путешествовать (“to travel”) | Russian Pronunciation Demystified!

0:00Hey guys, I'm Kira, and today you'll learn how to pronounce the word put your chest forward or to travel. Let's start with the stressed syllable. Shaw is pronounced with the tip of the tongue curved upward, but with the rest of the tongue low, making lots of space in the mouth. And the rest of the syllable is straightforward, as long as we have good Russian default mouth position. Shaw slightly forward, tip of the tongue behind the bottom teeth, lips rounded and protruded. Shest, shest. The O and the A in the next two syllables sound like schwas, and the Tha at the end of the word is soft, so we use more air than in English. It's not T. With the tip of the tongue, instead the tip touches the back of the bottom teeth, and it's the part behind the tip that makes contact with the roof of the mouth.

1:00Because the vowel in the last syllable is a schwa, but the word final Tha is soft, a most fantastically and magically cool thing happens within the last syllable. The tongue rises at the last second, and that rise can be heard at the very end of the syllable. Voight, voight, voight, voight, voight, voight, voight, voight, voight, see, magic. Let's back up and do the last three syllables. Joe, tongue, lips, shest, vova, voight, shest, vova, voight. The first syllable contains an u, so be sure to stick your lips out way further than you would in English, and the yet in the next syllable sounds like an e, so the first two syllables sound like this.

2:25Finally, I have one more magical subtlety to tell you about. Russian words usually have only one stressed syllable, and all the other syllables are much shorter and less emphasized than unstressed syllables in English, and we can really make this word sound Russian by de-emphasizing every syllable except the stressed one. It's not, pute-sest-vova-vat, but rather pute-sest-vova-vat, pute-sest-vova-vat, pute-sest-vova-vat, pute-sest-vova-vat, pute-sest-vova-vat, pute-sest-vova-vat. That's it guys, be sure to find me on YouTube and learn Russian with Kira and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I love to hear from listeners, so please suggest a word for an episode, or just say hi. You can support my work by joining me on Patreon and checking out my video course at UnlockingRussianPronunciation.org,

3:29where 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 recommending my YouTube channel to your students, so they can see them too. Thank you for watching!