# Forum Learning Russian Language Grammar and Vocabulary  The difference between "всё" и "все"?

## Freegman

Здравствуйте всё! I'm new here (obviously) and I was wondering if you guys could help me figure something out. Sometimes I see "всё", sometimes "все", and seemingly the words mean the same thing in the sentence, so what's the difference? I've noticed it in other words too (where "ё" replaces "е" and vice-versa), like "Чёрный" и "Зелёный" for example. Is it just personal preference or does it change the meaning? 
Спасибо!

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## alexB

Sometimes people are just lazy to write Ё instead of E. If you wrote *елка* вместо *ёлка* everyone would understand what you meant and if asked to read the word aloud they would certainly read it as ёлка, because the sounds are different. I don’t like it when the dots above the Ё are omitted but what are you gonna do about it? The printed press plays by its own rules and almost never fails to skip the dots. By the way do you like it when someone substitutes *u* for *you*?
As for все vs всё it depends on what you mean. When you mean всё (everything), for lack of patience you may write все with a good chance of being understood but in no case you are to write всё instead of все(everyone), (suppose a surge of excessive intellectual vigor grips you by surprise), the meaning changes completely.

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## Оля

It's not because people are lazy and it's not the same as "u" instead of "you" at all. Omitting dots on the "ё" is an official tradition of Russian language. You can find a lot of books where those dots are omitted. 
As for your question about "все" and "всё": *всё* means "all, everything", and it's not the same as "*все*" *все* means "all (people), everyone", and it could be itself (the word "все") or "всё" with no dots. Usually it is clear from context. 
So "Здравствуйте всё" is wrong.   ::

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## Freegman

Ah I see, thanks a lot for the detailed answer. Kind of funny that I got "Здравствуйте все" wrong then!  ::  
So I assume that those other words that omit the dots are still pronounced as if they're spelled with a "ё"?

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## translationsnmru

> So I assume that those other words that omit the dots are still pronounced as if they're spelled with a "ё"?

 Yup.

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## DDT

> It's not because people are lazy and it's not the same as "u" instead of "you" at all. Omitting dots on the "ё" is an official tradition of Russian language. :

 If that is not laziness then what is it? Making laziness "official" does not make it less lazy, it just makes it Official Russian Laziness!

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## DDT

> Sometimes people are just lazy to write Ё instead of E.  I don’t like it when the dots above the Ё are omitted but what are you gonna do about it? The printed press plays by its own rules and almost never fails to skip the dots. *u* for *you*?

 God bless you!  
It is extremely confusing for us who are learning Russian if the correct letter is not used.

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## Zaya

Pressing the key with "ё" is not harder than pressing "е."   ::

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## kotlomoy

> В обычных печатных текстах буква ё употребляется выборочно.
> Рекомендуется употреблять ее в следующих случаях.
> 1. Для предупреждения неправильного опознания слова, напр.: всё, нёбо,
> лётом, совершённый (в отличие соответственно от слов все, небо, летом, совершен-
> ный), в том числе для указания на место ударения в слове, напр.: вёдро, узнаём (в
> отличие от ведро, узна´ем).
> 2. Для указания правильного произношения слова — либо редкого,
> недостаточно хорошо известного, либо имеющего распространенное неправильное
> произношение, напр.: гёзы, сёрфинг, флёр, твёрже, щёлочка, в том числе для
> ...

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## gRomoZeka

I personally hate when they use "ё" (e with dots) in books. It makes me feel like I'm reading a book for a 5 year old or like they doubt my intelligence. I can read perfectly well without mental crutches, thank you very much. And this little dots really slow down my reading speed, because I kinda stumble on them.  ::

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## Rtyom

> I personally hate when they use "ё" (e with dots) in books. It makes me feel like I'm reading a book for a 5 year old or like they doubt my intelligence. I can read perfectly well without mental crutches, thank you very much. And this little dots really slow down my reading speed, because I kinda stumble on them.

 Значит, когда я пишу с ё, ты запинаешься на моих сообщениях?..

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## translationsnmru

Помнится, я где-то когда-то читал, что одной из причин пренебрежения буквой "ё" была банальная экономия. Как мы помним, встарину тексты набирались вручную. Литеры хранились в огромных наборных кассах. В серьёзных типографиях было по нескольку наборов литер разных кеглей и разного начертания. Так вот, для того, чтобы использовать букву "ё" вместо "е" везде, где звучит "ё", нужно было отливать большее количество литер. Перерасход металла. Кроме того, из-за точек над "ё" расходовалось больше типографской краски. Конечно, когда в повсеместное употребление вошли линотипы (не говоря уж о более современных технологиях), проблема перерасхода металла отпала, но традиции уже сформировались. Впрочем, мопед, как говорится, не мой, так что за достоверность этой теории не ручаюсь.

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## chaika

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%81
You know, this letter is the newest one in the Russian alphabet.  I am not sure why it came to be, because there was no need for it. When you wanted a stressed /o/ after a "soft" consonant you wrote E and when you wanted a stressed /e/ you wrote Ѣ. viz. ВСЕ - ВСѢ, ПОЛЁТ - ЛѢТЪ. I personally can hardly wait for them to bring back yat and the final yer on words that end in a hard consonant! I won't be holding my breath for Ѳ or Ѵ, though (even though the latter was handy for writing Roman numerals). Ё is for wimps!  =:^0

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## translationsnmru

> When you wanted a stressed /o/ after a "soft" consonant you wrote E and when you wanted a stressed /e/ you wrote Ѣ. viz. ВСЕ - ВСѢ, ПОЛЁТ - ЛѢТЪ.

 That's incorrect. Before the October revolution, "Ѣ" in most cases designated the same sound as "e".  For example, "на стене" was spelled as "на стѢнѢ" ("ять" in both cases). The word "белый" was spelled as "бѢлый".
The reason that "Ѣ"  coexisted in writing with "е"  is that in Old Slavic, "Ѣ" used to be a different, separate sound. With time, it disappeared in all Slavic languages, coinciding with "е" in Russian (in pronunciation, but not in spelling) and with other sounds in some other Slavic languages. In Polish, for example, the "Ѣ" in most cases became "(i)a", so if you know both Russian and Polish, you can find out where you had to spell "Ѣ" in Russian. If Polish has "(i)a" where modern Russian spelling has  "е", then that word was most likely spelt with "Ѣ" before the revolution. _Las_ and "лес", therefore, you had to spell it as "лѢс". And if a Polish word has (i)e  where its Russian counterpart has  "е", then the word was, in all probability, spelt with "e" rather than "Ѣ". (The rule is not 100% errorproof though).  Of course, most Russian schoolkids didn't know Polish, so they had to simply memorize the words that were spelt with "Ѣ". Fortunately, there were not too many of those, maybe a hundred words or so, plus maybe a couple dozen endings and suffixes, so it was not as hard as many people believe.  
And *after* е an Ѣ had become the same phoneme in Old Russian, a vowel change took place where stressed "е" in certain positions started to be pronounced as "'o". In writing, people either still used "е" or "Ѣ", or tried to use letters combination like "iо", "йо/ио" or "ьо" to represent the true sound (Russian spelling was not static, it kept evolving, and was not fully codified until 19th century). Anyway, in the late 18th century, Princess Yekaterina Dashkova finally proposed to introduce the new letter ё.

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## chaika

Thanks, translationsnmru, yeah, I was beginning to realize that I was getting in over my head and already writing much more than I wanted to. Glad to see there is another linguist on the board. Dziękuję.

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## Zaya

> And this little dots really slow down my reading speed, because I kinda stumble on them.

 Да, мне они тоже мешают.

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