Thread: Fluent in 11 languages.

All the sothern Russia (most people there) pronounce voiced х [γ ] instead of г. (x at the end of words and before a voiceless consonant).
It can be considered uneducated because of the dominance of the Moscow dialect.
Freqent Belorussian (probably rural) features: hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
Lukashenko was laughed at because of it.

Originally Posted by Marcus

All the sothern Russia (most people there) pronounce voiced х [γ ] instead of г. (x at the end of words and before a voiceless consonant).
It can be considered uneducated because of the dominance of the Moscow dialect.
Freqent Belorussian (probably rural) features: hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
Lukashenko was laughed at because of it.

(No need for "the" when you say Southern Russia.
It's either "Southern Russia" or "in the South of Russia" )

So why is it said that there is no accent in Russian then?
All of this stuff including the A/O thing that xdns mentions is accent!
It means you can listen to the person speaking and say where he comes from.
You can say for example, "you come from the South of Russia, near Ukraine".
Just like I can listen to someone and say "you come from the North of England, near the Scottish border".


hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
This, I don't notice either - I have to really focus to say it right. To me it is the same sound with only a very minor difference.

But x and G are two different letters. It's impossible to miss....

The A/O thing I would notice I think, but I have never met anyone that speaks this way, at least not that I know of.

On the Youtuble polyglot. I know of the guy called Luca because he was discussed at a forum I used to participate in before I joined MR. He was speaking Swedish but his accent was pretty bad and he was just saying some nonsense pickup phrases. It was not impressive at all.

I agree with what Gromozeka was saying that it is better to know 2-3 languages really well, and this is most peoples realistic upper level - than mess around in lots of languages but not have any depth.

Of course, if you live in Europe and get around a bit (all of the EU is smaller geographically than both Russia and the USA as far as I know) then it is good to be able to say simple things in some other langauges. Order food, ask for your clothes size or ask directions. But that is not the same as speaking a language.

А/О thing is much rarer than Г/Х thing if we speak of all Russia. Zuganov, for example, speaks with the southern variety of Г/Х, but I don't know any TV personality who has А/О issue in his/her speech. Speaking southern version of Г/Х is not considered uneducated - just regional difference - if your speech has no other stereotypical markers of southern villager. It is often about stereotypes, really. Put simply, Г/Х thing evokes southern village and А/О thing evokes nothern village in the mind of a "standard" Russian person, not too "southern", not too "northern" (both villages in European Russia, where the differences originated and evolved). I've written "southern" and "northern" because actual geographical details are more complicated and many people don't bother with them

А/О showcase:


Trio of soldiers (at 1:50 and many other times during the film) sings expressly in the northern version of А/О. They sound so authentic and funny to my ear!
Their "northern" А/О is explicitly strong. The hero of the film also has this pronunciation feature, but in a subtler form.

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_dialects has a map showing places of origin of primary Russian dialects as well as other information. It highlights the point that these primary pronunciation features formed before the 16-17th centuries and major Russian expansions. Since then Russia has conquered many lands to the south, the east and the north, while the dialects remained mostly in their original habitats, just slightly expanded. For example, in my hometown of Astrakhan (to the south-east of "southern" pronunciation belt, in the delta of the river Volga) there is no trace of Г/Х thing - our accent is rather standard, I think.

Another excellent А/О example - "Россия молодая":


In this TV series the protagonist Ivan Ryabov (he is a real historical figure, a Pomor, i.e. a Russian from the shores of the White Sea) speaks with beautiful northern А/О accent.
You may hear him, for example, at 44:50 where he is captured by the Swedes and pretends to agree to steer their ships and circumvent shoals on the track to Arkhangelsk, which the Swedes are going to destroy. He accepted the offer for a reward of 500 riksdalers, but in the end ran Swedish ships aground right in front of cannons of a Russian fortress. It is a very good TV series, based on a book of the same name. I remember Estionian guy helping Russians, Swedish spy in disguise of a Danish person (Denmark supported Russia because Russia opposed Sweden). This book/film definitely arouses Russian patriotic feelings

PS: In the scene which I described Swedes and Russians communicate with the help of English-Russian interpreter. I wonder how truthful this detail is...

Originally Posted by xdns

Another excellent А/О example - "Россия молодая":


In this TV series the protagonist Ivan Ryabov (he is a real historical figure, a Pomor, i.e. a Russian from the shores of the White Sea) speaks with beautiful northern А/О accent.
You may hear him, for example, at 44:50 where he is captured by the Swedes and pretends to agree to steer their ships and circumvent shoals on the track to Arkhangelsk, which the Swedes are going to destroy. He accepted the offer for a reward of 500 riksdalers, but in the end ran Swedish ships aground right in front of cannons of a Russian fortress. It is a very good TV series, based on a book of the same name. I remember Estionian guy helping Russians, Swedish spy in disguise of a Danish person (Denmark supported Russia because Russia opposed Sweden). This book/film definitely arouses Russian patriotic feelings

PS: In the scene which I described Swedes and Russians communicate with the help of English-Russian interpreter. I wonder how truthful this detail is...

Cool, I'll see if I can watch that film some other time!

Obviously if Swedes and Russians had met at that time, they would either have had communication difficulties, or perhaps they would have communicated in German or French. Definitely not English.

Russian is not a language that Swedes traditionally study in large numbers. For the last 3 years in school, students can choose a third foreign language to study (after English and German/French). That's when Russian becomes available to choose. So nobody has studied more than 3 years of Russian in school, and most people choose another language that is easier. But those who start studying Russian really fall in love with the language, I have noticed, and learning about Russian culture is interesting because most people here have a quite shallow understanding of Russia - when they learn more about the culture they find it really appealing. Very similar to ours in some ways, yet exotic and very different in many aspects.

I did not know Denmark sided with Russia against Sweden, but I am not surprised to hear that!
The fact that Russia brought about the end of Sweden's empire on the Baltic is not exactly my favourite thing about your country.
It was a long time ago though, and Sweden was acting quite aggressively against a larger enemy. Not so smart, perhaps....

Originally Posted by Hanna

I did not know Denmark sided with Russia against Sweden, but I am not surprised to hear that!

Denmark-Norway, Poland-Lithuania, Saxony and Russia joined in the Northern Union against Sweden in 1699-1700.
But only Russia remained an active member of this union all the time during the Great Northern War.

Oh, I've remembered one curious thing about Denmark-Russia relations: there was even a privateer Karsten Rode, Danish subject at the service of Ivan the Terrible, who boarded many Swedish ships (Russia had no fleet at the time and the tsar payed Danish pirate for annoying Swedish and Polish sailors in the Baltic sea!). I'm sorry Hanna, it just came to my mind because I read from time to time about Danish history and culture

Here is some generally accepted terminology about the A/O thing: оканье and аканье (in both words the first syllable is stressed). We say они окают about northern speakers and мы акаем about "standard" Russian speakers. Other information about Russian language varieties can be found here: Диалекты русского языка.