If >> ё << is an actual letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, and it has a different sound altogether than the letter >> e <<, why is it almost never given in the transcripts of these dialogs… such as in the above example from Lesson 8? Is it usually left unmarked in normal written Russian? Does one just learn the stress of the word? and if it happens to fall on an “e”, then it becomes “ё”? Is it entirely optional to mark a stressed e with the “umlaut” (to borrow from the German) ??
It is indeed usually left unmarked in normal written Russian. There exist words where the stress falls on the “e”, for example, “тесно” or “девка” off the top of my head. It’s optional as far as I know to write on the “umlaut”. For example the word “тётка” would normally be written “тетка”. That’s how I see the situation anyway.
Thank you for pointing out. I will edit all LingQ text for beginners. Usually ё is always written with dots in the texts for beginners. I don’t know why providers of Russian LingQ lessons decided not to type dots.
In texts for natives ё is usually wriiten as “e”. Although I always type ё. I really like its dots :))
I think you have to learn stresses. Where the stress falls depends on the stem (root?) of the word I think. You know how Russian words work: it’s [prefix][ancient root wordy bit][verby, nouny or adjectivy bits]. I think the stress says consistent on the ancient root wordy bit. Except for the ones where the stress shifts, eg from singular to plural.
For what it is worth, I have never minded that the e has not dots. As Helen says, you have to listen a lot. You get used to the words, and the stresses where the pronunciation changes вот и все
The real problem is knowing where the stress falls. This is a nightmare for any learner of Russian. And there are many stress patterns. The same word may have different places for the stress in different noun cases, verb forms, etc. The fact that normally “ë” is written as “e”, is easier to deal with. It it is true that the more you listen the more you know how to pronounce this letter and where to place stresses, especially with very common words, but with unusual words it takes more time. I use dictionaries to learn the stress patterns of words that I only see once, but if I don’t use them soon afterwards they are easy to forget.
I guess what I am getting at is whether ё is an actual letter of the alphabet, rather than just an e wearing a funny hat!! ))) Unlike an accent mark placed over vowels in other languages such as French for example, this situation with ё seems to be somewhat different. Whereas the ё is always stressed, a stressed e is not always given by ё just because it is stressed.( for example Sunday = воскресенье): ё is a different letter with a different sound than an e… even a stressed e. True, one can pick up the “yo” sound of the ё by careful listening, but if it is truly the letter ё that is being used in the word, I think it should be written as such… with the dots… at least with the beginner content, as Cakypa points out. Apparently, she likes the dots too!!!
