Southern Russian dialects explained

Southern Russian is one of the main groups of Russian dialects.

Territory

• The territory of the primary formation (i.e. that consists of "Old" Russia of the 16th century before Eastern conquests by Ivan IV) is entirely 11 modern regions (oblasts): Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Oryol, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tambov, Tula, Voronezh; and some southern parts of 3 regions: Moscow, Pskov, and Tver
• The territory of the second formation (i.e. where Russians settled after the 16th century) consists of most of the land of lower Don and Volga, the Northern Caucasus, as well as Southern Ural, Siberia, and Far East.

Phonology

• Unstressed pronounced as //o// undergoes different degrees of vowel reduction mainly to pronounced as /[a]/ (strong akanye), less often to pronounced as /[ɐ]/, pronounced as /[ə]/, pronounced as /[ɨ]/.
• Unstressed pronounced as //o//, pronounced as //e//, pronounced as //a// following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to pronounced as /[ɪ]/ (like in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced pronounced as /[æ]/ in such positions (e.g. несли is pronounced pronounced as /[nʲæsˈlʲi]/, not pronounced as /[nʲɪsˈlʲi]/) – this is called yakanye/яканье.^[1]
• Fricative pronounced as //ɣ// instead of the Standard and Northern pronounced as //ɡ//. Soft pronounced as //ɣʲ// is usually pronounced as /[j~ʝ]/.
• Semivowel pronounced as //w~u̯// in the place of the Standard and Northern pronounced as //v// and final pronounced as //l//.
• pronounced as //x~xv~xw// where the Standard and Northern have pronounced as //f//.
• Prosthetic pronounced as //w~u̯// before pronounced as //u// and stressed pronounced as //o//: во́кна, ву́лица, Standard Russian окна, улица "windows, street".
• Prosthetic pronounced as //j// before pronounced as //i// and pronounced as //e//: етот, ентот, Standard Russian этот "this".
• In Pskov (southern) and Ryazan sub-groups only one voiceless affricate exists. Merging of Standard Russian pronounced as //t͡ʃ// and pronounced as //t͡s// into one consonant whether pronounced as //t͡s// or pronounced as //t͡ɕ//.

Morphology

• Palatalized final pronounced as //tʲ// in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects):^[2] он ходить, они ходять "he goes, they go"
• Occasional dropping of the 3rd person ending pronounced as //tʲ// at all: он ходи, они ходя "he goes, they go"
• Oblique case forms of personal pronouns мяне́, табе́, сабе́ instead of Standard Russian мне, тебе, себе "me, you, -self".

Relation to other languages

Some of these features such as akanye/yakanye, a debuccalized or lenited pronounced as //ɡ//, a semivowel pronounced as //w~u̯//, and palatalized final pronounced as //tʲ// in 3rd person forms of verbs are also present in modern Belarusian and some dialects of Ukrainian (Eastern Polesian), indicating a linguistic continuum.

See also

• Central Russian dialects
• Northern Russian dialects

Bibliography

• • • Book: Roland Sussex

. Sussex. Roland . Roland Sussex. Cubberley . Paul. The Slavic languages. Dialects of Russian. Cambridge University Press. 2006. Cambridge. 521–526. 978-0-521-22315-7.

External links

• М.О. Garder, N.S. Petrova, А.B. Moroz, А.B. Panova, N.R. Dobrushina. Corpus of Spiridonova Buda dialect. 2018. Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE.
• A.V. Ter-Avanesova, F.A. Balabin, S.V. Dyachenko, A.V. Malysheva, V.A. Morozova. Corpus of the Malinino dialect. 2019. Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, NRU HSE. URL; Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• A.V. Ter-Avanesova, S.V. Dyachenko, E.V. Kolesnikova, A.V. Malysheva, D.I. Ignatenko, A.B. Panova, N.R. Dobrushina. Corpus of Rogovatka dialect. 2018. Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, NRU HSE.

Notes and References

1. Web site: The Language of the Russian Village. Russian. 2011-11-10.
2. Web site: The Language of the Russian Village. Russian. 2011-11-10.