Constantine Borissoff
Qualifications:
- MA, Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck College, University of London
- Higher-Intermediate Certificate in Sanskrit, SOAS Language Centre, London
- Diplom (Univ.) in Oriental Philology, Far-Eastern State University, Vladivostok
Special interests:
- Historical Linguistics
- Comparative Linguistics
- Lexicology & Etymology
- Articulatory Phonetics
- Pronunciation teaching
Languages:
Russian, English, Italian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Ukrainian, Bulgarian
Memberships:
borissoff 
19 comments
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August 7, 2015 at 05:48
Татьяна
Здравствуйте! Скажите пожалуйста, у вас есть русская версия статьи об основах артикуляции и подобных статьях? Вы можете ее выложить здесь или прислать на мой электронный ящик?
August 7, 2015 at 12:16
borissoff
Уважаемая Татьяна!
К сожалению, я пишу только на английском. Сейчас я в дороге и вернусь в конце августа. Я обязательно пришлю несколько статей по этой тематике на русском
из своего архива на ваш е-mail tat6…….
КБ
August 7, 2015 at 22:57
Татьяна
Спасибо большое!
October 20, 2015 at 00:32
stas
Could you send me the same articles, too. I would be glad to read such articles in Russian. By the by what do you think about the book ‘A Practical Introduction to Phonetics’ by J. C. Catford? I am going to use that as a self-taught book with the purpose to achieve good or theoretically perfect pronunciation.
October 20, 2015 at 07:41
borissoff
Thank you for your comment! I shall send the articles to your e-mail address. As for Catford, it is a very useful book and the key word about it is “practical”. It has a lot of theory but also many practical drills. I quite agree with Catford saying that “[…] the competent phonetician must acquire is a deep, internally experienced, awareness of what is going on within the vocal tract — an ability to analyse, and hence describe and ultimately control the positions and movements of organs that produce the sounds of speech”. However, one should not forget that a language is a complex system and even if one masters to articulate separate sounds, it may not be enough for getting a good overall pronunciation effect. The problem of many phoneticians, in my view, is that they advocate the atomistic approach while it should be systemic. This is where the ideas of the Basis of Articulation and the Articulatory Setting (these two things are not interchangeable!) become important. You may spend ages on trying to get your separate English vowels right but just but learning how to maintain the proper tongue setting as briefly described in my post (https://borissoff.wordpress.com/tag/basis-of-articulation/) and, importantly, by getting your English neutral vowel right, all other vowels will naturally align correctly and become more English-like.
November 4, 2015 at 15:36
Thu
Thanks for your posts. They are of great help. I tried to change the tongue position and I find the whole pronunciation process is more effortless. But I still couldn’t get it right. I have problems with consonant clusters like /dz/ and I couldn’t get “girl” right, something to do with the /l/.
I’m trying to practice mask resonance, hopefully it will increase my intelligibility.
I’m from Vietnam and I found the airstream mechanism plays a big part in accent, too.
Anyway, trying to get better but I still have a long way to go.
Thanks again for your posts.
Have a great day!
November 4, 2015 at 18:21
borissoff
Thank you for your comment! I would advise you to practice the movement of the tip of the tongue. First anchor your tongue so that its sides rest on the upper molars. The upper part of the tongue should hang freely in the middle of the oral cavity slightly withdrawn from the teeth. Now, keeping it fixed, raise only (!) the tip of the tongue and touch the alveoli. Position 4 on this picture https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Places_of_articulation.svg/375px-Places_of_articulation.svg.png Repeat many times this flipping movement. It is like sport – the tongue is made of muscles and they should be trained which takes time. Now, build some pressure in your lunges and add a push of air when you withdraw the tip (aspiration). You should get an aspirated /t/ sound. Just adding a voice to it would produce an aspirated /d/. The trick to change /d/ to /dz/ is to touch the alveoli not by the very tip but with a broader upper part of the tongue tip. Remember about aspiration! By the way, removing voice in the same position would make /ch/.
Good luck!
