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There is certainly wide varitation in the style of the recordings I've heard. For example, on one recording Kiev is said as two syllables, while on another it is one syllable. Some of this I suspect is an attempt to over pronounce something to help show all the sounds that are there. I wonder how much might be attributed to individual or regional variation of speech.
One recording I found very useful was of all the combinations of single letters followed by single vowels. That helped me differentiate the palatized vs. non-palatized sounds.
One thing I have noticed is that I can understand more when a woman is speaking than when a man is. Russian spoken by men sounds much less distinct, but this may just be lack of practice on my part.
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