r/belarus • u/NitroXM • 11d ago
Беларуская мова / Belarusian language Does Belarusian youth have Belarusian accent when speaking Russian?
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u/Federal_Attention717 11d ago
Russian spoken in Belarus is different from Russian spoken in Russia, yes.
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u/serp94 11d ago
How is it different?
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u/Federal_Attention717 11d ago
Many small things in pronunciation, intonation and vocabulary. To me the biggest giveaways are ть/дь and some unstressed vowels
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u/Green_Web_6274 Belarus 8d ago
Сколько не общался с росиянами, но что-то не замечал ни разу что мы на "разном" русском языке разговариваем.
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u/Spiritual_Cycle_7881 11d ago
Yes. I can clearly distinguish russian spoken in Minsk vs russian spoken in Moscow. And the words like шуфлядка will quickly indicate who is who.
It is not that obvious when comparing speakers from two villages near the border though
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u/ConsciousFractals 11d ago
Very interesting, my grandparents from western Ukraine said «шуфлядка». We also say «таний» instead of «дешевий» and «тхір» (тхор) instead of «скунс».
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u/CNC_Russia 11d ago
Что. Такое. ШУФЛЯДКА 😅🤔
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u/nhSnork 11d ago
A drawer (or "выдвижной ящик стола" in Russian).
From what I've heard at times, most Russians don't tend to use "подъезд" in the meaning of apartment block segments/entrances either.
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u/drUiD5812 10d ago
From what I've heard at times, most Russians don't tend to use "подъезд" in the meaning of apartment block segments/entrances either.
We use подъезд as apartment block/entrance.
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u/dendarkjabberwock 9d ago
No. We def use подъезд as entrance at least in Moscow. Maybe also парадная in Petersburg
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u/Green_Web_6274 Belarus 8d ago
I'm Belarusian and never used the word 'шуфлядка' in my speech. The same applies to the differences between Russian and Belarusian. I personally wouldn't be able to "clearly distinguish" Russian in Russia and Belarus for the most part.
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u/Minskdhaka 11d ago
Not usually anymore, at least in the cities. Only once in a while a Belarusian "h" instead of a Russian "g" will slip through. My mum's generation (people in their 60s) and those older than that tend to have strong Belarusian accents in Russian. Even in my generation (I'm 45), a Belarusian accent is rare, let alone in today's youth.
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u/justgettingold 11d ago
I used to think that it doesn't until I got into uni and my roommate from Nyasvizh area had a pretty heavy one, so it happens
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u/preparing4exams 11d ago
There are some give aways - local words that only people from Belarus use. "Байка" is the one that I can remember, it means a hoodie, but only in Belarusian Russian, people wouldn't understand it anywhere else.
Speaking about the accent, I wouldn't be as categorical as others. I think Belarusians who grew up in big cities usually have little to no accent or a touch of an accent.
Personally, as a Russian speaker from outside of Belarus who has friends all over CIS region, I would have a hard time distinguishing a student from Minsk from a student from Voronezh. However, many belarusians tend to pronounce "ч" differently. They pronounce it hard (the same way as in Belarusian language), whereas in Russian it can only be soft. Learning polish I've struggled with this sound so much, because in polish "cz" is also pronounced the same way as Belarusian "ч".
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u/Unique-Temporary2461 5d ago
My experience is that Belarusians who have accent in Russian (such as hard ч) would generally be older people (generally over 60), especially those who grew up in rural areas or smaller towns. People younger than that would pronounce everything exactly as it suppose to sound in standard Russian. You are right about usage of certain words (шуфлядка, байка, калыханка, болька, шкарлупка, etc.), that's the main giveaway for Belarusians.
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u/preparing4exams 5d ago
I agree, I personally really adore Lukashenko's accent, he sounds as Belarusian as can be. Funnily enough I've almost never heard him speaking Belarusian (except for a couple of sentences).
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u/0utkast_band 11d ago
I am always meh when I hear the moscovite accent
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u/nekto_tigra Belarus 11d ago
I know, right?
