Part of the (ever-growing in conception) series on how to fake Russian accents.
Rule 4. Reduce unstressed vowels. Of course, unstressed vowels are also reduced to some extent in normal American English. But Russian accented English takes this to the next level. And what's more, in faking the accent, people often tend to go the other way. A lot of people who try to sound Russian end up sounding somehow German (maybe they think it should be similar because of the /w/ -> /v/ and /θ/->/s/ shifts). I think their main problem is that they enunciate unstressed vowels too much. They end up speaking all the syllables slowly and clearly, which is un-Russian to the extreme. Basically every unstressed syllable should sound somewhat muddled and very neutral. And almost every word (unless it's supercalifragialisticexpialidocious) should only have one stressed syllable. The /ɐ/, like a carelessly pronounced "u" in "they're nuts!" or a good old /ə/, like the "a" in "about", should be substituted for pretty much every vowel except the stressed one. If the vowel is somewhat front and close (i or u, basically), a /j/ may be added in front. Easy and fun! Let's have some examples (which also use rules that haven't yet been discussed)! 
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