Russian dialects

Russian dialects

The Russian language is the eighth most spoken language based on the number of native speakers and the fourth on the basis of number of speakers globally. Widely spoken in Eurasia, Russian translation is necessary to reach out to a large non-English speaking population.

A dialect means that speech of the same language can vary a bit from one         location to another. The dialect generally applies to the vocabulary, grammar,        and pronunciation characteristics of a specific geographic location or social class. There are fourteen kinds of Russian dialects commonly used. Also there are over a dozen variants on a finer scale.  The Northern Russian dialects are the Arkhangelsk dialect, the Olonets dialect, the Novgorod dialect, the Viatka dialect and the Vladimir dialect. The Southern Russian dialects are the Orel or Don dialect, the Ryazan dialect, the Tula dialect and the Smolensk dialect. The Moscow dialect and the Tver dialect form the Central Russian dialects. Then there are also the Northern Russian dialect with Belorussian influences, the Sloboda and Steppe dialects of Ukrainian and the Steppe dialect of Ukrainian with Russian influences.

Each of these dialects is characterized by specific vocabulary, grammar usage, intonation and pronunciation. Some of the dialects use words that have long been discarded by the modern language speakers. This is true for any language. As time passes and culture evolves, new words are added and some of those which are no longer relevant are discarded. Russian translation calls for a complete understanding and familiarity with various dialects and their usage.

Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central (or Middle) and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. All dialects also divided in two main chronological categories: the dialects of primary formation (the territory of the Eastern Rus' or Muscovy, roughly consists of the modern Central and Northwestern Federal districts); and secondary formation (other territory). Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language.

The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly (the phenomenon calledokanye/оканье). Besides the absence of vowel reduction some dialects have high or diphthongal /e~i??/ in the place of Proto-Slavic *?and /o~u??/ in stressed closed syllables (like in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/. In morphology it has an interesting feature as a post-posed definite article -to, -ta, -te similarly existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

In the Southern Russian dialects unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [?] (like in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced /a/ in such positions (e.g. несли is pronounced [n?as?l?i], not [n??s?l?i]) – this is called yakanye/яканье. Consonants include a fricative /?/, a semivowel /w~u?/ and /x~xv~xw/, whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /?/, /v/, final /l/ and /f/, respectively. In morphology it has a palatalized final /t?/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). Some of these features such as akanye/yakanye, adebuccalized or lenited /?/, a semivowel /w~u?/ and palatalized final /t?/ in 3rd person forms of verbs are also present in modern Belarusianand some dialects of Ukrainian (Eastern Polesian), indicating a linguistic continuum.

The city of Veliky Novgorod has historically displayed a feature called chokanye/tsokanye (чоканье/цоканье), where /t?/ and /ts/ were confused. So, цапля ("heron") has been recorded as 'чапля'. Also, the second palatalization of velars did not occur there, so the so-called?² (from the Proto-Slavic diphthong *ai) did not cause /k, ?, x/ to shift to /ts, dz, s/; therefore where Standard Russian has цепь ("chain"), the form кепь [k?ep?] is attested in earlier texts.

Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the 18th century. In the 19th, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the 20th century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка [d????l??kt?l????it??sk??j ?atl?s ?rusk?v? j?z??ka]), was published in three folio volumes 1986–1989, after four decades of preparatory work.