Vowel reduction in Russian

In the pronunciation of the Russian language, several ways of vowel reduction (and its absence) are distinguished between the standard language and dialects. Russian orthography most often does not reflect vowel reduction, which can confuse foreign-language learners, but some spelling reforms have changed some words.

There are five vowel phonemes in Standard Russian. Vowels tend to merge when they are unstressed. The vowels and have the same unstressed allophones for a number of dialects and reduce to an unclear schwa . Unstressed may become more central and merge with . Under some circumstances, , , and may all merge. The fifth vowel, , may also be centralized but does not typically merge with any of the other vowels.

Other types of reduction are phonetic, such as that of the high vowels ( and ), which become near-close. Thus, ('to play') is pronounced , and ('man') is pronounced .

General description

The five Russian vowels in unstressed position show two levels of reduction:
# The first-degree reduction in the first pretonic position (immediately before the stress).
# The second-degree reduction in positions other than the first pretonic position.

The allophonic result of the reduction is also heavily dependent on the quality or the nonexistence of the preceding consonant. Thus, the reduction is further grouped into three types according to the environment:
# After the hard (non- palatalized or velarized) consonants (including always hard ).
# After the hard retroflex sibilants and .
# After the soft ( palatalized) consonants (including the soft and ) and semi-vowel .

The unstressed vowels also may be grouped in series that reflect similar patterns of reduction:
# High and (never reduced).
# Non-high , and (always reduced).
# Back and (both exhibit ''akanye'').
# Front and (both exhibit ''ikanye'').
# Back high (never reduced).

High vowels

Two high vowels and are usually thought to undergo no reduction. However, on the phonetic level, they show allophonic centralization, particularly under the influence of preceding or following consonants.

The unstressed high back vowel is either (after hard consonants, written ) or (after soft consonants, written , except , ).

The unstressed high front vowel is either or (after soft consonants, written ) or or (after hard consonants, written , except , ). Nevertheless, in rapid colloquial speech they both may be reduced to schwa , for example, ('kind', instrumental case, singular masculine neuter) versus ('kind', prepositional case, singular masculine neuter). The case ending //-im// in the former case may surface as like the case ending //-om//, which thus leads to the merger of and , or as ('they do') versus ('he/it does'). Both may surface as or .

Back vowels

Other than in Northern Russian dialects, Russian-speakers have a strong tendency to merge unstressed and . The phenomenon is called ''akanye'' (), and some scholars postulate an early tendency towards it in the earliest known textual evidence of confusion between written "a" and "o" in a manuscript that was copied in Moscow in 1339.
''Akanye'' contrasts with ''okanye'' () pronunciations in Standard Russian as follows:
* After hard (non- palatalised) consonants, the standard phonological rules prescribe a two-level reduction. The stressed vowel is normally the longest and the only place (with certain exceptions) that permits the . In the syllable immediately before the stress and in absolute word-initial position, both reduce to (sometimes also transcribed as ). In all other locations, and are reduced further to a short . For example, ('ferry'), ('cloud'), ('grass'). In practice, the second reduction has a gradient character: if the vowel in question is pronounced for enough time (such as by hyperarticulation), it may be pronounced as . Shorter durations have the effect of gradually transforming into schwa. Recently, it has been argued that the change of sound quality during the second-degree reduction is merely an artifact of duration-dependent "phonetic undershoot", when the speaker intends to pronounce , but the limited time reduces the likelihood of the tongue being able to arrive at the intended vowel target.
* In fast speech, reduction ultimately may result in the vowel being dropped altogether, with the preceding consonant slightly lengthened or turned into a syllabic consonant: , vs. ('boots'), ('ceiling'), ('ten').
* When , , , or is written in a word, it indicates so ('to realise') is pronounced .
* With prepositions, the processes occur even across word boundaries, as in ('under the sea'), ('on the reverse side', 'overleaf'). That does not occur with other parts of speech.
* Both and merge with after palatalised consonants and ( is written as in those positions). This merger also occurs for after retroflex consonants. Examples: (phonetically ; 'wife'), (phonetically ; 'tongue').

Across certain word-final suffixes, the reductions do not completely apply. In certain suffixes, after palatalised consonants and , and (which is written as ) can be distinguished from and from each other: ('field' nominative singular neuter) is different from ('field' singular genitive), and the final sounds differ from the realisation of in that position.

There are a number of exceptions to the above comments regarding the ''akanye'':
* is not always reduced in borrowing from foreign languages: ('radio'). The common pattern for that exception is the final unstressed being preceded by another vowel (, , ). Compare with , whose final unstressed is reduced to .
* Speakers with old Moscow dialect reflexes pronounce unstressed as after retroflex consonants and and thereby imitate the reduction of . For other speakers, that pronunciation generally applies only to ('to regret'), ('unfortunately') and to oblique cases of ('horse'), such as .
* replaces after in the oblique cases of some numerals: ('twenty').

Front vowels

The main feature of front vowel reduction is ''ikanye'' (), the merger of unstressed with . Because has several allophones (depending on both stress and proximity to palatalised consonants), unstressed is pronounced as one of those allophones, rather than the close front unrounded vowel. For example, ('seeds') is pronounced and as ('price') .

In registers without the merger (''yekanye'' or ), unstressed is more retracted. Even then, however, the distinction between unstressed and unstressed is most clearly heard in the syllable immediately before the stress. Thus, ('to add to') contrasts with ('to betray'). Both are pronounced and respectively. The ''yekanye'' pronunciation is coupled with a stronger tendency for both unstressed and , which are pronounced the same as .

Speakers may switch between both pronunciations because of various factors, the most important factor likely being the speed of pronunciation.

Yakanye

''Yakanye'' () is the pronunciation of unstressed and after palatalised consonants preceding a stressed syllable as , rather than ( is pronounced , not ).

This pronunciation is observed in Belarusian and in most Southern Russian dialects, as is expressed in a quip (with liberal ''yakanye''):
:

That example also demonstrates other features of Southern dialects: palatalised final in the third-person forms of verbs, for and for (in some places) and , clear unstressed for or .

Spelling

Generally, vowel reduction is not reflected in the Russian spelling. However, in some words, the spelling has been changed based on vowel reduction and so some words are spelled despite their etymology:

* (instead of , meaning 'ferry'),
* (instead of , meaning a special type of bread).

Spelling those words with was already common in the 18th century, but it co-existed with the spelling with , conforming to etymology of those words. Dictionaries often gave both spellings. In the second half of the 19th century, Yakov Grot recommended spelling those words with (conforming to their etymology), but his recommendations were not followed by all editors. The Ushakov Dictionary (1935–1940) gives , and . Finally the spelling of those words with was set by the 1956 orthographic codification (orthographic rules and spelling dictionary). That is, in cases of doubt, codifiers of 1956 based their choice not on etymological conformity but on the spread of usage.

* (instead of , meaning 'witness').

That spelling has a long history and is based on a folk etymology basing the word on (to see,) instead of (to know).

In the closely-related Belarusian, the original has merged with , like in Standard Russian, but the reduced pronunciation is reflected in the spelling.

See also

* Russian phonology

Notes

References

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Further reading

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External links

The Language of the Russian Village
(A dialect atlas for use in Russian junior high school. Maps 12 and 13 shows the extent of vowel reduction in Russian dialects.)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vowel Reduction In Russian

Russian language
Russian language varieties and styles
Vowels
Slavic phonologies