Thread: long "o"

In the movie "А зори здесь тихие" the male lead pronounces his short "o" long, for example, the o in ко мне sounds like the o in после. Does anyone know why? He does it all the time, it's very noticeable.
If you don't know what I'm talking about I'll post a clip.

Originally Posted by sperk

In the movie "А зори здесь тихие" the male lead pronounces his short "o" long, for example, the o in ко мне sounds like the o in после. Does anyone know why? He does it all the time, it's very noticeable.
If you don't know what I'm talking about I'll post a clip.

All Russian vowels are short, maybe you mean "unstressed" o?
Vaskov speaks with "оканье" (Kostroma-Vologda govor).

I didn't pay attention for that when watched this movie, but I suppose it could be used to show that the man came from the common people. For example my granny, who lives in a village, says some words in this way. Also pronunciation differs in the regions - I've heard people from Вологда saying мОлОкО (milk), while here, in the central part, it sounds like мАлАко... don't know if I made it clear...

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by sperk

In the movie "А зори здесь тихие" the male lead pronounces his short "o" long, for example, the o in ко мне sounds like the o in после. Does anyone know why? He does it all the time, it's very noticeable.
If you don't know what I'm talking about I'll post a clip.

All Russian vowels are short, maybe you mean "unstressed" o?
Vaskov speaks with "оканье" (Kostroma-Vologda govor).

So, is pronouncing мОлОкО (milk) instead of мАлАко оканье?
Thanks!

It's a dialectical pronunciation.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Оканье

I've noticed that people in this forum (I mean, English speakers), like the movie "А зори здесь тихие", because it was mentioned several times. It's caught my eye because I think that this movie is slightly interesting for foreigners. Sperk, was this movie really interesting for you? I sort of thought that people like movies more like "Василий петрович меняет профессию" or "Приключения шурика".

Originally Posted by sergey.k

"[s:1kwfb38l]Василий петрович[/s:1kwfb38l] Иван Васильевич меняет профессию"

So, is pronouncing мОлОкО (milk) instead of мАлАко оканье?
Thanks!

Yes.

Originally Posted by wanja

It's a dialectical pronunciation.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Оканье

That's impossible since there are no Russian dialects.

Originally Posted by paulb

That's impossible since there are no Russian dialects.

Let's call it "govor", not "dialect". A govor has peculiarities in pronunciation, and not in vocabulary or grammar.

Olya, that is what a dialect is. If the speech in some area shows some marked distinctions that set it aside from others, then it is a dialect. Okanie is a dialectal feature. So are ikanie, jakanie, tsekanie, and others. So is something like pronouncing носят as носют if it is consistent, which is a morphological feature, not a phonetic one like the others I mentioned.

I worked on a project studying the phonological and morphophonemic aspects of Russian dialects in the 1960s when I was in grad school.

Originally Posted by sergey.k

I've noticed that people in this forum (I mean, English speakers), like the movie "А зори здесь тихие", because it was mentioned several times. It's caught my eye because I think that this movie is slightly interesting for foreigners. Sperk, was this movie really interesting for you? I sort of thought that people like movies more like "Василий петрович меняет профессию" or "Приключения шурика".

WelI, I liked it a lot but I wouldn't call it interesting. I thought it was very moving and a true honor to women. "Interesting" touches my reasoning, this movie touched my emotions.

Originally Posted by chaika

Olya, that is what a dialect is. If the speech in some area shows some marked distinctions that set it aside from others, then it is a dialect. Okanie is a dialectal feature. So are ikanie, jakanie, tsekanie, and others. So is something like pronouncing носят as носют if it is consistent, which is a morphological feature, not a phonetic one like the others I mentioned.

I worked on a project studying the phonological and morphophonemic aspects of Russian dialects in the 1960s when I was in grad school.

I guess I'd have to break out the dictionary and see how dialect is defined, but I think of dialects as being similarly rooted, but basically mutually unintelligble languages; not slight differences in pronounciation. For example, the many dialects of Chinese perhaps share an ancient root, but are so different as to be almost separate languages. A speaker of Fukinese cannot understand a speaker of Cantonese and vice-versa.

It's probably somewhere in between. When I speak German, other native speakers will notice that I must be from somewhere in the Rhineland as I shorten some vowels, like the 'a' in 'Vater', and we say 'dat' instead of 'das' (neuter article). But it is not a dialect, you could call that an accent. If I spoke the local dialect (which I can't) nobody else would understand me.

However, we still call it a dialect if the speaker has a very noticable regional accent, because in that case there is a real dialect like Swabian which influences the pronunciation of a given speaker of that dialect even when he speaks High German. Yet this often has much larger implications than just pronouncing vowels slightly differently.

So in the case of -o being or not being pronounced like -a it's more a matter of accent, not dialect.

Robin

Originally Posted by bitpicker

So in the case of -o being or not being pronounced like -a it's more a matter of accent, not dialect.

Only in Russian we use the word "accent" (акцент) only when we mean a foreign accent, so I think it would be better to use the word "govor" (говор)... Well, at least that's what my Russian ears thirst for...

I'll try to keep that in mind should I ever contribute anything to a discussion of accents in Russian...

Robin

Originally Posted by sperk

For example, the many dialects of Chinese perhaps share an ancient root, but are so different as to be almost separate languages. A speaker of Fukinese cannot understand a speaker of Cantonese and vice-versa.

"...Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often considered dialects and not languages, despite their mutual unintelligibility, because the word for them in mandarin, "Fangyan", was mistranslated as dialect because it meant regional speech."(Wikipedia)