Pronouncing "i"

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Levike
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Pronouncing "i"

Postby Levike » 2013-06-20, 18:14

Okay so this is a question for those who find this a bit problematic:

Do you sometimes not hear the final "i" ?
For example in the words "marți" or "tauri".

Just because I heard people saying they don't really hear any "i" in these cases. :?

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby phaed » 2013-06-23, 3:07

[flag]en[/flag] Yes, the sound is sometimes very subtle to me. It was a little difficult to hear these 'i's before I began talking with a native speaker.
[flag]ro[/flag] Da, câteodată sunetul e foarte subtil. A fost puţin greu să aud aceşti 'i' înainte să am început să vorbesc cu vorbitor nativ.
Native: [flag=]en-US[/flag]
B2: [flag=]es[/flag] (2006), [flag=]fr[/flag] (2008), [flag=]de[/flag] (2012)
A1: [flag=]ro[/flag] (2013)
Admiring from a distance: [flag=]sco[/flag] [flag=]la[/flag] [flag=]el[/flag] [flag=]fa[/flag] [flag=]no[/flag] [flag=]ru[/flag]

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Levike
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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Levike » 2013-06-23, 9:22

phaed wrote:[flag]ro[/flag] Da, câteodată sunetul e foarte subtil. A fost un pic greu să aud aceşti 'i' înainte de a începe să vorbesc cu un vorbitor nativ.

Am corectat-o un pic dacă nu te superi. :)

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby pittmirg » 2013-07-08, 18:21

I haven't heard enough Romanian — paying attention to what's being said, anyway — to be sure about it. Definitely -ți (which is probably the most frequent combination) sounds palatalized to me. On the other hand, îmi sounds just like [ɨm] to me in the samples I could find. Probably it would be easier to answer this question if you had provided recordings with various consonants.

Another oddity I've noticed is that the ea diphthong occasionally sounds just like [a] to me, in some recordings.
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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby silvohex » 2013-07-09, 12:19

Greetings!

[flag]en[/flag] - I'm a native speaker of Romanian and I often do not hear the "i" myself. If I talk rapidly, I don't end up saying „marți”, but „marts”.
[flag]ro[/flag] - Sunt un vorbitor nativ al limbii române și deseori eu însumi nu aud sunetul „i”. Dacă vorbesc rapid, nu zic „marți” ci „marts”.
"Growing old is necessary, but growing up is optional."

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby dgher4 » 2013-07-16, 11:55

pittmirg wrote:I haven't heard enough Romanian — paying attention to what's being said, anyway — to be sure about it. Definitely -ți (which is probably the most frequent combination) sounds palatalized to me. On the other hand, îmi sounds just like [ɨm] to me in the samples I could find. Probably it would be easier to answer this question if you had provided recordings with various consonants.

Another oddity I've noticed is that the ea diphthong occasionally sounds just like [a] to me, in some recordings.


That's actually a very good way to learn how to talk Romanian, by correlating the Romanian words with English sounds. Here's an example:

Uşă - door.

The U can be pronounced like a deeper Uuuuu ( like when someone challenges another or makes a good joke about him). The rest of the word, şă, can be pronounced by saying shovel, only stopping at sho and also making it deeper.

Hope it makes sense :)

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Levike » 2013-07-16, 15:06

pittmirg wrote:On the other hand, îmi sounds just like [ɨm] to me.

Another oddity I've noticed is that the ea diphthong occasionally sounds just like [a] to me, in some recordings.


îmi is also like the -ți but maybe we don't pronounce it so loudly.
And as Silvoplex said we may eat these palatalizations if we talk rapidly.
But in normal speech leaving it out would sound weird.

ea is usually pronounced like a normal diphthong
but there are a few examples when the e is very short and the a a bit longer
like in the personal pronoun ea where instead of iea you may hear just ia.

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby AdiJapan » 2013-07-17, 15:51

Levente.Maier wrote:ea is usually pronounced like a normal diphthong
but there are a few examples when the e is very short and the a a bit longer
like in the personal pronoun ea where instead of iea you may hear just ia.

