# Forum Learning Russian Language Pronunciation, Speech & Accent  Accent variation across Russia

## medzie

Does anyone have any views on the way spoken Russian varies as you head East across the country from Moscow?  I visited Irkutsk recently and, though my Russian is not perfect, I didn't really detect a significant accent.  This seemed strange to someone who comes from the UK, where 2 hours on the train could land you in cities where a native speaker can feel lost!! 
Was I just not picking it up?

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## pisces

> Does anyone have any views on the way spoken Russian varies as you head East across the country from Moscow?  I visited Irkutsk recently and, though my Russian is not perfect, I didn't really detect a significant accent.  This seemed strange to someone who comes from the UK, where 2 hours on the train could land you in cities where a native speaker can feel lost!! 
> Was I just not picking it up?

 I'm sure that this topic was discussed many times here. The pronunciation may slighty differ across the country, but not to the point where a non-native speaker can tell the significant difference.
Thanks to television, radio etc. the Moscow Russian is broadcasted all over the country, people travel back and forth; so nowadays Russian is pretty much "equalized" between different parts of Russia.
But the above is true only for rather big cities and towns. If you go into rural area, you can find signigicant deviations from standard Russian in both vocabulary and pronunciation.
I even heard that there are languages unintelligible by native Russian speakers which only exist in some particular village and are spoken by, say, only 10 people.

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## laxxy

I think that as far as the native Russian-speaking urban population is concerned, there are just two major variations in pronunciation that are significantly different from standard Russian: Moscow City and regions bordering Ukraine (actually, a very large part of ukrainian population itself would also fall into this category). 
although there are some lexical differences, especially in jargon words and such.

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## medzie

but......I don't think the radio/TV argument holds water.  These forms of communication have only been around for the past 100 years, and Russian (in one form or another) has been spoken for 10 times that long.
Also compared to Western European countries where mass communication has developed more quickly the variation is far smaller in Russia.  Could it be the complexity of the language that makes it so consistent??

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## laxxy

> but......I don't think the radio/TV argument holds water.  These forms of communication have only been around for the past 100 years, and Russian (in one form or another) has been spoken for 10 times that long.
> Also compared to Western European countries where mass communication has developed more quickly the variation is far smaller in Russia.  Could it be the complexity of the language that makes it so consistent??

 imo: there has always been a lot more variation in the language in the villages, as opposed to cities. The people in the rural areas spoke the local dialect, and those in the cities spoke "standard Russian" and looked down upon the villagers. This is somewhat different from, say, the US, where even the educated elite in the South spoke in the local dialect, rather than that of Boston or NYC. 
I think the historically centralized political structure and maybe the lack of upward mobility (up until 1861 russian peasants, i.e. the vast majority of the population, were effectively the property of their landlords and couldn't leave their villages) might account for that, plus of course the pretty aggressive efforts of the central government to standardize things. 
I don't think the Russian language is really any more complex than English or any other European language, so i don't think it has anything to do with that.

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## Eugene

> but......I don't think the radio/TV argument holds water.  These forms of communication have only been around for the past 100 years, and Russian (in one form or another) has been spoken for 10 times that long.
> Also compared to Western European countries where mass communication has developed more quickly the variation is far smaller in Russia.  Could it be the complexity of the language that makes it so consistent??

  It's correct, but the first part of 20th century was a period when the Country was like a great alarmed beehive...Russain-Japanese war, 3 revolutions, Civil war,  2 World wars. There were greate changes of language, written language since 1917. There is no village that wasn't visited by agitators or troops. And of course,  the great word: "КОЛХОЗ" - everyone could learn only one language there - language that Communist Party speak (and the Party really took care about that)...

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## medzie

Perhaps my question is better put the other way around.  Why is there so much diversity in the speaking of English in such a small place like the UK, or France where the population have been traditionally very mobile and similar feudal structures as you describe reigned supreme until the 19th Century. 
I have never before lived in a country as vast as Russia, but there seems to me to be no logical reason why 2 people who live 3 days train ride apart (and that train has only been running for 100 years) speak an almost identical variant of a language.   
My speculative conclusion is that Russian is less prone to variation because when spoken even slightly inaccurately it is incomprehensible.  Accents have therefore been irradicated by a process of natural selection.  English and French (the other two languages I speak) can be spoken in a vast array of accents and dialects and still be understood.  Those variations have therefore survived and flourished.......so despite your adamant rejection, maybe I am back to the technicality argument!?

