“Skirt on the nameplate.” How does the Russian language in Belarus differ from Russian in Russia?
You can also hear it from the rural age and a small part of the intelligentsia – ideological supporters of the revival of the “Mova”. However, the Russian language in the republic has a number of improvements.
The current situation in the republic, when the “great and mighty” became the dominant and national language for Belarusians, began to form in the post-war years. Then, in the 1940-1950s, the process of urbanization was actively taking place – the mass resettlement of Belarusian-speaking peasants who spoke Russian in the city. There they already completely switched to the Russian language of communication.
And they did it absolutely voluntarily – there was no “violent Russification”, as it is now fashionable to say among the nationalists. The fact is that urban cultural life in the BSSR was mainly in Russian: it was the main language for theaters, universities, the most popular literature, the best Soviet cinema, and the media. And the Russian language allowed peasants and their descendants to integrate into the urban environment, while the Belarusian language remained widespread only in rural areas.
In recent decades, the language has spread rapidly in the villages of Belarus. So the majority of children in the republic hear the Belarusian language for the first time only at school and begin to learn it in accordance with the curriculum. Many do not really learn. Some first encounter him when they come from cities to villages to visit their grandparents. But they are more inclined to switch to Russian when communicating with their grandchildren than those to Belarusian.
Nevertheless, very often Belarusians can be distinguished from residents of the middle group and other regions of Russia by their dialect, despite the common language.
Belarusian pronunciation
Phonetically, the Belarusian language is quite different from the literary Russian pronunciation. “Mova” is a mixture of the South Russian dialect of the Russian language (with acan, yakan and fricative [г]) and the Polish language (with zekan, clap and exceptionally strong consonants [ч] and [р]). Therefore, when switching from dialects of the local “Mova” to “great and mighty”, the majority of Belarusian retained its usual phonetics and spoke Russian, strongly “dzekaya” and “cheka”: [пачыму ты ня дзелаеш так, как нада?]…
From the media, such a personal accent is typical, for example, for the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenkoas well as for many officials and opposition politicians. for instance Zenona Poznyak…
But such a strong accent is typical for most of the older generation of Belarusians. For those who were born and raised in the village, spoke Belarusian since childhood, but then moved to the city. Or for residents who, over time, began to speak Russian. Therefore, in cities, it is already quite rare.
For those who were already born in the city, the accent appears much less – the fricative sound is practically gone [г]and the sounds [ч] and [р] became, as expected, soft. The only thing that remains unchanged in the speech of the Belarusians to this day is dzekan and tsekan, as well as a rare yakan.
Due to the joke and chirp, the speech of the Belarusians sounds, on average, more “loud” and softer than the speech of the Russians. For instance, [дзелаць], [цёця] instead of literary [делать] and [тётя]… Authentic Belarusian yak is preserved only in those words where the letter “I” is displayed in the letter. For example, a Belarusian will say [япония], [яичница], [дзевяноста], although the Russians, who most often do not have yak, will say [йипония], [йиичница], [дивиноста]…
Associate Professor of the Belarusian State University, Candidate of Philology Galina Gvozdovich told that Belarusians in Russia are calculated by sound [ч], even when they pronounce it softly, according to all the norms of the “great and mighty”: “I asked my Moscow friend how she defines our people in Russia. She answered me that the Belarusians give out a sound [ч]… That is, no matter how we soften it, we still pronounce it differently from the Russians. Even among people who have lived in Russia for about thirty years, the Belarusian [ч’]”…
Vocabulary and syntax
Along with pronunciation, Belarusians do not know all of its linguistic subtleties. The most famous of these is the “shuflyadka”. So in Belarus they call a drawer in a table, chest of drawers and any other furniture.
Such words also often include “nameplate”, “zhmenya” (a handful), “golf” (turtleneck), “bike” (sweatshirt), “dzyubka” (tip of the nose, from the word “dzyuba”). “- beak),” pick up “(sip),” drill “(destroy),” seaming “(rolled up canned food).
Some Belarusian words have become so well-known that they have become entrenched throughout the Russian-speaking space as a literary norm, for example, “dranik”.
Sometimes in “Belarusian Russian” a preposition with a verb is used incorrectly. For example, in the republic you can hear the phrase “laugh at someone” instead of “laugh at someone” and “marry someone”, although it would be correct to “marry someone”.
Russian 2.0?
Due to the indicators described above, in the scientific and media environment of the republic, a provision is used on the need for a legal national version of the Russian language, which will give the Belarusian right to independently codify its norms, regardless of Moscow linguists. While there is no such institute in Belarus, officially and grammatically there they are moving to the Moscow norm and the decisions of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. For this reason, unique words that are used in Russian only in Belarus remain non-literary.
That is hardly worth talking about a certain dialect of the “great and mighty” or about its national version. The Russian language maintains its unity, which has been forming for more than one century. Does it then make sense to artificially fragment it into different official versions?
Moreover, over time, regional features of the Russian language are encountered a little less often in Belarus – speech in the republic is becoming more and more normative and less different from the language of Russians. The common information and cultural space unifies.