Actually the pronoun ea is pronounced identically to the verb ia, that is, they are both pronounced [ja]. Many natives are influenced by spelling and have the false impression that the two words are pronounced differently.

As such, the pronoun ea does not contain the diphthong [e̯a], at least not in standard Romanian. In some of the northern subdialects of the language, diphthongs /e̯a/ and /ja/ tend to be realized identically, as [ja].
[flag]ro[/flag] maternă  [flag]us[/flag] pretty well  [flag]fr[/flag] pas mal  [flag]ja[/flag] 順調

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Levike » 2013-07-19, 18:54

When you learn a new Romanian verb and conjugate it
then how do you know how to pronounce the final i, ex:

tu erai
tu cari
tu intri
tu mergi
tu aduni
tu parchezi

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Lietmotiv » 2013-07-19, 21:25

Isn't this palatalization and nothing more?

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Levike » 2013-07-19, 21:31

In erai the i is pronounced as a clear y like in yes

in intri it's like i in to be

and in aduni it's palatalization

But my question is that if you're a foreigner learning the language
how do you decide how to pronounce it? ( since there are 3 ways )

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby Lietmotiv » 2013-07-19, 22:20

Intri is not palatalization, of course, so is "noștri".
erai - a vowel cannot be palatalized, but it's a short "i".
Otherwise, in most of the cases, except for words like "intri" "afli", "noștri", negri" it's palatalization

But my question is that if you're a foreigner learning the language
how do you decide how to pronounce it? ( since there are 3 ways )


I guess the best way would be to hear the language as much as possible, meaning exposure to the language.

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Re: Pronouncing "i"

Postby AdiJapan » 2013-07-20, 10:48

Levente.Maier wrote:But my question is that if you're a foreigner learning the language
how do you decide how to pronounce it? ( since there are 3 ways )

In case you're talking only about verbs, where the final i marks the second person (sometimes the first also), its pronunciation is fairly straightforward, because it only depends on the phonetic context, that is, it's not lexical (you don't need to remember the pronunciation for each verb). Here is the rule:

- If i comes after a vowel, then it's a semivowel. Examples: tu stai, vrei, știi, îndoi, pui, vedeai, făceai; eu îndoi, adusei.

- If it comes after a muta cum liquida sequence --- pr, br, tr, dr, cr, gr, pl, bl, cl, gl, fl, etc. ---, then it's a full vowel. Examples: tu intri, sufli, umbli, umpli.

- Otherwise, after consonants, it is a palatalization. Examples: tu vezi, aduni, întrebi, treci, poți, lucrezi, dorești, făcuși; voi aveți, aveați.

The same rule applies to nouns and adjective, where the final i marks the plural:

- Semivowel in: cai, femei, fii; răi, grei, goi, etc.

- Full vowel in: codri, miniștri, membri; negri, simpli, dubli, etc.

- Palatalization in: străzi, frați, arabi; tineri, scumpi, lungi, etc.

However, if that final i is not a marker of the second (or first) person in verbs or a plural in nouns, its pronunciation depends on other things. For instance, in verb infinitives it is always a full vowel, no matter the phonetic context: a sui, a înnoi; a umbri, a împietri; a porni, a iubi, etc.

The rule is usually very easy to get used to and apply. I know of only one situation where it's not clear whether two consonants form a muta cum liquida sequence or a usual sequence: rl. For example, in the verbs a urla and a azvîrli we have the same consonant sequence, but in one case it requires a full vowel after it, and in the other a palatalization: tu urli (i is a vowel), tu azvîrli (i is a palatalization). Then how to tell? The easiest way is to look at the first person form of the same verbs: eu urlu, eu azvîrl. You can notice that in eu urlu there is an additional -u ending, which proves we have a muta cum liquida sequence (in Romanian no word can ever end in such a sequence), whereas in eu azvîrl the word ends in a consonant, which means here rl is just a usual sequence of consonants. But this is a point for rather advanced learners.
[flag]ro[/flag] maternă  [flag]us[/flag] pretty well  [flag]fr[/flag] pas mal  [flag]ja[/flag] 順調


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