How to have a Russian Accent - Rule 8

Part 8 in the (endless) series on how to have a Russian accent (if you don't). One thing I realised is that it's sort of useful to think about this stuff if you do have one, too. These rules are basically the things you're doing wrong.

Rule 8. Devoice final consonants. This is perhaps the easiest thing to do that a lot of people won't. In fact, many people go the other way and voice things that aren't even voiced in normal English! But this is how it should work

-v --> -f
"I love Ivanov" becomes [ajlafivɐ'nof] roughly reanglicized as "I luff Ivanoff"
-d --> -t
"spilled blood" "" [spʲillt'blat] "" "speelt blutt"
-z --> -s
"France's balls" "" [frɛnsəs'bols] "" "frenciss bollss"
-b --> -p
"grab grub!" "" [grɛp'grap] "" "grepp grapp!"
-g --> -k
"A big gong" "" [ɛbʲik'gonk] "" "a bik gonnk"
-d͡ʒ --> -tʂ
"dodge that fridge!" "" [dotʂzət'frʲitʂ] "" "dotsh zet freetsh"

This rule applies not only to the word-final consonants, but also ones that are in the middle of a word that are followed by a non-voiced consonant. And, by using the "devoice final consonants" and "devoice consonants before devoiced consonants" rules together, you can see that many final clusters are devoiced, so that "bugs" and "bucks" for instance, sound the same.

The rule is pretty pervasive. The only exceptions to devoicing I can think of right now are that "is" is pronounced [iz] (or /ɪz/) and is never devoiced (which probably means other one-syllable -z words like "peas" nad "Liz" aren't either), and the -v of "of" is not necessarily devoiced if it is found before another vowel.

The bottom line
phrase: "one finds contrived examples on blogs"
"normal" Am. E.: /wʌnfaɪnzkʌŋˌtɹaɪvdɪg'zæmplzɑn''blɔːgz/
russ. acc. E.: [wanfaɪnskəntrɐɪftəkzemplsən'bloks]