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## pisces

> My speculative conclusion is that Russian is less prone to variation because when spoken even slightly inaccurately it is incomprehensible.

 If that were true, learning Russian would be a waste of time: no mater how hard you try, you would unlikely reach a point where you would speak without even a slight inaccuracy. And therefore your speech would be incomprehensible.
Variations of Russian may be incomprehensible for you because there are many things about Russian that you don't know. One step away from what you learned - and you're lost. But a native Russian speaker can easily tolerate even bigger differencies.
In fact, it is not that hard for a native Russian speaker to understand, for example, Ukrainian (and vice versa). And this is not a dialect, it's a separate language with different alphabet and pronunciation.

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## mishau_

I found this subject also discussed at gramota  http://www.gramota.ru/forum/read.php?f=15&i=545&t=545 
the point of view that Russians travelled a lot against their will (not only in XX century, let's remeber Siberian banishments)  seems quite reasonable, too.

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## laxxy

> Perhaps my question is better put the other way around.  Why is there so much diversity in the speaking of English in such a small place like the UK, or France where the population have been traditionally very mobile and similar feudal structures as you describe reigned supreme until the 19th Century. 
> I have never before lived in a country as vast as Russia, but there seems to me to be no logical reason why 2 people who live 3 days train ride apart (and that train has only been running for 100 years) speak an almost identical variant of a language.   
> My speculative conclusion is that Russian is less prone to variation because when spoken even slightly inaccurately it is incomprehensible.  Accents have therefore been irradicated by a process of natural selection.  English and French (the other two languages I speak) can be spoken in a vast array of accents and dialects and still be understood.  Those variations have therefore survived and flourished.......so despite your adamant rejection, maybe I am back to the technicality argument!?

 Are the regional differences in France now still so large (as you are putting it into the same category with the UK)? I thought for some reason that it was not the case anymore and that they were closer to Russia in this respect, but then, I've never been there...
As for bad Russian being incomprehensible, that is emphatically not the case. Ask anyone with experience and he'll tell you that Russians rank on the very top when it comes to understanding and tolerating badly spoken Russian, compared to other countries.

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## laxxy

> I found this subject also discussed at gramota  http://www.gramota.ru/forum/read.php?f=15&i=545&t=545 
> the point of view that Russians travelled a lot against their will (not only in XX century, let's remeber Siberian banishments)  seems quite reasonable, too.

 Also true. Actually it seems to me that there are few people whose family histories do not have stories about whole villages of people moved across the country when they were sold by their landowners, or used to settle a debt, or even exchanged for dogs (hunting dog breeding seems to have been quite an expensive and popular hobby back then), etc...

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## token_287

I doubt Russian is so standardized because of its complexity; think of all the instances of terrible English you've heard, but could understand.  The media is an attractive answer, as well, but look at Arabic: a more or less standardized media in MSA, but mutually unintelligible dialects, and Arabic is at least as old as Russian, and also spoken over a vast area, so can't be an answer in itself.  I think the reason why languages in, say, England and France are so diverse is that these were diverse areas linguistically to begin with: Gaelic and Germanic languages had existed there at different times long before the rise of modern English, so it shouldn't be surprising that areas that previously spoke, say, Welsh (and still do, in some cases) are going to differ markedly from places where the Vikings from Norway had more influence.  It's the same with Breton, for example, in France, although you could make the argument too that vulgar Latin "decayed" in different ways over different areas.   
  So, Russian.  Perhaps it's so standardized because the move from what was Rus has occurred relatively recently, displacing, for example, Altaic speakers; in places where Altaic or Causcasian languages still exist (or did), there are examples of variation (Г becoming a voiced velar fricative in South Russia), or because the power structure of the country has been such that the prestige dialects (Saint Petersburg, Moscow) have been in relatively closer contact with the rest of the country (with the rural/city variations that you could expect with such distance, but which haven't made speech unintelligible), at least among ethnic Russians. 
  I guess it could also be interesting to compare all the East Slavic languages as a whole with the Romance languages, rather than looking at just "Russian" and "French."  The changes from the original languages of Rome (Latin to Vulgar Latin to Romance languages) and, say, Old East Slavic which gave rise to Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc could be similar if we consider all of these to be "vulgar" forms of Old East Slavic, which existed around 1000 years ago; in which case the languages' differentiation is 1000 years younger than those of the Romance languages, many of which are even [partially] mutually intelligible today.  I can speak Spanish and understand a lot of Portuguese; it's said Columbus, who spoke both, may not have been able to tell the difference, a position in our relative time scale 400 years in the future.  So the real question becomes, not why [relatively young] Russian is not as varied as it is, but why the variations between East Slavic languages are as they are (more or less mutually intelligible to the point where there's debates as to whether, say, Ukrainian is a different language).  
  Anyway, just food for thought.

