Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific AmericanIt is Science quickly, My name is Kendra Pierre-Louis, I’m replacing Rachel Feltman.
So I have a confession to free myself from, and I bring my friend, SciAmThis is Allison Parshall, to help you.
Allison Parshall: What is it, Kendra?
On supporting science journalism
If you enjoy this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribe. By purchasing a subscription, you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Pierre-Louis: I am obsessed with the TV show Passionate rivalry.
Parhall: Wait, me too! [Laughs.]
Pierre-Louis: The romance, the hockey, the tension…
Parhall: It’s so good!
Pierre-Louis: Desire!
Parhall: The Russian? I mean, one of the things that you and I have talked about so much is how American actor Connor Storrie, who plays the Russian character Ilya Rozanov, managed to speak so much Russian and perfect his accent.
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, it was shocking, and to help us understand the linguistics behind the hit TV series, we spoke to Passionate rivalryKate Yablunovsky, Russian dialect coach.
Thank you for being with us today.
Kate Yablunovsky: Thank you very much for having me.
Parhall: Can you tell us a little more about dialect coaching? What is it about and how did you come to do this work?
Yablunovsky: Well, dialect coaching, I specialize specifically in Russian, Russian, Ukrainian, and it’s about preparing an actor to speak with as much of an authentic accent, which isn’t always what it sounds like. It’s not always about being authentic. Sometimes, in fact, it’s the opposite; sometimes it’s about taking the perfection out of the accent to make the character feel authentic.
It’s something I got into very unexpectedly. It started when a small production in my town had Russian-speaking characters and they couldn’t find a local Russian dialect coach. And I was casting this movie, and they said, “Maybe you should coach them too.” »
And I jumped in, and it took me on a journey because I learned so much from that very first experience. And I had to start developing all kinds of techniques and exercises and trying to understand speech therapy and everything that it entails to be able to understand [the] best possible outcome for them.
And from there I got to work [a] a few other productions and started working with actors. And I think it was like a mutual evolution for [the] actors and for myself.
Pierre-Louis: Before you get into the work you’ve done Passionate rivalry, What are the most difficult Russian sounds for English speakers to understand?
Yablunovsky: Well, it’s funny because when I teach actors to speak Russian, there’s always this comment that comes up, they say, “Oh, my God, you have so many sounds.” [Laughs.] “You have so many sounds.”
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]
Yablunovsky: And I joke with them, I say, “Okay, I’m going to open you up to a whole new world of sounds.” »
It’s usually the vowels that, you know, in English, make it sound like they’re two letters, but actually it’s [a] vowel of a letter that must be pronounced with other consonants. So there is the sound “ы”, like when we pronounce the word “ты”.
Pierre-Louis: E.
Parhall: E.
Yablunovsky: Yeah. [Laughs.]
Parhall: E.
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]
Yablunovsky: This is a difficult question. [Laughs.]
Now imagine, the way we say “you” in Russian is “ты”. So now imagine adding T to the “ы” sound. It’s “ты”.
Parhall: So it’s one of the most difficult vowels for English speakers to understand, but it’s… is it one of the most common?
Yablunovsky: Very common because whenever we say “you”, you know, ты, is a very common word in speech.
“Yo” too. So yo is a vowel, and if you want to add consonants before it, you need to make it sound like they’re merged together, not make it sound like you’re pronouncing the consonant and vowel separately.
Parhall: Is there an example of this?
Pierre-Louis: Isn’t that “yo” sound in “I love you”?
Yablunovsky: I love you in Russian means: “I love you”.
But here is an example. I said “я тебя люблю”, which contains the vowel “ya”. So “yeah” is similar. For example, you have to – in the word “тебя”, you have to merge the “b” with the “ya” and say “ti-BYAH”, not “tib-YAH”.
Parhall: Mmm.
Yablunovsky: That’s the example, right? Not “tib-YAH”, but “ti-BYAH”. And this is something very difficult to learn for non-Russian speakers.
Parhall: I noticed this when I was trying: even Ilya, one of the main character’s names, is this also the case with his name? Because I feel like English speakers often pronounce it as “Il-ee-YAH” rather than how it’s supposed to be. But I don’t know if I can do it like I’m supposed to do it.
