O and A: Tolstoy, Bolshoi and krakadil Gena

Keywords: Anya Golubeva names Real Russian Club Russian grammar Russian with Tamara tolstoy word stress

It can hardly be stressed enough. Knowing where the stress falls in a Russian word is essential. This not only tells you how to spell the word крокодил (crocodile), but also how to properly pronounce names like Tolstoy and Bolshoi. This is what stress does to the Russian o.

Oh and ah

The o is the most common letter in Russian (as mentioned in Paste Sounds). Were all those o’s to have an o sound, the language would sound very differently. But the established rule is, that an unstressed o (usually) takes on the sound of an a – and luckily so. Because oh, oh, oh, how beautiful the Russian language – in part because we don’t hear oh, oh, oh all the time.

Vowel Reduction

Vowels that are not stressed, instantly become a lot less prominent. They also get somewhat flattened or reduced, and change sound. The grammatical term for the phenomenon is vowel reduction (аканье).

Video in Dutch. ‘Russische uitspraak – Klemtoon en klinkerreductie’ = Russian pronunciation – Stress and vowel reduction (Russian with Tamara, 2020, 7 m).

Crocodile Gena’s confusion

More on the matter in diptych Vowel reduction from Russian grammar, of which the first part here. Featuring a crocodile unsure whether to write крокодил with o’s or with a’s. The stress falls on the last syllable, and this causes confusion: two a’s are heard, two o’s are written.

From Крокодил Гена (= Gena the Crocodile) from 1969. Featured in Чебурашка и Крокодил Гена (Союзмультфильм, 2014), scene starts here.

Vowel reduction (I)
(Russian grammar, 2016, 6 m)
Part 2 (2017, 2 m) is about е and я.

Tolstoy and Bolshoi: the correct pronunciation

The way most Westerners say ‘Tolstoy’, that can never be correct. It’s either Tólstoy (which would sound strange), or Talstóy – which initially also seems strange, but it is correct, and one quickly gets used to it. Толстый, by the way (stress on the first syllable), is an adjective and means fat.

Also, never order tickets for the Bolshói Theater or Bolshói Ballet – go for Balshói instead. Pretty sad that this goes wrong so often. Mind you, these are balshoi household names.

It gets worse rather than better with How To Say Tolstoy (Emma Saying, 2017, 1 m) and in How to Pronounce Tolstoy (2012) from a channel called Pronounce Names. And would you want to know how to properly pronounce Dostoevsky, don’t watch or listen to How to Pronounce Fyodor Dostoevsky (Julien Miquel, 2020, 1 m).

Watch instead:

How to Pronounce 15 Well-Known Russian Author Names (abookolive, 2016, 4 m)
How To Pronounce the Names of Russian Classical Authors? (Ria Lamoreaux, 2015, 4 m), by the same channel Leo Tolstoy – How to Pronounce the Names of Characters (2016, 6 m) and How To Pronounce the Names of Characters from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s books? (2015, 8 m)
5 Russian Names You’re Pronouncing Horribly Wrong (Some Russian things, 2013, 5 m)

And don’t forget about the correct pronunciation of Russian composers.

How to Pronounce the Names of Russian Writers / Russian Classical Writers
(Bookish Topics, 2020, 20 m)
‘You see? Very easy, Russian names are quite easy. Like, people just overthink them.’