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## scotcher

A thougtful, well-written and intelligent post if ever I saw one. 
Am I on the right forum?

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## VendingMachine

In Russia we have a wide variety of different accents and dialects. Native speakers can easily tell which part of the country you come from. People from rural areas tend to have thicker accents. Also, the higher on the social ladder you are, the closer to standard Russian is your accent. Just go to the villages in Lyeshukonye, you won't understand jack shit if you listen to native speakers converse. (I don't, being a native speaker from another area) However, when they address a stranger, they will tone their accents down for his/her benefit - that's probably why you never heard much difference. To hear a thick accent you should go to places where Russians have lived for centuries, not some relatively young cities like Irkutsk, etc. Go to Kurskaya, Bryanskaya, Vologodskaya, etc. oblasts. 
P.S. I can pick up subtle differences in the accents of native Petersburgers (not recent migrants!) from different city districts (docklands vs. north-east, etc.)

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## mishau_

> Native speakers can easily tell which part of the country you come from.

 Although I've been about here and there, I'm afraid I can't detect which area you could come from. I can only say that for me now it is closely associated with exhebitions where people from almost all over the country are gathered. So, now when I hear an accent different from mine, an impression appear like this: "Oh, he (or she) is going to elaborate on some technical parameters of the products his company exposes"  ::   
I can't notice that in Russian movies heroes (actors) have strong accents. That's strange. However, when I watch very old movies, I _can_ see that modern Russian pronunciation is certainly different, but I can't explain how exactly.

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## Paxan

> P.S. I can pick up subtle differences in the accents of native Petersburgers (not recent migrants!) from different city districts (docklands vs. north-east, etc.)

 I'm sorry, where are the docklands?

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## VendingMachine

The "промышленный район порта" - people from there have a very distinctive accent.

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## Paxan

Серьёзно? Я что-то совсем не замечал такого....а поясните в чём там особенность, если не лень канечно...

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## VendingMachine

> Серьёзно? Я что-то совсем не замечал такого....а поясните в чём там особенность, если не лень канечно...

 The accent of the docklands is very nasal. Also, they tend to use уо instead of о quite a bit (двор may sound almost as двуор, etc.).

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## adoc

> So the real question becomes, not why [relatively young] Russian is not as varied as it is, but why the variations between East Slavic languages are as they are (*more or less mutually intelligible* to the point where there's debates as to whether, say, Ukrainian is a different language).  
>   Anyway, just food for thought.

 The real question is where you get that absurd information.  They are not "more or less mutually intelligible" any more than French and English are mutually intelligible. 
Having never lived in Ukraine or studied Ukrainian, I have no clue what the following is saying: 
У разі нагальної необхідності запобігти злочинові чи його перепинити уповноважені на те законом органи можуть застосувати тримання особи під вартою як тимчасовий запобіжний захід, обрунтованість якого протягом сімдесяти двох годин має бути перевірена судом. Затримана особа негайно звільняється, якщо протягом сімдесяти двох годин з моменту затримання їй не вручено вмотивованого рішення суду про тримання під вартою. 
Something about laws and courts.  Maybe.