Yablunovsky: No, no, actually, this one is very serious. It’s “He-YAH”.
Parhall: Oh okay. So this one is easier.
Yablunovsky: And if we get into accent coaching, it’s just that the I to the name Ilya is softer in Russia. So it’s not “IL-yah”; it is “He-YAH”.
Parhall: There are so many nuances that you don’t know until you get into it.
Yablunovsky: [Laughs.] No, totally. It’s a whole world. But you know, a lot of actors don’t understand Russian well, so they have this kind of idea that it has to be aggressive.
Parhall: Mmm.
Yablunovsky: But in reality, it’s not aggressive at all. It’s not hard. It’s compressed.
Parhall: Can you say more about what you mean by compressed?
Yablunovsky: Yes, it’s just that stress isn’t meant to make him harsh or aggressive, right? It’s just about holding back the expression a little, holding back a little of the emotion behind the words. But it’s still lyrical, you know? It’s always humorous. There is still heat. There is irony. There are all kinds of things. It’s not just this kind of monotonous and harsh expression.
Parhall: I wanted to ask you a little about what you were led to do specifically to Passionate rivalry. For example, what was the challenge presented to you when you first started? Is this pretty normal for the type of work you often get as a dialect coach, or is this a bit out of the ordinary?
Yablunovsky: So what was out of the ordinary? Passionate rivalry This is exactly the amount of Russian an American actor needed to do. I was lucky enough to work with Connor Storrie because he was incredible and he really took the challenge head on. And it was very stressful.
But I was hired on the project before Connor was cast, so I just looked at the script, saw all this Russian, and to be honest, for a while I got nervous because the timing was short. We were about a few weeks before the main shoot, and that’s a very short time to start practicing Russian at that level for that amount of money.
When Connor was cast, when we had our first call, I told Connor, you know, “If you want, I’m willing for us to show up every day and work on Russian, and this is the best way for us to make this work.” And he was totally invested in it, and we met every day, including weekends. And we continued to work even after principal photography started, you know, so on days off or after filming, during breaks, whatever. We continued to work as much as possible.
Pierre-Louis: What were some of the challenges Connor faced? For example, what was he really good at and what did he find particularly difficult?
Yablunovsky: So the beauty of Connor is he came with a really good foundation. So first of all, he speaks French too, and that’s a great tool because it gives him another toolbox of other pronunciations. If someone only speaks English, they only know English pronunciation. The French pronunciation is very different from the Russian, but it still stretches its elastic, right?
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Yablunovsky: It’s as if his muscles are already stretched to the point of working with accents.
And then he was always very interested in Russian culture. He listened to Russian music, Russian rap. It was fun working that way because we exchanged musical ideas and cultural anecdotes. So he had an insight into Russian culture, and that helped him a lot.
I think the challenges with Connor weren’t the usual challenges I’ve had with other actors I’ve trained. The challenge with him was knowing how much he had to do because he had very little time. Not only did he have to learn Russian — and we’re talking about not only learning Russian, but also memorizing it, putting a character in it, acting it and everything — but he also had to prepare the whole rest of the script, all the parts in English. He had to learn to skate. He had to prepare for hockey. You know, there were so many.
So I felt like with Connor, it wasn’t necessarily that he had challenges. The harsh sounds we talked about earlier, everyone struggles with it, and we always had to work a little harder on it. But I think he was miles ahead of everyone, and with everything he had on his plate, you know, the challenge was just to run that marathon and stay sane.
Parhall: Something that people have noticed is that when Connor speaks Russian on the show, it seems like his face is very different than when he’s just being himself, Connor Storrie. And I know this: in accents there is something called oral posture, which is the way you hold your mouth and your tongue and everything. And speaking other languages, I feel like my mouth completely changes shape. And we were just a little bit curious, like, do you coach people on changing the shape of their mouth to help them understand how to make sounds? Is this part of something? Or does it just come from making the sounds correctly?
Yablunovsky: So what I coach is more understanding the culture of how people speak, how a Russian speaker would pronounce, enunciate and how their body language would be used.
However, facial expression is, in fact, more about speech placement, isn’t it? So for example, in English – English is very advanced, it’s true: the lips, the teeth, breath. Well, Russian is more in the back of the mouth, and there is a heavier tongue base. So once you change all that, it changes the psychology. And that’s why, actually, you can hear different people speaking more than one language. When they speak different languages, the sound of their voice changes due to the difference in intonation and perhaps also their face.
