accent

realization of affricates in the Russian language. In section three, I will put forward my hypotheses for this

study. In section four, I will describe the methodology employed in this study. In section five, I will explain

the data analysis methods as well as the results of this study. In section six, I will provide a discussion of

the study. In section seven, I will conclude the paper.

2 Literature review

The effect of the phonological system of the mother tongue in mastering a foreign language in the

area of production is generally recognized. For example, Trubetzkoy (1961) stressed that we have an

incorrect phonological interpretation of a foreign language sounds because they pass through the

‘phonological sieve’ of our native language (Trubetzkoy, 1961: 59).

The phonetic interference is reflected in the accent of the speaker and, according to Weinreich (2000),

it is manifested in the following aspects: under-differentiation of phonemes – the mix of two sounds of the

secondary system that are not differentiated as meaning units (phonemes) in the primary system; over-

differentiation of phonemes – for example, a phoneme of the secondary system can be identified with a

number of phonemes of the native language; reinterpretation of phonological distinctions – the distinction

of phonemes of the studied language on the grounds that are relevant to the native language but unimportant

to the phonological system of the second language; and phone substitution – the identification of phonemes

of the second language with similar or even equivalent phonemes of the native language as these phonemes

differ in both languages only in their pronunciation, that is to say, the phonetic quality (Weinreich, 2000:

45-46).

Flege (1995) argues that foreign accents in the studied language are often found in the non-native

speakers’ speech. Thus, the researcher notes that listeners can distinguish foreign accents when they identify

deviations from phonetic norms of the English language as well as segmental and suprasegmental

dimensions. Besides, the scholar notes that foreign accents may have a number of undesirable consequences

for non-native speakers. Thus, “they may cause listeners to misjudge a non-native speaker’s affective state”

(Gumperz 1982; Fayer and Krasinksi 1987; Holden and Hogan 1993), “or provoke negative personal

evaluations, either as the result of the extra effort a listener must expend in order to understand, or by

evoking negative group stereotypes” (Lambert et al., 1960; Giles, 1970).

According to Vinogradov (1990), a “foreign accent” arises not from the inability to pronounce a

particular sound, but rather from the incorrect judgment about the sound because of the differences between

the phonological structure of foreign and native languages.

Affricates are consonants that represent a fusion of two sounds that involve complex movement of

pronunciation organs (Punegova, 2012: 97). According to Zinder (2007), it is possible to distinguish three

phases in the pronunciation of affricates, the first two of which coincide with the production of obstruent

consonants. The difference between them is detected in the third phase, in which, according to Bondarko

FEATURES OF RUSSIAN AFFRICATE PRODUCTION BY NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS

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(1991), the closed organs of pronunciation open slightly, not wide at once, forming a slot for air escape. As

affricates are an “indivisible unity”, it is impossible to distinguish the boundary between these phases

(Matusevich, 1976: 125).

The detailed description of the articulation of affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/ is offered in the Avanesov’s

(1968) study ‘Russian Literary Pronunciation’: the letters ‘ц’ and ‘ч’ represent the affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/,

respectively. Each of these sounds is a kind of merged into one indivisible sound mix: the affricate /ts/ is

an indivisible sound, consisting of the elements <т> /t/ and <с> /s/: <тс>; the affricate /tʃ/ consists of the

elements <т’> /t/ and <ш’> /ʃ/ – soft <т> /t/ and <ш> /ʃ/: <т’ш’>. Hence, the affricate /tʃ/ is pronounced as

a “soft” (palatalized) consonant that is usually followed by vowels that are relatively more front, while the

affricate /ts/ is pronounced as a “hard” (unpalatalized) consonant that is usually followed by vowels that

are further back. When pronouncing affricates, the tip of the tongue forms a closure required for the

production of the sound /t/ and /tʲ/; the sounds /ts/ and /tʃ/ are formed with the help of a friction of an air

stream on the margin of the glottis formed by interconnected organs of speech (Avanesov, 1968: 82).

