Siberian speech?

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Hey everyone,

Random question, but is there anything I should know about the way people speak in Siberia, particularly the Altay Region? I'm going there this summer for a job, luckily it seems like my host family speaks English, but I just wanted to know if there was anything particular differences in speech that could be a source of misunderstanding. I'm used to Moscow and St. Petersburg speech. Just in case.

Comments

[surkova.livejournal.com]

I think there is no difference… =/

[shimshoni.livejournal.com]

There is no much difference. May be a little bit more "o" sounds instead of Moscow "a"s. But it'd hard to notice any way. You should have no problems at all. And may be they use a few specific "Siberian" words in their everyday life but no more then Moscow and St. Petersburg people use theirs (famous example, St.Petersburg "поребрик" and Moscow "бордюр" for "curb". May be in Novosibirsk it's called somewhat else ;)

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

"O" is Novgorodian, isn't it?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's a feature of the Volga accent, Nizhny Novgorod included, but not Novgorod as such: Nizhny Novgorod and the Great Novgorod are hundreds of miles away, and "новгородский" applies exclusively to the Great Novgorod. If you want to point out that this or that is connected with or belongs to Nizhny Novgorod, you say "нижегородский".

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

I thought, "o" was from Great Novgorod, I did not even think of Nizhny. Am I mistaken?

As for "Volga accent", I have relatives in Saratov, when I visit them, I could not hear any specific "o" or any other distinguishable dialect. Of course, it is always possible that I have bad ears. :P

(Please note how more severe is the case case with English and Spanish: you could tell British from American and Andalucían from Mexicano 1) no matter how bad are your ears and 2) in 100% of cases.)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are mistaken. O speech ("оканье") is a Volga accent feature, and therefore relates to Nizhny Novgorod rather than Great Novgorod. But you cannot hear that accent anymore in Volga region cities, at least from nobody under 50 or 60. TV, with its predominantly Muscovite "normative accent," had killed most of Northern and Central accents. The only accent you can still really tell from the "normative Russian" is Southern, which is seemingly far more resistant to Moscow speech influence than Volga Region оканье, Ryazan аканье, Northern цоканье etc. Therefore, you will most likely tell a person from Rostov, Belgorod, Krasnodar or from Eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk) from a Muscovite or a person from Saratov, but you will not tell those two from each other, unless they both are older than 60.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Green = "o", orange = "a", striped = "partial o", magenta="dissimilative a". For details refer to the source: http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map12.html (in Russian).

It seems, that:

1) Grand Novgorod seems to have "a" in a small isolated region, however, it is surrounded by "o" regions - could it be, that "a" is solely in the metropolitan area? If so, rural elderly still do "o".

2) Nizhny Novgorod seems to have "partial o".

3) North Volga seems to have "partial o", while south is not on the map, but I'd say the map suggests they do either "a" or "dissimilative a". Speaking of my relatives, most of them are in rural area far from Saratov and they are over 60. And yes, they don't do "o".

Here is a sample of Saratov speech:



Pay attention how they clearly say агня, челавек. This is exactly how I remember people speaking, including rural elderly.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Exactly my point.
Re: the Dialectology Maps you mention: go one level up to the Introduction --
"Материалы для этого уникального издания собирались в 1946–1966 гг. по специальной Программе (в ней 294 вопроса) во время многочисленных экспедиций в деревни Центральной России."
1946-1966 is 43 to 63 years ago.
And it deals with VILLAGES.

City people younger than 60 in the 21st century speak with almost no significant regional accent throughout most Russia, except some Southern regions -- Southern accent is still quite distinguishable.

The people in your video are the city people. They live in Saratov, a big city, population about a million. Certainly their speech bears little or almost no dialectal features.

Speaking about your relatives, were they born in the rural area in Saratov region, from the parents born there, did they grow up there?

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

OK, so the map refers to the countryside of 1950-s. Got it. So there is a little area centered at Velikiy Novgorod, where people say "a", and around it people say "o". Weird.

