pronounced as /notice/Akanye or akanje[1] (Belarusian: аканне, Russian: а́канье, pronounced as /ru/), literally "a-ing", is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes pronounced as //o// or pronounced as //e// are realized as more or less close to pronounced as /link/. It is a case of vowel reduction.
The most familiar example is probably Russian akanye (pronounced but not represented orthographically in the standard language). Akanye also occurs in:
In Belarusian аканне (akanne), both non-softened and softened pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //a// and other phonemes phonetically merge into pronounced as /link/ in unstressed positions; see Belarusian phonology.
In Russian а́канье (akan'ye), (except for Northern dialects), pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //a// phonetically merge in unstressed positions. If not preceded by a palatalized (soft) consonant, these phonemes give pronounced as /link/ (sometimes also transcribed as pronounced as /[ʌ]/) in the syllable immediately before the stress and in absolute word-initial position. In other unstressed locations, non-softened pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //a// are further reduced towards a short, poorly enunciated pronounced as /link/.[6] The phonemic dialectal feature of clear distinction of the unstressed o (i.e., no reduction) is called (Russian: о́канье), literally "o-ing".
After soft consonants, unstressed pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //a// are pronounced like pronounced as /link/ in most varieties of Russian (see vowel reduction in Russian for details); this reduction is not considered a manifestation of akanye. Unlike Belarusian akanne, Russian akanye does not affect softened vowels.
Slovene akanje may be partial (affecting only syllables before or after the stressed vowel) or complete (affecting all vowels in a word).[2] Examples from various Slovene dialects: domú → damú 'at home' (pretonic o),[2] dnò → dnà 'bottom' (tonic o),[7] léto → líəta (posttonic o),[7] ne vém → na vém 'I don't know' (pretonic e),[2] hléb → hlàb 'loaf' (tonic e),[7] jêčmen → jèčman 'barley' (posttonic e).[7]