любовь (“love”) | Russian Pronunciation Demystified!

0:00Guys, I'm Kira, and today you'll learn how to pronounce the word you woof or love. Here let's borrow from Welsh. I think there's this really cool double L sound they have, like an L with a really high tongue position, but they breathe through it with no vocal chord vibration as if it were an H. This is a great way to get to the soft L in the beginning of our word. Another way to think of it is that it's an L with a slight Y sound built in, if you combine this with a real Russian woo sound with jaw forward and duck lips, you have the first syllable. In English the letter O closes to an O sound, O, O, but Russian does the opposite.

1:01It opens either from an O to an A sound or from an O to an O sound, O, O, O, O. Let's say the second syllable with good Russian default mouth position, jaw slightly forward, tip of the tongue behind the bottom teeth, lips rounded and protruded. Woo, woo, woo. Finally, the ver is soft, so a fascinating and magical thing happens at the end of the second syllable. The ver sounds like an F, and the tongue moves from a low position to a high position, so that the F sounds very shallow, not F, but H. So the second syllable sounds like this, jaw, tongue, lips, boi, boi, boi, boi. Now the whole thing, jaw, tongue, lips, loo, boi, loo, boi, loo, boi, loo, boi, loo, boi,

2:16loo, boi, loo, boi, loo, boi. That's it, guys. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, share my videos, suggest a word, join me on Patreon, and check out my video course at unlockingrussianpronunciation.org, where I explain why some letters sound different in certain situations, and how you can learn to predict and pronounce all of the subtleties. And if you teach Russian and you like my videos, please consider tagging me on Instagram, so your students can see them too. Chislyua!