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## BlackMage

Peterburgers say конечно (and the like) with a hard ч.
Southerners and Ukranians pronounce г softly. 
So, don't trust someone who says, "Конешно, я из Ленинхрад."

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## fragdemon

First thing I'd like to say, is that I clearly understand the text in Ukrainean provided above, without knowing Ukrainean. Still, Ukrainean has plenty difference from Russian, and can be considered a seperate language. Those people who spoke about Russian southern dialects actually meant the dialects that are in fact something average between Ukrainean and Russian and that are used in Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia.  
Second, there're 4 major dialects in Russia - those spoken in Smolensk, Ryazan, Vladimir and Novgorod. Moscow Russian is an average of these four dialects. St. Petersburg Russian is a later modification of Moscow Russian. What you hear now in the street is an average of all this.  
Somebody has posted a message that there's a difference in accent between modern and old Russian movies. In fact, what you hear in old movies is a good Moscow Russian. What you hear in modern movies is the average Russian. The reason for that is that Moscow Russian was and is considered the correct Russian, and in the past a lot of attenetion was payed to speaking good Moscow Russian in media. But during the last 50 years the population of Moscow has trippled due to migration, and Moscow Russian is not spoken that often even in Moscow anymore. And it turned out to be hard to preserve it in media.  
Again, it;s not easy to find a Russian-speaker who speaks dialectal Russian. In fact, most of the country's territory is populated by settlers who moved there in the last 2 or 3 centuries. The biggest cities of Russia are located on the Volga, in the Urals, in Siberia - and they are populated by people who moved from Central Russia not so long ago. The population of the historical Russian territory is small (except Moscow), and the territiory has always been dominated by Moscow. In fact, the population of Moscow is bigger than the population of all other historical Russian territory.  
Still, people who come from the towns located in the historical Russian territory usually have a thicker accent than those who come from the territiories taht were populated in the last 3 centuries, allthough the historical regions are closer to Moscow. But they are affected by media and education, that are all in Moscow Russian. In rural areas of these regions, people have wonderfull dialects that are not easy to understand even for a native-speaker. But they aren't proud of having such an accent  ::  I recall I've seen a guy in the street in Moscow, who asked me, where a hotel was. And he articulated the question with a VERY thick Vladimir accent, pronouncing "o" instead of "a", "ц" instead of "ч"... And he had to repeat his question three times before I managed to understand him! He turned red during the conversation, because he felt he was speaking "incorrect" Russian.

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## igorfa100

> Also, the higher on the social ladder you are, the closer to standard Russian is your accent.

 that isn't always the case, take Gorby for example, his russian is really awful, he speaks like a village retard, he routinely uses the ukrainian g and misplaces the stress in  80% of the words and yet he was as high as you could possibly get in the USSR. Or Chernomyrdin, while his pronounciation may not be as bad when it comes to sentence construction, you'd never guess the man is a native speaker. Looking at tranascripts of his speeches one might think the guy had botched brain surgery.

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## igorfa100

> Does anyone have any views on the way spoken Russian varies as you head East across the country from Moscow?  I visited Irkutsk recently and, though my Russian is not perfect, I didn't really detect a significant accent.  This seemed strange to someone who comes from the UK, where 2 hours on the train could land you in cities where a native speaker can feel lost!! 
> Was I just not picking it up?

 there are differences in accent as you travel west to east across Russia, they're just more subtle. These differences are rather hard to detect as long as the people stick to standard vocab and grammar. but generally when a friend of mine's cousin came to our city from the Magadan area, I could clearly hear that he spoke differently. Like I said though, the difference was mainly phonetic and very subtle, his intonation was different, sort of curt. you know to my ear the way they speak out in the east is they tend to blurt sentences out, whereas where I'm from , west of Moscow as well as in Moscow itself the intonation is more sing song, with a bit of a drawl to it, thus out there you might get called a кзел while in Moscow they'll call you a каазиёол. There even exist longer equivalents to some grammatical forms, like I was typing up a document in word a few days ago and in one place I had to write that a substance gets neutralized before being deposited, so I just worte that  bit in Russia and there instantly appeared a red wavy line under my word for neutralize which was "нейтрализовывается", the standard Russian for this is "нейтрализуется", so where I'm from we tend to lengthen things (that's not the only example, we also say "играются" for "играют" etc) drawl them out. So to sum it up there do exist different accents across Russia, they're just more subtle and they're accent rather than dialects in that the basic vocab and grammar are the same. Dialects are confined to rural areas.

