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Is there any situations where "прямо" is pronounced "прямó"?

I was watching the victory parade (the one in China), and I got the impression that the officer said "прямó", but I could have heard wrong. Is there a distinction in the pronunciation of this word? If there is none, I'm going to order myself a hearing aid. :)

From RT, starting at: 25:25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoC0Xcjko0A&t=1525s

CocoPop
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Ева
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2 Answers2

27

Military oral commands can have several stresses.
Typically a word is divided into two parts:

  1. All syllables, except the last one. It identifies a command and means get ready for step 2.
  2. The last syllable that means Go!

Examples:

Нале-во!
Напра-во!
Пря-мо!

Dmitry
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    Excellent! This is something that is not mentioned in the study material we are using. Большое спасибо. – Ева Dec 20 '15 at 14:31
4

Just adding to the excellent answer by Dmitry.

In military commands the second to last syllable is often artificially prolonged, in order to give time to recognize the command and prepare for action. While the last syllable is not only given an additional stress, it must differ in intonation — basically becoming a short shout.

All this makes military commands rather poorly suited for language study.

Elements In Space
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Giedrius
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