In the video at least the second interviewed man says, that he's not from the city. But he's young, true.

As for my senior relatives, everyone was born and raised in the countryside. And everyone except for my grandmom has permanently lived in the contryside.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

But shall we also agree, that it is strictly speaking incorrect to say about "Volga's o-kanie"? I thought that all Volga says "a", but now I see, that north is different from the south.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Actually, in early 20th century there was as much as seven basic Volga accents, from upper Volga and down the river; in the lower part, such as near Tsatitsyn (present-day Volgograd,) all seven would mix with each other, as well as with several other dialects, especially Southern (as the Lower Volga regions, lower than Tsaritsyn, were inhabited mostly by relatively late re-settlers from other regions of Russia.) All seven were quite different, but in the middle-Volga regions (between Nizhny Novgorod and Saratov,) which is considered THE Volga region, their common feature would be оканье (at least in the mass perception outside of the region,) the most popular and well-known example being the speech of Maxim Gorky, who was from Nizhny Novgorod and spoke with REALLY heavy O accent (there was that popular joke that stated than the Great Proletarian Writer once found an, er, trace of a bird on his fedora, and said in his inimitable O drawl, "хОрОшО, чтО кОрОвы не летают!").
After the Сivil War and especially after the beginning of massive village-to-city migration, those regional dialects started to evaporate. The spread of the radio in 1930s, and especially the spread of the TV in 1960s, as well as the mandatory universal 7-years high school education introduced in late 20s, and then 10-years education introduced in mid-1950s, with massive mighration of school teachers educated in major cities, created the situation when new generations would not pick up the elders' accents any more. Therefore, whatever the dialectology maps say, you don't find much regional difference in cities and smaller towns within the last, say, 40 years.

The last person I've heard speaking with a relatively heavy O accent in Volga Region was a granny who was working as wardrobe lady at the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, and was at least 75.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Thanks for an really interesting comment!

> Therefore, whatever the dialectology maps say, you don't find much regional difference in cities and smaller towns within the last, say, 40 years.

I would only mention one thing: the dialectology map (as you say, of 1950-s, rural) has your point of no accent by then.

So by 1950-s people in villages in Nizhny Novgorod would not anymore say "хOрОшо" (because of "partial o").

And as for Saratov, the map ends there, but it is unclear, whether it is a "partial o" or an "a".

I'd say, "a". The oldest person from Volga I ever talked to was my great grandmother, born 1907, raised and lived in the countryside all her life. I recall her speaking just like me...

I have interacted with her daughter and the husband of the daughter last summer, they also speak just like me. (Not counting for my grandmother, but she's a city person.) I've also wondered around a village where they live, probably, about 100 people. I haven't heard any traces of "o" at all.

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

It's quite funny to me how you could notice 'а' in огня and человек. Well, they probably do pronounce 'о' as 'а' there, but that sounds absolutely normal to me being a muscovite :). I suspect only a person used to some peripheral accent can notice some "innormal" sounds in their speech. I could only notice the south-russian vocal "х" instead "г" ("для хорода") in the speech of the first woman there, although otherwise even she didn't have any strong accent to my ear.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

I noticed only because I was paying attention. That sounds normal to me too.

[alamar.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of relatives in a village near Ульяновск; and indeed they tend to pronounce о more carefully like о.
Including relatively young people.
It's not as severe as in jokes about Вологда, but it's certainly not as in Мааасква.

However, the real difference would be that they're using some tatar loanwords, like айда (let's go).

And there's an universal (I guess it spans from Ульяновская область to Архангельская область) village accent: For example, the -щи- syllable is pronounced as шшы or шчи:
настоящий would be настОяшшый
щи would be шчи

Also, sometimes the last vowel would be stripped from adjectives: красна instead of красная.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot, this is really interesting.

Айда I know and use too, but I did not know it was Tatar. :) I don't know where did I get it from. Could be from Crimean Tatars.

