UKRAINIAN ORAL SPEECH ECOLOGY: PRONUNCIATION OF CONSONANTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to Ukrainian oral speech at the synchronous level, in particular the pronunciation features. The purpose of the survey is to prove orthoepic normativity and historical organicity on the basis of opinion polls, to indicate pronunciation problems and deviations, to determine the percentage of pronunciation of consonant norms depending on the respondents’ sphere of activity, region of Ukraine (North, South, West, East, Central). The object of the research is Ukrainian speech of students of Philological Departments in Ukraine. The subject is knowledge of orthoepic rules of modern Ukrainian, in particular orthoepy of consonants (pronunciation of voiced and voiceless consonants, [в] as [ў], [з] as a part of prefixes роз-, без, prefixes з-, об-, над-, під -, від-, аffricates [д з], [д ж]). The proposed work integrates general scientific and special research methods: analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, observation; taxonomy; quantitative analysis, descriptive, comparative and historical methods, method of linguistic geography; field research methods: oral examination and sociolinguistic analysis; auditory analysis. They allowed to identify orthoepic features and general characteristics of Ukrainian oral speech which were subjectively perceived. Thus, the research conducted in Ukraine allows us to call stable such orthoepic norms of consonants pronunciation as the pronunciation of the merged [д зᶦ] in the word дзвінок (followed by 100% of respondents), the pronunciation [г] as [x] in the word легкий (90%), pronunciation of prefixes роз- (100%), без- (100%) in words розписати, безпека.  Pronunciation norms were developed quite clearly in the second half of the XIX century and are recorded in manuscripts and first editions written in phonetic spelling. The formation of orthoepic norms was influenced by traditional spelling and folk speech.  We see the prospect of further research in the study of orthoepic deviations of the regional speech of young people, in particular in the pronunciation of sound combinations.