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Let's suppose you are having a casual conversation with a friend and talking quickly and want to say, "Попал в бесперспективняк." Will you be able to pronounce this flawlessly and without changing the fast tempo of your speech?

I am asking because my teacher criticized me for slowing down the tempo when I pronounced that phrase. Calling my tongue clumsy, he then made me repeat this phrase many times. He made me "stress the consonants," as he puts it, and then to speed up the tempo. In the end, he got more or less pleased, but said that I still have to work in order to pronounce such phrases like a true Russian girl.

I am curious whether native speakers really have no difficulties pronouncing this phrase quickly and naturally.

Mitsuko
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    i do and would never take trouble of having to articulate it, you can consider this one of those folk tongue twisters of which there're quite a few in Russian, maybe it's good for training but not really for actual speech – Баян Купи-ка Sep 01 '19 at 22:22
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    Well, saying that word бесперспективняк is a good alcohol test, for a native speaker that is :) For a foreigner I would really expect anyone to have a hard time with it, unless you are training to be a super spy and absolutely must blend in at a Russian TV anchorman competition or a tongue-twister themed party. – DK. Sep 02 '19 at 01:03
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    @DK then being able to pronounce this word effortlessly will be really suspicious ;) – PavelAndré Sep 02 '19 at 09:08
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    Прыжок с подвыподвертом (https://russian.stackexchange.com/q/2498/487) – c.p. Sep 02 '19 at 21:51
  • Your teacher wants to train you in tongue-twisters. Those can be trouble for native speakers in any language. – Alexander Sep 03 '19 at 18:11

3 Answers3

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I think it's a word which was specifically coined to be difficult to pronounce. There are many quasi-linguistic jokes about either complexity or uniqueness of the Russian language which feature silly or absurd or overcomplicated words or phrases, and "бесперспективняк" probably originates from a joke like that. Some of my friends use it, and they stumble upon its pronunciation every other time, but nobody makes a fuss over it.

PavelAndré
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As for me, it's difficult to pronounce that phrase fast, but maybe it's because I've never even thought of saying such a silly word, and I can hardly imagine someone who'd use it. On the other hand, as a tongue-twister drill, it's pretty good. After some exercise and training, it's quite possible to learn to pronounce it quite fast. Training distinctive speech at high pace is very important at higher levels of language acquisition.

Every tongue-twister seems difficult or sometimes even impossible to pronounce quickly, but you know, Übung macht den Meister, practice makes champions.

Your teacher is absolutely right, repeating it many times, first slowly and then with more and more increased speed is the best way to get the most distinctive and crisp pronunciation.

Cheer up, you'll cope with it!

c.p.
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Yellow Sky
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    Thanks a lot. Could you elaborate on why you consider that word silly? – Mitsuko Sep 01 '19 at 18:37
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    @Mitsuko - First, because it's hard to pronounce. Second, because the suffix -(н)як attached to adjectival roots usually produces vulgarized nouns used in low colloquial conversation (тупняк, глушняк, вторяк), but here the suffix is with the bookish root бесперспектив- which makes a strong contrast. It looks like a word from some low slang with a narrow professional sphere of usage. And overall, it just sounds silly, for me, subjectively. :P – Yellow Sky Sep 01 '19 at 18:53
  • Could you give me a synonymous noun that you do not find silly? – Mitsuko Sep 01 '19 at 18:54
  • @Mitsuko - Since it's slang, it's hard to predict the meaning exactly. From the first sight, it could mean бесперспективное положение, it can well be a chess / gomoku term (попал = got into). Or it can be a hunting term (попал = shot), then it means бесперспективное, негодное как трофей животное. Without any context it's impossible to determine the meaning of such words. What's the context? What was the conversation about? – Yellow Sky Sep 01 '19 at 19:01
  • @Mitsuko - Also, it can mean группа бесперспективных, негодных для некой цели людей, then попал = was classified as, filed under. – Yellow Sky Sep 01 '19 at 19:11
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    It was about a job position that gave no career prospects. Someone got hired and later realized he попал в бесперспективняк. What is the Russian word for a situation in which there are no good prospects? – Mitsuko Sep 01 '19 at 19:22
  • @Mitsuko - Then, my last guess was right, группа бесперспективных, негодных для некой цели людей. Such weird, often created on the spot words are usually used as contractions for long phrases. There's no single words in Russian for that notion, so such word, though itself long, seems a better choice than the 7-word phrase. – Yellow Sky Sep 01 '19 at 19:27
  • @Mitsuko ..попал в бесперспективняк. What is the Russian word for a situation in which there are no good prospects? - на нормативном русском: "отсутствие перспектив(ы) (роста)". Разумеется, вместо попал в, будет использоваться обнаружил, увидел, осознал и т.п. Basically, an analogue of realized that you used in your comment... – tum_ Sep 01 '19 at 23:19
  • There is a perfectly legitimate word бесперспективность, which is equally difficult (for some people, at least) to pronounce. To @Mitsuko: you won't get any trustable statistics on this resource. For some native speakers this word is a tongue-twister, others will say it with no problem at all. People have different abilities in this regard, either natural or acquired through dedicated training (actors, singers, public speakers, etc). And yes, practice makes perfect - this applies to both natives and foreigners. – tum_ Sep 02 '19 at 06:17
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    Personally, I would add that I've never heard it being used with such words as "попал в", "осознал", "увидел". Only in a descriptive manner: "Это бесперспективняк" или "Полный бесперспективняк". I wouldn't say that the other uses are unnatural, though... just unfamiliar. – PavelAndré Sep 02 '19 at 09:10
  • @PavelAndré Моё осознал относилось к "отсутствию перспектив". А вот попал в бесперспективняк - это теперь так в Япониях учат :) – tum_ Sep 02 '19 at 14:38
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  1. If they use this word in a conversation then I assume they used it many times and won't have trouble with it.

  2. It's slang so not all native speakers will use it. I would use something more precise depending on context to say that I got into situation/profession/field with no good outcome no matter what I do here.

P.S.: To master this word I would divide it into prefixes, root, suffixes: "Бес" + "перспектив" + "няк"; and learn each part starting from hardest and adding "meat" to it until you get the whole word.

You can translate them to understand what is going on: "Lacking" + "Perspective" + "Russian suffixes to make quintilion words". Can't explain suffixes without research because they are natural for me and I don't need rules to apply them but there are rules for them too.

lostero
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