[towarysc.livejournal.com]

If it's a city, there shouldn't be much difference. In villages some strange dialects can be heard, though.

[dobryi-drake.livejournal.com]

I dont think you will be able to find anyone there whom you will not be able to understand because of his "siberian" dialect.

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

Siberia was settled en masse mostly in last 100-150 years by people from various regions of European Russia. So most of them may keep their original dialects, and, due to the fact that population of Siberia is quite sparse, they did not converge into some common dialect.

[ybelov.livejournal.com]

In today's Russia dialets are not strong, because in the Soviet times people were moved about a lot by the state and subjected to uniform mass media, education and ideology. There are still regional differences. You can see local words in this Dictionary of Cities.

Языки городов - Словарь диалектов русского языка
Усилиями лучших ученых-социолингвистов был создан проект «Языки городов», и теперь он доступен всем носителям русского языка, которые могут добавлять в него слова из своих диалектов!
www.lingvo.ru/goroda

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

But not a whole lot of differences. Like, I could not tell where my university mates were from based on their speech. Sometimes you can tell, but the difference is really faint. Comparing to, say, British and American English or Andalusian and Mexican Spanish. :)

[ybelov.livejournal.com]

Yeah, French in Québec and France... But even within relatively small countries, like Sweden and Finland, dialects are more pronounced, because there rural communities have been preserved. In Russia they have been almost completely distroyed.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

"Destroyed" implies a willing force of destruction... :) If this is what you call things like centralized media, mass education and stuff... well, USA has suffered similar thing to some extend. I'd rather say, they died out as a decrepit thing.

BTW, just watching my Spanish friends having fun communicating with each other, I cannot say the absence of well-distinguished dialects is an absolutely bad thing. :P

Speaking of dialects. I hope I will be forgiven an off-topic. I've always wondered why of all Spanish languages only castellano has been spread in Latin America.

[ybelov.livejournal.com]

Russian villages were destroyed by collectivization, then poverty and finally drinking, from which all the more talented tried to escape.

There is universal education and mass media in all modern countries; so it’s not the root of the problem. I have never been to the USA, but I’ve seen in documentaries that farms there have become so big and industrialized that the rural way of life has almost disappeared.

In Québec, where I lived, farms are also big, but some rural traditions still exist, though not to the same extent as in Europe, where almost in every village people wear their own folk costumes, hold dance festivals and have local crafts like production of glassware, etc.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, horrific Soviet regime. :D I beg you, let's not develop this topic, as it gets close to expressing political views.

>but I’ve seen in documentaries that farms there have become so big and industrialized that the rural way of life has almost disappeared.

You're wrong. In fact, I currently live in rural USA. :) And yes, it is really, really rural. :) And yes, you can buy cucumbers from a small family-owned farm, same with meat, beer and other food, as well as general merchandise. And yes, people do wear cowboy clothes here, however, it is more like a fashion for wealthy. And yes, people do hold crafts festivals.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Don't expect any difficulties. Russian is pretty uniform -- dialectal differences do exist, but everybody understands standard language as spoken on TV or radio.

[sonador69.livejournal.com]

No special dialects, except "o" instead "a", but its not so important.
Dont worry, if your "european" russian is pretty good,
you wont have problems with "siberian".

[hellga.livejournal.com]

Depending on where exactly you end up, there will be certain dialectal words, but you shouldn't have any problems.

[sudden-fox.livejournal.com]

Actually, in West Siberia Russian is considered to be the purest of the whole country. There are some differences in pronunciation of sounds «o» and «a», but this is not critical. Moreover, they say that Siberia is the best place to learn Russian)

[inoctiluci.livejournal.com]

I live in Eastern Siberia, and there are only some subtle differences here. Moscow speech is easily understood, and I have no problem understanding anyone, except for elderly or male villagers sometimes.

[wondershot.livejournal.com]

This is such a great community :-)