Linguists point out that Russian affricates, as well as other obstruent consonants (e.g. /t/), are abrupt

sounds. If the second, fricative element of the affricate formed by friction is pronounced slowly, we get not

a single, indivisible sound, which it is, but the combination of sounds. This is what differentiates affricate

/ts/ from the combination of <тс> /t/+/s/ that is usually pronounced as <цс> /ts/+/s/ (<по<ц>арствовать>

/pɐtssˈarstvəvətʲ/1 ‘to reign’; <о<тс>аживать> /ɐtssˈaʐᵻvətʲ/ ‘to plant out’).

Studies carried out in different regions of Russia have showed significant deviation from the literary

pronunciation norms of affricates in representatives of different dialects of Russian as well as bilingual

speakers living in a multinational state. Researchers have observed phenomena such as the use of one

instead of two affricates (only /ts/ or only /tʃ/) among the older literary Russian speakers. There are people

who in words ending with <-ция> /-tsᵻjə/ and their derivatives utter /tʲsʲ/ rather than /ts/. However, in some

Russian dialects, the consonant on the place of /tʃ/, on the contrary, is pronounced in a hard way

(Bukrinskaya, Karmakova, Sarkisyan, Golubeva, & Nikolaev, 1994; Orlova, 1957; Ignatovich, 2010;

Punegova, 2012; Yerofeyeva, 2013; Protsukovich, 2015; Morozova, 2015; Lavrentyeva, 2016; inter alia).

3 Hypotheses

First of all, it is logical to hypothesize that the production of Russian affricates by Native English

speakers will be based on the phonological system of English. Since English also has two affricates (the

voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate /tʃ/ and the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate /ʤ/), Native

English speakers have the pronunciation skills of complex sounds. But, as Shcherba (1974) observed, one

must first understand that the particular difficulties lie not in the sounds that are not similar to the native

language of students, but rather in the sounds for which the native language has similar sounds. Flege (1991)

holds the same idea and considers that the most difficult sounds to acquire are not new, but similar to the

sounds of one’s native language, because if the new sound is not similar to a sound in the native language,

the speaker will try to pronounce it in a correct way. However, if it is similar to the sound of one’s native

language, the speaker most likely will “slide” to the usual, habitual pronunciation. My second hypothesis

is that the “foreign accent” in the production of Russian affricates may be expressed in different degrees

and in different ways for affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/. According to Flege, the later a person begins to learn a

foreign language, the stronger degree of accent he or she has. My third and last hypothesis is that in the

pronunciation of Anglo-Americanisms, affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/ will sound different than in the pronunciation

of traditional Russian words. Within the framework of the pilot phase of the experimental research, it is

difficult to get answers to all these questions. However, they all are relevant in the case of a complete

analysis of the development of Russian affricates by Native English speakers.

1 The symbol ‘'’ indicates stress.

EDUARD SVIRIDENKO

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4.1 Participants

For the pilot phase of this study, I recruited two Native English participants with an elementary

knowledge of Russian as their foreign language who currently live in an English-speaking environment:

one male between the age of 18 and 25, living in Ontario, Canada, who is currently enrolled in a graduate

program and began acquiring Russian at 22 (P1), and one male between the age of 26 and 30, living in

California, the United States, who is enrolled in a college program and started learning Russian at 26 (P2).

The participant criteria were that they be Native English speakers, have elementary knowledge of Russian,

be educated, and be between 18 and 30 years old. No speech defects among the participants were detected.

For the transcription of the tokens, I selected two native Russian speakers in the same age group and

with a corresponding level of education, who live in Russia and have an advanced knowledge of English.

At the time of the study, both the English and Russian participants did not know each other.

4.2 Tasks

The participants completed three tasks in the course of this study:

1. Proficiency questionnaire: All participants completed the Language Experience and Proficiency

Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) (adapted from Blumenfeld & Kaushanskaya, 2007). This survey asks about

basic demographic information and relative experience and proficiency in Russian. A copy of the

LEAP-Q is included in Appendix A. The task lasted for three minutes.