So Connor’s facial expressions are something he brought to the table; it is his creation. But it’s inspired by the fact that all these things that I explained, you know, change your psychology, and that’s part of the character.
Parhall: One of the most impressive scenes, I think, for a lot of people is the monologue that Connor does when he’s talking to Hudson [Williams]the character of Shane, in Russia. Can you tell us a little about how that scene came together?
Yablunovsky: Yes, this monologue was something that stressed us out because it was a few pages long; it was very emotional. So it was not only about learning it, memorizing it, but also reaching the emotional milestone. And here it was very important, you know, where he would put the emphasis, where he would pronounce it the right way. That’s what makes all the difference.
And it all started with… I make sure that when I teach actors Russian or prepare them for a Russian text, they actually know what they are saying. So they don’t memorize Russian lines without understanding what they’re saying – word for word, right? It’s not like, “This line, it says this.” » I translate every word for them, even if it doesn’t make sense. So if in Russian the placement, the order of the words, is different than in English, I would translate it as is so that they understand each word that they say and understand where the emphasis should come from and how they articulate that whole sentence.
Parhall: Is there an example? I don’t know if I remember what happened in the monologue.
Pierre-Louis: Oh, when he says: “I love Svetlana, but not like I love you”?
Yablunovsky: Well, he said: I’m just giving a free word-for-word translation into English. Let’s say, from the phrase “I love you so much and I don’t know what to do about it”: “I am so strong that you love.” (“Я так сильно тебя люблю.”) So just to show you, you know, how the order is different.
Parhall: Well, I could see how they need to know that, because otherwise the stress might fall in the wrong place. Like, you wouldn’t really know how to feel about it.
Yablunovsky: That’s right, because you’ll notice that in the monologue, Connor did it perfectly. It was very beautiful and very touching. I was also touched on set. But he said, “Ya tak SIL’no tebya lyublyu,” you know? He emphasized the “SO a lot“: “I love you such.” And he did this accent in Russian, and the “сильно” means “strongly” – you know, “so much” is what it means – he knew exactly what he was doing.
Pierre-Louis: Part of the reaction to Connor’s accent in the show is that many of us have attempted to learn a foreign language and struggled with the accent and pronunciation, and it often feels like we’re sort of left to our own devices to figure out how to speak like a local. Do you have any advice for language learners who are unable to hire a dialect coach?
Yablunovsky: I think when you’re learning a language, if you’re doing it yourself, you can try the same principles of dialect coaching: listening to the pronunciation, understanding the sounds, and trying to understand what’s happening in the mouth when you try to pronounce that sound. And at first it’s not going to work, right, but then you kind of have to move the needle to find that sweet spot where you can make the sound, right?
Parhall: I mean, I think one of the interesting things about learning languages is what you said earlier, which is that having learned any language is like stretching your rubber band. I thought it was a great metaphor. It seems like we’re hard on ourselves because we want to sound, quote, unquote, “correct,” but I think about all the people I know and love in my life who speak a different English accent than I do, and it’s just, like, more beautiful flavors of English, so.
Yablunovsky: Totally.
Parhall: It’s a question of communication.
Yablunovsky: Exactly. And it’s different for actors because actors strive to achieve a perfect accent. But the problem is that sometimes trying to achieve a perfect accent is actually counterintuitive; it makes the character unreal.
And when there’s a struggle, I tell the actors, “Drop the accent.” » And they panic. [Laughs.] But then when they say it in their own voice, they kind of start to hear, like, where is the accent logic behind this language, in my case, Russian, right? Like, where’s the logic? Where is the stress? Where is the restraint? And then they hear it. They understand it. They’re able to do it a little more calmly, you know?
The focus has to be above the character, right? You can’t just come and play it. That must be part of the feeling.
Parhall: This has been so interesting, Kate. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Yablunovsky: Thank you so much.
Pierre-Louis: That’s all for today. See you on Friday to find out how the kisses were born.
Science quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was co-hosted by Allison Parshall and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check in on our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more recent and in-depth scientific news.
For Scientific American, This is Kendra Pierre-Louis. See you next time!
