| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 俄國語文學研究所 === 96 === There is a very close relationship between the characters and language, because the characters are the visual symbols of a language. They both have a function of communication; however, the Russian sound system is much more complicated than its spelling. On the other hand, they are not completely in agreement with each other. For example, ”хорошо” can be written out in four different ways: «хорошо», «харошо», «харашо», «хорашо» and there is only the first spelling «хорошо» is correct.
Orthography (орфография) is not only the principle of spelling of a language, but an indispensable tool in written form of communication among people. Its primary task is to express the contents and thoughts of a spoken language accurately. The features of Russian orthography are not only in harmony with the sound structure, but also conform to the verbal structure.
Russian linguists admitted that the morphological principle (морфологический принцип) is the foundation of orthography. The sound of morpheme (root, ending, prefix, and suffix) will be different due to its position in a word, but the spelling never changes. For instance, the root «сад» has several different speech sounds in following words: [са́ду]－[сат]－[сΛд]о́вник－[съд]ово́д, but it still remains the same throughout in these words. In addition, the consistency in spelling is not only merely in the root, but also in the prefix, suffix and the ending. For example, the prefix «от»: в[о́т]пуск－[о́д]был－[Λт]пусти́ть; the suffix «ск»:по́ль[ск]ий, де́[ц]кий; the noun ending «-е» in singular dative case: сосне́ /sasn’é/, дере́вне /d’ir’évn’i/. Besides, the phonetic principle (фонетический принцип) is also one of the principles of orthography. Its essence – “how do you speak it, then write it down“, in other words, spelling is based on the sound. After clarifying the sound of each word, people use letters to write it down. Under such circumstances, the sound is totally identical with the spelling. However, the Russian spelling system does not always rely on the sound, for instance: сама́ (oneself) - сома́ (silver carp) the first vowel of these two words (а, о) pronounces [а]; трут (tinder) - труд (work) the end of these two consonants (т, д) pronounces [т]. Therefore, according to the speech sound, it is not easy to judge which letter to write is correct.
In accordance with the above-mentioned examples, we predict that learners may have the following spelling errors: 1) the non-accented vowel interchange 2) unable to distinguish soft and hard consonants 3) the assimilation of voiced and voiceless consonants 4) the combination of consonant clusters 5) the unpronounceable consonants in the combination of consonant clusters.
In order to prove whether the prediction accords with the learners’ spelling errors or not, the author made a questionnaire and asked them to do it. Afterwards, the author will offer the experimental materials to teachers as a teaching reference in the classroom.
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