2. Reading production task: All participants were audio-recorded as they read aloud Russian words

containing the target phonemes /ts/ and /tʃ/ in a word initial, medial, and final position. They read

them once and completed the task three times. It took two minutes to complete the task three times.

3. Imitation production task: All participants were audio-recorded as they repeated Russian words after

the native Russian speaker. The items contained the affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/ in a word initial, medial,

and final position. The words were uttered by the speaker three times, while the participants repeated

them once. The task was completed three times and lasted for five minutes in total.

In the second and third tasks, the words were presented in an “I say [a target word] again” (‘я говорю

[…] снова’ /jˈæ ɡəvɐrʲˈʉ […] snˈovə/) way and in a random order in regards to a word position of affricates.

However, the words were organized in a way that the same affricates did not follow each other, and

Anglicisms were pronounced separately from native Russian words.

4.3 Stimuli

For the reading and imitation tasks, I created a set of words, based on the Russian-language

dictionaries and a dictionary of Anglicisms in the Russian language, compiled by Dyakov (available at

http://anglicismdictionary.ru/slovar). The total number of target words is 12, the number of tokens is 144.

In Table 1, the affricates are presented in a word initial, medial, and final position.


5

Table 1: Stimuli

Position of /tʃ/ Russian word Anglicism

Initial читать /tʃɪtˈatʲ/ ‘to read’ Чикаго /tʃɪkˈaɡə/ ‘Chicago’

Medial ночной /nɐtʃnˈoj/ ‘night’ Adj коучинг /ˈkoʊtʃɪnk/ ‘coaching’

Final врач /vrˈatʃ/ ‘doctor’ ланч /lˈanjtʃ/ ‘lunch’

Position of /ts/ Russian word Anglicism

Initial цель /tsˈɛlj/ ‘aim’ цент /tsˈɛnt/ ‘cent’

Medial оценка /ɐtsˈɛnkə/ ‘grade’ бицепс /bjˈitsᵻps/ ‘biceps’

Final конец /kɐnʲˈets/ ‘end’ принц /prjˈints/ ‘prince’

5 Data analysis and results

The data were collected in November 2016. The material was recorded on the Samsung Galaxy Note

4 built-in voice recorder for one participant (in-person recording) and with the help of Callnote Call

Recorder over Skype for the other participant (remote recording). During the recordings, the participants

behaved in the usual way. Noise removal was not applied as it could negatively affect the recorded

production of Russian affricates. The total duration of the recordings is 14 minutes 35 seconds. The total

number of tokens used for analysis is 144.

The produced affricates were transcribed by two native Russian speakers who currently live in Russia

and have an education in the field of linguistics. The Russian speakers defined whether the Native English

speakers produced Russian affricates in a similar way to the norms of the Russian language or if they had

some deviations from the Russian norms of pronunciation. The deviations were considered errors. Both of

them completed a transcription of the same produced tokens.

As shown in Table 2, the transcription of affricate production showed that the following deviations

from the rules of pronunciation took place in production of Russian affricates by both participants of the

study:

1. Replacement of the affricate /ts/ with consonants <с> /s/, <т> /t/ or <тс> /t/+/s/ with a stop after the

sound /t/. This observation coincides with the theory of Vinogradov (1990) regarding the wrong

judgment about the sound.

2. Replacement of the affricate /tʃ/ with consonants <ш> /ʂ/, <щ> /ʂː/, <тш> /tʂ/, <тьш> /tʲʂ/.

The participants consistently mispronounced the affricate /tʃ/, although it is a normal English sound.