November 4, 2015 at 18:42
borissoff
As for /r/ and /l/. The trick is that their articulation is almost identical. The difference is that with /r/ you (maintaining the tongue anchorage as described above!) start to sound the neutral vowel and while doing it slightly curl the tip of the tongue upwards towards point 4 but without touching it. This will add to your neutral sound an r-colouring (Americans are experts in this 🙂 ). Then continuing the same sound slightly touch point 4 and your /r/ will start to sound as /l/. Practice it many times going from /r/ to /l/ and back. It is a very small movement just of the tip of the tongue. Phonetics is built about economy of movements.
November 7, 2015 at 09:44
autumn19xx
Thanks for your reply, Borissoft. Can you listen to my speech sometime and tell me what I do wrong?
November 7, 2015 at 11:12
borissoff
Thank you for your reply! Please call me Constantine :). Surely, I can do it over Skype but at this point it becomes professional. If you would like to continue, please contact me by e-mail to discuss the terms.You can find my e-mail address here: https://borissoff.wordpress.com/contact/
June 21, 2017 at 06:12
osman
hi. first thank you for your articles. i read article about the scitians and the vocabularies of scitians i admired them because many of are same with Zazaish language who is descendants of Dailamites live east of turkey. for examples;
arm-arm, or-pregnant, heşt-eight, bır-cut,shave-, da-gave, derg-long, des-ten, se-hundred, siya-black, vac-say, verg-wolf, ber-door, giru-weight, ga-cow, kutik-dog, mır-die, newe-new, pay-foot, pari-belong last year,pez-wild sheep…
June 24, 2017 at 18:04
borissoff
Dear Osman,
The close resemblance is not accidental because Zaza belongs to the Zaza–Gorani group of Northwestern Iranian languages. It has acquired many loans from Arabic and Persian but the bulk of its vocabulary is still Indo-Iranian. Its grammar, however, has undergone a considerable change but it still maintains a distinction between the masculine and feminine gender and has two cases (nominative and accusative).
August 2, 2017 at 11:34
osman
thank you for your reply…have a good day
July 27, 2017 at 14:05
Zerovanus
Hi, could you recommend me a good book on Vedic grammar preferably written by Indian specialists?
July 27, 2017 at 15:39
borissoff
If you you are a complete beginner I would recommend you to start from A Practical Sanskrit Introductory https://archive.org/details/ApracticalSIIt is simple and very effective. Once you pass this stage you may want to read Mcdonell’s A Vedic Grammar for Students https://archive.org/details/vedicgrammarfor00macduoft
July 28, 2017 at 23:10
Zerovanus
Thank you. I’ll definitely check them out.
July 29, 2017 at 06:09
borissoff
Also you may want to buy this textbook I used to study Sanskrit at SOAS: A Sanskrit Primer https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Samskrta-Subodhini-Sanskrit-Primer-Michigan-Papers-South-Southeast/089148079X/ref=sr_1_3/261-0746985-2536605?ie=UTF8&qid=1501311928&sr=8-3&keywords=a+sanskrit+primer
August 26, 2018 at 03:25
Ilia
Dear Constantine
Thank you for your great work
May I take this opportunity to ask if you have any good books, articles or exercises for acquiring and understanding of English tongue position and articulatory settings?
Thanks in advance!
August 26, 2018 at 23:03
borissoff
Dear Ilia,
Thank you for the interest in my work.
I would advise you to read the disseminating article by Honikman “Honikman, B. D. Abercombie D.B. Fry, P. M. N. S. &. L. T. (Ed.) Articulatory Settings In Honour of Daniel Jones, London: Longmans, 1964, 73-84”
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cNWaQBwzqBteJMwsjXvRCINSrEZt5pe_
You may find many other references in my works which you probably read:
https://www.academia.edu/2594641/The_Concept_of_Basis_of_Articulation_in_Russia_in_the_First_Half_of_the_20th_Century
https://www.academia.edu/1012358/Basis_of_Articulation_or_Articulatory_Setting
https://www.academia.edu/1005692/Basis_of_Articulation_and_Articulatory_Setting_in_pronunciation_teaching
Also you may want to read the papers of my collegue Piers Messum at:
https://independent.academia.edu/PiersMessum
If you read Russian, there is some useful information here:
http://lingorado.com/simple-ponunciation-exercise/
Regards,
Constantine