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Unit 4 · The letter stays; its sound can weaken · Read
The letter stays; its sound can weaken
Understand teaching accents and natural word audio.
Pitch shows questions and feeling, not a new word
No tones, mobile stress
Russian has no lexical tones. Stress is mobile and normally unwritten.
ко́фетакси́
KO-fe · tak-SI: the accent marks the strong syllable
Teaching accents
The course adds an acute accent to multisyllable teaching words, such as ко́фе and такси́. Those accents fade in real-world reading and are absent from the final check.
ко́фе
coffee
такси́
taxi
молоко́
Written о о о, heard ma-la-KO
Weak vowels keep their letters
Unstressed о is often a-like, and unstressed е or я can be i-like. Do not rewrite a reduced vowel as another letter: spelling stays молоко́.
молоко́
milk
Decode first, then check the whole-word recording
The recording is the model
Whole-word audio is the pronunciation model. Read the letters first, then let the recording show you the stress and the weakened vowels.
Decode first, then check the whole-word recording
LernLaterne