Perhaps the reason for this is their intention to produce the familiar sound in a different, “Russian” way as

opposed to their habitual pronunciation. The participants could assume that pronouncing this sound in an

English manner could be incorrect and “non-Russian”. This means that the “foreign accent” in the

production of Russian affricates is expressed in different degrees and in different ways for affricates /ts/ and

/tʃ/. The results are consistent both with the reading and imitation production tasks.

Table 2: Mispronounced sounds of P1 and P2

P1 and P2

Russian affricate /ts/ /tʃ/

Mispronounced sounds

<с> /s/

<т> /t/

<тс> /t/+/s/

<ш> /ʂ/

<щ> /ʂː/

<тш> /tʂ/

<тьш> /tʲʂ/

EDUARD SVIRIDENKO

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Both participants in the reading and imitation tasks consistently demonstrated greater number of

correct pronunciation of the affricate /tʃ/ than that of /ts/ (as shown in Tables 3.1 – 3.9). As shown in the

following tables, the results were examined and compared both in regard to the participants and the tasks.

Thus, Table 3.1 shows the number and percentages of correctly and incorrectly produced tokens by P1 in

the reading task.

Table 3.1: P1 in the reading task

Russian affricate Number of occurrence Percentages

Correct Incorrect Correct Incorrect

/ts/ 4 14 22% 78%

/tʃ/ 10 8 56% 44%

Similarly, Table 3.2 compares the same using P2 tokens.

Table 3.2: P2 in the reading task



/ts/ 2 16 11% 89%

/tʃ/ 11 7 61% 39%

The imitation task by P1 is shown in Table 3.3. It is worth noting that the percentage of correct

production of the affricate /tʃ/ uttered by P1 in this task is the lowest among all in this study. Perhaps, the

reason for that is the anxiety of P1 due to the in-person recording.

Table 3.3: P1 in the imitation task



/ts/ 3 15 17% 83%

/tʃ/ 6 12 33% 67%

As for the imitation task for P2, the number of the correctly produced affricate /tʃ/ is almost two times

higher than that of P1.

Table 3.4: P2 in the imitation task



/ts/ 4 14 22% 78%

/tʃ/ 11 7 61% 39%

The results for both P1 and P2 in the reading task are indicated in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5: P1 and P2 in the reading task



/ts/ 6 30 17% 83%

/tʃ/ 21 15 58% 42%


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The imitation task results for P1 and P2 are shown in Table 3.6.

Table 3.6: P1 and P2 in the imitation task



/ts/ 7 29 19% 81%

/tʃ/ 17 19 44% 56%

The reading and imitation production tasks results for P1 are demonstrated in Table 3.7.

Table 3.7: P1 in the reading and imitation tasks



/ts/ 7 29 19% 81%

/tʃ/ 16 20 44% 56%

Table 3.8 indicates the results for reading and imitation tasks combined together for P2. Although

the correct percentage of the affricate /ts/ remains relatively the same for both P1 and P2, the realization of

the affricate /tʃ/ is still better for P2.

Table 3.8: P2 in the reading and imitation tasks



/ts/ 6 30 17% 83%

/tʃ/ 22 14 61% 39%

The results for P1 and P2 in both the reading and imitation tasks are presented in Table 3.9. Overall,

the correct production of the affricate /tʃ/ is almost three times higher than that of the affricate /ts/.

Table 3.9: P1 and P2 in the reading and imitation tasks



/ts/ 13 59 18% 82%

/tʃ/ 38 34 53% 47%

Perhaps, the reason for that is that the phonological system of the English language has the voiceless

palato-alveolar sibilant affricate /tʃ/ that sounds and is produced in a similar way to the Russian affricate

/tʃ/. This means that the production of Russian affricates by Native English speakers is based on the

phonological system of English. However, there is no similar sound to the Russian affricate /ts/ in English,

that is why the participants had a greater difficulty in producing this affricate.

According to the combined results for all tasks and participants (144 analyzed tokens in total), as

shown in Table 4, Russian affricates were produced correctly only in 35% of cases, while the percentage

of incorrect pronunciation was 65%. This indicates that Russian sounds that are complex in their

composition are difficult to acquire by Native English speakers.

