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Dialects of Russian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 20 27 September 2013 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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As someone learning Russian, I'd like to imagine happily that by learning Moscow standard Russian I could then understand everyone in the country. But, it seems it is a very natural thing for a language to splinter off into multiple dialects when it has a large number of speakers over a wide area. I've read many times about the numerous dialects in the Arabic speaking world and throughout China, for example.
So, I am curious to know, what about Russia? Is the language genuinely uniformed throughout the largest country in the world, or does a similar dialect situation exist in Russia as in China? Or is it more a case of accents? How easily, for example, would someone from Moscow be able to understand someone from Vladivistok? And then if we go outside of Russia, have groups of Russian speakers in say Ukraine or Kazakhstan developed their own flavour of Russian? If anyone could shed a bit of light on the subject, I'd be very grateful :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 20 27 September 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, it is. The pronunciation differs a bit, but we can effortlessly understand each other. Ukrainian Russian might be a bit different, but I didn't notice any difference talking to Russians from Kazakhstan. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 20 27 September 2013 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't notice much difference in Vladivostok compared to Moscow. Nor when I was in
Siberia, either west or east. I think Belarusian Russian may sound a little different, but on the whole I understood them too and the same goes for Azeris and Kazakhs I met on the train. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4715 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 4 of 20 27 September 2013 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to agree with Mark. (Of course, he's the native =P)
Anyway, my ears are still not great to distinguish between accents in Russian, but I've spoken with people from Moscow, Samara, Omsk, St Petersburg, and also from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and they all sounded about the same imo. With people from Ukraine, I could notice an accent though, but speaking with them is not a problem at all. I've also spoken with a man from Georgia who lived in Moscow, his accent was somewhat stronger, but still very understandable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 20 27 September 2013 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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People from the Caucasus always have an accent. I spoke with a man from Grozny and he had
an accent too. So do Ukrainians (although I've only ever met one or two). But they live here in the Netherlands. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 20 28 September 2013 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I've asked the same question several times, and the answer that comes back is pretty much similar to what Mark said - Russian is surprisingly uniform across speakers.
From my brief experiences of staying in Russia, the main difference I've noticed is how people from the north and south pronounce "o" differently in unstressed positions (i.e. /o/ vs schwa and /a/). I also recall there were some other subtle differences when I visited Kirov and Novgorod. I think the differences may be more apparent between native speakers from Russia and Baltic countries (as at least one poster mentioned above), or in contrast with immigrants from places like Tajikistan (I'm thinking of the antics of Ravshan and Jumshud from comedy sketches like "Nasha Russia" here). Still, it's good to know that these are mainly relatively small differences, and that the only strange dialect of Russian will be my own foreigner interlanguage when I try it out over there. ;) Edited by Teango on 28 September 2013 at 1:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 7 of 20 28 September 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||
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While Russia is currently the largest country in the world, the difference from Chinese and Arabic is that much of the territory that Russian covers was only settled within the last three centuries, and then underwent noticeable waves of resettlement in the 20th century. However, even the dialects of the Russian heartland, where the variance is at its greatest, aren't different enough from each other to severely impede mutual intelligibility. In addition to that, bona fide dialects as outlined on the map I linked to are pretty hard to come by these days and seem to be limited to older rural populations. My mother's first job was in a small town called Vyazniki in Vladimir oblast, where the local dialect is preserved really well even among the younger population, so it took a lot of time to get used to. But places like that are more like the exception than the rule. The most you're likely to get is an occasional local slang term or a really broad phonological feature (like the fricative pronunciation of Г in southern Russia).
Places like the Caucasus and Tajikistan have been mentioned here. In those places there are large populations for whom Russian is a second language, so the accents from there can't really be called a dialectical feature. Ukraine and Belarus are a bit different, in that the closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian languages exert varying degrees of influence on the varieties of Russian spoken by local Russian native speakers. I haven't had much experience with Baltic Russian, but I do recall talking to a customs officer in the Riga airport whose name tag had a Russian name on it, but whose Russian had a noticeable Latvian lilt. Not sure how widespread that is though, 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 8 of 20 28 September 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
You are right that vowel reduction is the most various feature of pronunciation. I would like to support VonPetergof that we should consider only native Russian speakers, not native speakers of Tadjik or Caucasian languages, who learned Russian at school or somewhere else. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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