How to have a Russian Accent - Rule 6

I have exciting news! I have learnt that my blog is being read by at least two people!! (Who aren't me!!!). This is all the encouragement I need to post more rules from my (not actually very well informed) series on how to fake a Russian accent.

Rule 6 Short vowels. I hear their price to earnings ratio is way too high! Well, what I mean is that Russian doesn't actually have any long vowels. American English sort of has three /iː/ (the "ea" in "beat"), /ɔː/ (the "ough" in "thought") or /uː/ (the "ough" in "through"). But, actually, vowel length in American English isn't a phonemic distinction. If you say beat as /bit/ that'll actually sound mostly normal to American ears (although I think that might sound strange to a Kiwi, for instance). This is because in American (and most other forms of) English, the difference in length is reinforced by a difference in vowel quality. Americans don't normally read "bit" as /bit/, but as /bɪt/, for example. But russophones don't naturally have this distinction, either. Thus, people speaking with a Russian accent will pronounce the vowels in these pairs of words exactly the same

foot-food (as [fut] and either [fud] or [fut])

feat-fit (as [fit])

bought-bot (as [bot]).

This leads Russians to great desperation and embarrassment when they have to say things like "I left the sheet of paper on the beach".

Bottom line:

Normal English phrase: "I bought a bit of butter"

The russian-accented phrase in IPA: [aɪ'botəbitəfbatə]

Sounds a little like: I bot a beat* of butter

*(but short)

Also, what the hell is up with blogger formatting? Picking "normal" in the font doesn't actually give consistent results post to post! I realise that this is an html thing, and also that it actually can be fixed with by picking a set font size in the html code. But the point of the "frontend" is exactly so you wouldn't have to do that!