Table 4: P1 and P2 in the reading and imitation tasks

Russian Affricate Number of Occurrence Percentages


/ts/ + /tʃ/ 51 93 35% 65%

EDUARD SVIRIDENKO

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I would also like to note that the participants studied the Russian language the same amount of time

and had the same level of language training prior to the experiment, so in this study, it is impossible to

determine whether training affects the production of Russian affricates by Native English speakers.

6 Discussion

In section three, I put forward the following hypotheses:

1. The production of Russian affricates by Native English speakers will be based on the phonological

system of English.

2. The “foreign accent” in the production of Russian affricates may be expressed in different degrees

and in different ways for affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/.

3. In the pronunciation of Anglo-Americanisms, affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/ will sound different than in the

pronunciation of traditional Russian words.

All these hypotheses were confirmed even with the small nature of this study.

The phonological system of the English language has two affricates: the voiceless palato-alveolar

sibilant affricate /tʃ/ and the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate /ʤ/. However, when pronouncing the

Russian affricate /tʃ/, the participants sometimes produce another sound <щ> (/ʂː/ or soft /ʂ/), both with the

reading and imitation tasks. The foreign accent in the production of Russian affricates is expressed in

varying degrees: in some words, Russian affricates are easier for English speakers; in others – more difficult.

Most of the time, the accent is heard in the production of the affricate /ts/: <отсэнка> /ɐt/+/sˈɛnkə/ instead

of <оценка> /ɐtsˈɛnkə/ ‘grade’, <тсэл> /t/+/sˈɛl/ instead of <цель> /tsˈɛlj/ (aim), and <сэнт> /sˈɛnt/ instead

of <цент> /tsˈɛnt/ ‘cent’. It is less often heard in the production of the affricate /tʃ/: <вратьш> /vrˈatʲʂ/

instead of <врач> /vrˈatʃ/ ‘doctor’.

In the reading task, the participants did not always recognize words borrowed from English into

Russian, because they are written in Cyrillic. This fact has become one of the major issues for participants

when pronouncing the target words since currently they are not very familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Thus, the reading of the words <коучинг> /ˈkoʊtʃɪnk/ ‘coaching’, <бицепс> /bjˈitsᵻps/ ‘biceps’ and

<принц> /prjˈints/ ‘prince’ caused greater difficulties than the words <читать> /tʃɪtˈatʲ/ ‘to read’,

<ночной> /nɐtʃnˈoj/ ‘night’ Adj and <конец> /kɐnʲˈets/ ‘end’. When reading three times, the production of

Russian affricates in the words <врач> /vrˈatʃ/ ‘doctor’, <цель> /tsˈɛlj/ ‘aim’, <цент> /tsˈɛnt/ ‘cent’,

<оценка> /ɐtsˈɛnkə/ ‘grade’ and <принц> /prjˈints/ ‘prince’ remains incorrect.

When pronouncing some of the Anglo-Americanisms, the affricate /ts/ is pronounced in accordance

with the rules of the phonological system of the English language: <сэнт> /sˈɛnt/ instead of <цент> /tsˈɛnt/

‘cent’. However, according to the transcription of the tokens, the affricate /tʃ/ in the Anglo-Americanism

can also be produced with a foreign accent, as in the Russian words: <Тшикаго> /tʂˈɨkˈaɡə/ instead of

<Чикаго> /tʃɪkˈaɡə/ ‘Chicago’ and <коутшинг> /ˈkoʊtʂɪnk/ instead of <коучинг> /ˈkoʊtʃɪnk/ ‘coaching’.

Perhaps, this is due to a small set of target words used in the study. Another reason could be that the

participants did not recognize Anglicisms in these words, since they were written in Cyrillic.

