Final-obstruent Devoicing - Russian

Russian

Final-obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian бес ('demon', phonemically /bʲes/) and без ('without', phonemically /bʲez/) are pronounced identically in isolation as .

The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into "-off" (Russian: -ов), especially by the French.

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