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МЕНЯ ЗОВУТ НАТАША.... 'My name is...'

Hi, I have just started lessons and come across this sentence as above . The Russian pronunciation of 'O' in the middle word 'name' is 'zavut' but the letter is pronounced 'O' within the alphabet and not 'A'. Advice please!

Здравствуйте!

The reason, from what I understand, is the 'o' in the word зовут has the 'a' sound instead of the 'o' sound as in the letter in the alphabet, because the 'o' isn't stressed within that word, so it will take on the sound of 'a' instead. Hope that helps.

Yea, the above poster is correct, except more like...

In unaccented syllables that come AFTER the accented syllable, both a and o are pronounced like a. For example, слово.

In unaccented syllables that come directly BEFORE the accented syllable, the same is true. Such as in откуда.

And also when the o is the first or last letter in the word, it is also pronounced a.