Thread: Fluent in 11 languages.

Originally Posted by xdns

I think that pronouncing ш instead of щ sounds like speaking Russian with Belarussian accent

Oh dear, I couldn't hear any difference.
But one thing that I definitely CAN hear which I don't think sounds very nice, is that some Belarussians say "х" or "h" in places where there is a "г".

For example, "загореть" , they say "заhореть". I learnt the word from a Belarussian when I was there, and I actually checked the dictionary for захорить or something like that when I checked it up! LOL.There were several words like this.
I was told that this is a somewhat "uneducated" way of speaking Russian in Belarus.
Nothing strange about that at all, there are a million such nuances to English... But Russian is said to have "no accents", but I would definitely call this way of speaking a local accent.

Pronunciation of Russian has its regional varieties too. The Г/Х issue is probably the most noticable one - southerners (close to Ukraine) say Х instead of Г. Other well-known difference is А/О pronunciation - some Russians, mostly from the North of European Russia, pronounce молоко like it is written - молоко, while the majority pronounce it like малако. Every firstgrader in Russia has struggled with this problem. But wait... apparently those notherners have not? Never thought about that!