Southern Russian dialects


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

Territory

Phonology

  • Unstressed undergoes different degrees of vowel reduction mainly to, less often to,,.
  • Unstressed,, following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to, being instead pronounced in such positions – this is called yakanye/яканье.
  • Fricative instead of the Standard and Northern. Soft is usually.
  • Semivowel in the place of the Standard and Northern and final.
  • where the Standard and Northern have.
  • Prosthetic before and stressed : во́кна, ву́лица, Standard Russian окна, улица "windows, street".
  • Prosthetic before and : етот, ентот, Standard Russian этот "this".
  • In Pskov and Ryazan sub-groups only one voiceless affricate exists. Merging of Standard Russian and into one consonant whether or.

Morphology

  • Palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs : он ходить, они ходять "he goes, they go"
  • Occasional dropping of the 3rd person ending 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, a semivowel , and palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs are also present in modern Belarusian and some dialects of Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum.