On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 10:09:39 UTC, Chris wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 09:57:01 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev
wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 09:44:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
Just follow your natural way of speaking and you'll be fine.
Read it out to yourself. And let's be honest, it sounds
really crap when you read "an UFCS", bahhh!
Yes, well, the problem is that "an U" sounds completely fine
in my head!
The way you pronounce the U letter in the English alphabet is
the same (not sure if identical) as the Russian letter Ю,
which is considered a vowel in Russian.
In that case you'll just have to learn the rule: if it's a
single letter, it has to be `an`. Sorry, I didn't realize that
/j/ is treated as a vowel in Russian. I was thinking of
languages I'm familiar with, and there /j/ is always treated as
a consonant. Is the Russian sound a fricative or a pure vowel
without any friction (= obstruction)?
Can't answer that question, but <Ю> is actually [ju] in
isolation, that is, a glide + a vowel. When preceded by a
consonant, that glide is not pronounced, instead the consonant
gets palatalized. Thus it would be better to say that /ju/ is
treated as a vowel, not /j/.