The more time passes from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the weirder "Russian" Russian sounds to me. Back in the day, when everyone watched Moscow TV channels and movies, their accent sounded natural and kind of canon, now it's just "wow, why can't these guys talk like normal people?"
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u/According_Air_969 9d ago
This has always been the case, especially in and around Moscow. There is a similar attitude towards northern, southern, and Ural accents.
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u/nekto_tigra Belarus 9d ago
That’s normal in Russia because Russians speak their language naturally. For my generation, Russian was a language that we had to learn in schools, including the “proper” accent, just like we learned proper accent in English classes. Now, as we get less exposure to this “proper” accent, it starts to sound weird, that was my point.
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11d ago
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u/Positive-Cash-689 10d ago
Take into account that all of them learn a belarusian language at the school. They already have schools that use belarusian as a language of instruction.
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u/SanchesS80 11d ago
It depends... Usually yes. There is different accent. But young people from Minsk have so tiny difference in accent so it is barely noticable at all.
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u/agradus 10d ago
I can believe that people from large cities have a distinguishable accent, but it is very mild. I cannot reliably distinguish such speakers in most cases. Also, it depends where from Russia the person is. But with “standard” Moscow Russian it is very hard even for locals.
People from small cities and villages often have noticeable accent though.
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u/UserUserDontGetOld 9d ago
As a Ukrainian I mostly succeed in distinguishing Ukr, Bel and several Rus accents of Russian.
Bel tend to say "dz" instead of "d" and "ts" instead of "t" . I.e "дело" sounds to me more like "дзело" and "тело" - like "цело".
Ukr hardly uses "g" (albeit the sound is present in the language and has letter "ґ" for it), replaicing it with "h".
Moscovites tend to use prolonged "a" in stressed position ("спаасиба").
South-Western Russians say "о" in unstressed position where it is written, unlike normative Russian, where it reads as "a" ("корова" in official orthoepy is read as "карова", but "корова" on the South-West.
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u/Acrobatic-Extent-810 11d ago
here they write that there is a difference, but I watched several Belarusian bloggers and podcasters and learned that they are not from Russia only from their words. I could not understand from their speech
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11d ago
Not the ones I've heard.
You have to understand that most "post soviets" who speak Russian after the fall of the USSR don't develop an accent by talking to Russians, but rather due to exposure to Russian media and having been taught Russian at some point, or their forefathers being taught Russian at some point.
Russian-speaking Moldovans who don't speak Romanian also do not have a specific accent, they can just sound old fashioned sometimes. It's just a taught accent, similar to how the standard English accent you hear when talking to international school students.
Only time I have personally clocked someone as Belarusian is when pronouncing things specific to Belarus. Vitebsk, Mogilev, Katarina, Sviatlana and Mikalai are just some simple examples of names of places where I can probably tell your accent even if you lean for the Russian pronunciations, and I can't tell the accents apart very well.
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u/Andremani 11d ago
As far as i know, it is mostly unnoticable, but Belarusians speaking Russian have couple of specific minor vocabular, phonetic and grammatical traits
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u/Green_Web_6274 Belarus 8d ago
Bro is downvoted for speaking facts. Damn. The state of this community.
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u/The_balt 9d ago
A better question would be to ask how many people actually speak Belarussian language when communicating with family and friends… The answer will probably be that not many use the language.
Based on this, the whole question of accent becomes redundant as Russian is their first language. The difference is the same as those in Russia having different regional deviations between Moscow and Ural cities or Siberia.
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u/Green_Web_6274 Belarus 8d ago
No, we study the Moscow standard dialect of Russian, and almost 100% of people under 45 do not differ in the way they use it in comparison with Russians. I kind of laughed when a user mentioned the word "шуфлядка," as if that word suddenly makes our Russian so different.
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u/Zly_Duh 11d ago
Belarusians have a peculiar accent when speaking Russian, even if they claim to speak "pure Russian". You can almost always tell whether Russian speaking person is from Belarus or Moscow, East Ukraine, South Russia, Odessa and so on. It also depends hugely on socioeconomic and cultural background of a person.