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## Paxan

> Peterburgers say конечно (and the like) with a hard ч. 
> So, don't trust someone who says, "Конешно."

 Not true. At all.

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## VendingMachine

> Originally Posted by VendingMachine   Also, the higher on the social ladder you are, the closer to standard Russian is your accent.   that isn't always the case, take Gorby for example, his russian is really awful, he speaks like a village retard, he routinely uses the ukrainian g and misplaces the stress in  80% of the words and yet he was as high as you could possibly get in the USSR. Or Chernomyrdin, while his pronounciation may not be as bad when it comes to sentence construction, you'd never guess the man is a native speaker. Looking at tranascripts of his speeches one might think the guy had botched brain surgery.

 Those chaps are special cases  ::

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## laxxy

all of "нейтрализовывается", "нейтрализуется", "играются" and "играют" are correct words in proper literary Russian language. If MS Word doesn't know about that, it is its problem. 
I also find it curious when people call the standard dialect "Moscow Russian", when it is one of the few major surviving and distinctly different accents in Russia.

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## BlackMage

> Originally Posted by BlackMage  Peterburgers say конечно (and the like) with a hard ч. 
> So, don't trust someone who says, "Конешно."   Not true. At all.

 Take it up with my teacher.

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## Dogboy182

I'm gunna have to go with not true at all. 
There are such things as bad teachers. People like to exagerate things.

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## Paxan

It's just not true. Everybody(99%) say [што]

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## Paxan

I'm not trying to be a good teacher. I'm not tryng to be a teacher at all. I just thought Black Mage would understand what Imean by that having so sophisticated but wrong information.
Пис

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## Dogboy182

> I'm not trying to be a good teacher. I'm not tryng to be a teacher at all. I just thought Black Mage would understand what Imean by that having so sophisticated but wrong information.
> Пис

 I didnt say u were a teacher. I was refering to blackies teacher. Why does everyone always misquote me all the time?

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## BlackMage

> It's just not true. Everybody(99%) say [што]

 I know that, I said that you shouldn't trust someone who says, "Конешно, я из Ленинхрада," because they are lying.

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## garans

> Does anyone have any views on the way spoken Russian varies as you head East across the country from Moscow?  I visited Irkutsk recently and, though my Russian is not perfect, I didn't really detect a significant accent.  This seemed strange to someone who comes from the UK, where 2 hours on the train could land you in cities where a native speaker can feel lost!! 
> Was I just not picking it up?

 I am Russian and I have a reverse, very serious problem with English.
I could read books without a vocabulary in 3 years but even after 15 years I cannot tell many variations of spoken English. It is a real frustration bcs you cannot get this knowledge from books and my practice in speaking English is very limited.

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## laxxy

> Originally Posted by medzie  Does anyone have any views on the way spoken Russian varies as you head East across the country from Moscow?  I visited Irkutsk recently and, though my Russian is not perfect, I didn't really detect a significant accent.  This seemed strange to someone who comes from the UK, where 2 hours on the train could land you in cities where a native speaker can feel lost!! 
> Was I just not picking it up?   I am Russian and I have a reverse, very serious problem with English.
> I could read books without a vocabulary in 3 years but even after 15 years I cannot tell many variations of spoken English. It is a real frustration bcs you cannot get this knowledge from books and my practice in speaking English is very limited.

 That's only because, as you said, your practice in speaking English is limited... I wonder, why do you feel you need to distinguish English dialects though, if you don't have to actually converse with English speakers?

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## basurero

Only people who live in England can recognise all the different accents there, unless you're a linguist or something. To me they all sound the same only varying in strength. The only accents of Enlgish I can recognise at once are American, British, New Zealand, Australian, South African, Indian, Scottish and Irish.

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## net surfer

*basurero*, what about Russian one?

