Talk:но

Russian unstressed pronunciation
I am not "confusing" it with, but the two words sound exactly the same in unstressed position (for me at least). Compare the sentences " Ну не пошел он!" and "Он сказал, что пойдет, но не пошел ." (in the phrase "ну/но не пошел", the only stress is in "пошел"). It also works pretonically as well in " Но как он туда добрался?" and " Ну как он туда добрался?" (since there is a stress on "как"). --WikiTiki89 16:16, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * но doesn't carry the sentence stress but it's never reduced, it's pronounced clearly and in any case, о is never pronounced as у in any position, unlike Ukrainian. Но and ну can sometimes replace each other with a slight difference in the meaning but if you want to say ну, you write ну, not но. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 21:39, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * We've had disputes over pronunciation before. I know very well the difference in meaning between ну and но and I am not confusing the two. My theory is that precisely because the /o/ in но does not reduce to /a/, many speekers are unable in fast speech to preserve the /o/ sound in unstressed position, so it merges with the /u/ sound instead. --WikiTiki89 15:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)