Furthermore, the production of the affricates in the word initial and final positions could be affected

by the ending of the previous word ‘say’ (<говорю> /ɡəvɐrʲˈʉ/) and the beginning of the subsequent ‘again’

(<снова> /snˈovə/). The participants paused between the words and did not produce them together in one

word. However, the fact that the last word started with an /s/ sound may have affected the pronunciation of

affricates in the words <врач> /vrˈatʃ/ ‘doctor’, <принц> /prjˈints/ ‘prince’ and <конец> /kɐnʲˈets/ ‘end’.

In addition, I drew attention to the following fact: the more confident, energetic and faster the

participants produce the words, the more stable the errors in pronunciation are. The less confident they

behave, the more variations in the pronunciation of words they produce: for example, in some cases, the

Anglo-Americanism <цент> /tsˈɛnt/ ‘cent’ sounds as <сэнт> /sˈɛnt/ and in others as <тсэнт> with a stop


9

after the /t/ – /t/+/sˈɛnt/, that is the speakers pause after producing /t/ so that there is a glottal stop between

/t/ and /s/ in the word /tsˈɛnt/.

Both participants who are unsure of the quality of their accent are trying to avoid the pronunciation

of difficult phonemes, relying on sounds that are simpler for them; or, conversely, making a small pause

before producing the complex sound, then repeating it, as if searching for the correct way to pronounce it.

7 Conclusion

The analysis of the experimental data clearly indicates the tendency to replace Russian affricates by

Native English speakers. I noticed such substitutions as replacement of the affricate /ts/ with consonants

<с> /s/, <т> /t/ or <тс> /t/+/s/, as well as replacement of the similar to the English language affricate /tʃ/

with consonants <ш> /ʂ/, <щ> /ʂː/, <тш> /tʂ/, <тьш> /tʲʂ/ that could be caused by the participants’ desire

to avoid the habitual pronunciation of the English affricate /tʃ/ and to produce it in a different, or “correct”,

way. The indicated substitutions have occurred in 65% of cases while correct productions were recorded in

35% of cases.

At the same time, the correct pronunciation of the affricate /ts/ was noticed only in 18% of cases,

while the Russian affricate /tʃ/, similar to the one in English, was produced correctly in 53% of cases. This

indicates that Native English speakers rely on the phonological system of their language when producing

Russian affricates.

Since the majority of people around the world who are learning a second language are doing so in an

educational environment rather than a natural one, it is necessary to continue to search for suitable

techniques both for children and for adult audiences. Sometimes the efforts of the techniques’ authors are

focused on some specific aspects, while the others, no less significant, are ignored. For example, studies on

affricate production in dialects on the territory of Russia are very common, whereas the way foreigners, for

example, international students, pronounce affricates is not yet reflected in linguistic studies.

The Russian language has many words that contain the affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/. The qualitative

development of Russian affricates will reduce foreign accent in students learning Russian. The study of the

acquisition challenges of Russian affricates should form the basis for the development of methods of

pronunciation skills of these phonemes.

It should be recognized that this pilot study has several limitations. First of all, I was only able to test

a limited number of learners. The second limitation was a small set of target words that were produced by

the participants, the use of the non-professional equipment for the recordings, as well as the fact that the

surrounding noises were not excluded. Other limitations include the state of the participants, as well as the

volume, pace and intonation of the Russian language native speaker in the imitation task.

The results of this study have theoretical significance for the development of main aspects of

phonetics such as articulatory, acoustic, auditory and phonological, and they can be used in theoretical

courses on the phonology of the English and Russian languages, as well as in second language acquisition

courses. In practical terms, the results may be useful in solving the problems of automatic speech

recognition, in clarifying the situation with the peculiarities of the production of Russian affricates by

Native English speakers and, having statistically valid data will be taken into account in the development

or refinement of teaching methods and technologies.

References

Avanesov, R. (1968). Russian literary pronunciation (Russkoye literaturnoye proiznosheniye). Textbooks

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Appendix A. Language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q)

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Features of Russian affricate production by Native English ...

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