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## basurero

I mean, of native English speakers... Of course there are also Russian accents, spanish accents, french, german etc......

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## net surfer

I was kidding.

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## basurero

Yeah right....   ::

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## net surfer

Ну да конечно :)

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## garans

Broadcasting, movies, interviews etc. often consist of some phonetically unrecognizable English words. Often I cannot guess them. That's why learning English is a lot of frustrution. 
When strangers talk Russian - they have 2 problems:
1. They don't use typical language for a situation.
2. They speak with accent. 
The less noticable accent have, I think, Ukranians and Belorussians. Hollanders from the west have very slight accent too.

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## ezhikvtumane

> In Russia we have a wide variety of different accents and dialects. Native speakers can easily tell which part of the country you come from. People from rural areas tend to have thicker accents. Also, the higher on the social ladder you are, the closer to standard Russian is your accent. Just go to the villages in Lyeshukonye, you won't understand jack @@@@ if you listen to native speakers converse. (I don't, being a native speaker from another area) However, when they address a stranger, they will tone their accents down for his/her benefit - that's probably why you never heard much difference. To hear a thick accent you should go to places where Russians have lived for centuries, not some relatively young cities like Irkutsk, etc. Go to Kurskaya, Bryanskaya, Vologodskaya, etc. oblasts. 
> P.S. I can pick up subtle differences in the accents of native Petersburgers (not recent migrants!) from different city districts (docklands vs. north-east, etc.)

 Yes, of course Russia has variations in accent.  After a while, even non-native speakers can detect them.  I can hear the difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg accents, although I couldn't explain what that difference is, exactly... But it's obvious. 
To think that a language would not have different accents and dialects in the largest country in the world is a little... unusual.

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## ezhikvtumane

> It's just not true. Everybody(99%) say [што]

 +1

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## Chuvak

> Yes, of course Russia has variations in accent.  After a while, even non-native speakers can detect them.  I can hear the difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg accents, although I couldn't explain what that difference is, exactly... But it's obvious. 
> To think that a language would not have different accents and dialects in the largest country in the world is a little... unusual.

 I think you're wrong in a way, thinking that there is some differences between Moscow and St. Petersburg accents. I have been living in SPB for my whole life, listening to TV (films, news and so on) and I haven't heard any differences between accents!!! If you see the difference, you must know Russian better than me...

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## ezhikvtumane

> I think you're wrong in a way, thinking that there is some differences between Moscow and St. Petersburg accents. I have been living in SPB for my whole life, listening to TV (films, news and so on) and I haven't heard any differences between accents!!! If you see the difference, you must know Russian better than me...

 I'm assuming you're Russian, right? 
Like you, I've never heard any difference between accents on TV (films, news and so on), but I've definitely heard a difference in person.  Maybe what I'm hearing is not an accent, per se, but rather, a slightly different manner of speaking?    ::   It seems that people from St. Pete speak with a softer pronunciation than Москвичи. 
When I asked some other Russians if this was accurate, some of them agreed that there is a slight difference.  Maybe you'd notice it if you spent more time in Moscow....?    ::

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## MikeM

> I've definitely heard a difference in person.  Maybe what I'm hearing is not an accent, per se, but rather, a slightly different manner of speaking?     It seems that people from St. Pete speak with a softer pronunciation than Москвичи. 
> When I asked some other Russians if this was accurate, some of them agreed that there is a slight difference.  Maybe you'd notice it if you spent more time in Moscow....?

 It's interesting that you could hear a difference. I think it's mostly a thing of the past. I spent most of my life in SPb and I used to go to Moscow quite frequently and I don't remember noticing much difference, while at school we were taught that it is actually moscovites who speak softer. We were taught that they say дожжи instead of дожди, булошная instead of булочная, etc. I think it might have been true at some point in the past, but mass migration combined with mass media brought everything to a more or less common denominator. There are however words that are used only in SPb and not used in Moscow and vice versa. A common example is поребрик... Somewhere online there is a Moscow-Spb dictionary. It's mostly a joke, but I've met a lot of people who wouldn't know what I meant when I would say поребрик  ::

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