Northern Russian dialects

The northern Russian dialects make up one of the main groups of the Russian dialects.

Territory

• The territory of the primary formation (e.g. that consist of "Old" Russia of the 16th century before Eastern conquests by
  Ivan IV) is fully or partially modern regions (oblasts): Vologda, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Novgorod, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk
  .
• The territory of the second formation (e.g. where Russians settled after the 16th century) consist of most of the land to the North and North-East of Central Russia, that is
  Komi, Udmurtia, and as well as Siberia and Far East
  .

List of sub-dialects

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• Pomor dialects
• Olonets group
• Novgorod
  group
• Siberian dialects
• Vologda-Kirov group
• Vladimir-Volga group

Phonology

• Lack of vowel reduction:^[1] unstressed /ɔ/ does not merge with /a/ (okanye).^[2] Unstressed /ɔ/, /a/ and /ɛ/ after soft consonants also do not typically merge.^[3]
• Some dialects have
  Proto-Slavic *ě.^[2][3]
• In the eastern part of the group the change of every
  Proto-Slavic *ě also changes to /ɔ/ in these positions but only in stressed syllables.^[3]
• Also in the eastern part of the dialect group there is /o̝~u̯ɔ/ in certain positions instead of Standard Russian /ɔ/.[2]^[3]
• Southern Russian dialects).^[3]
• In the Vologda region, final hard /ɫ/ is replaced by a semivowel /w~u̯/.
• /ɡ/, /v/, /f/ are like in Standard Russian (differs from
  Southern Russian
  .
• In some dialects traces of unreduced
  Lake Chud" (instead of expected жерело /ʐɛrɛˈɫɔ/), перецок /pʲɛrʲɛˈt͡sɔk/ from earlier перецокл /pʲɛrʲɛˈt͡sɔkɫ/ "reread (past tense)" (instead of standard перечёл /pʲɛrʲɛˈt͡ɕɔɫ/). In these examples the groups *tl, dl dissimilated to /kɫ/, /ɡɫ/ instead of reducing to /ɫ/. Some (Shakhmatov, Durnovo) see this as an indication of possible West Slavic admixture in those areas, while others (Trubetzkoy, Lehr-Spławiński^[4]) treat it as an archaism from Proto-Slavic times.^[5]

• A suffixed definite article -to, -ta, -te similarly existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian.[2]
• 3rd person verbal ending with non-palatalized -t as in Standard Russian.^[3]

Vocabulary

Northern dialects are characterized by a number of words like, изба ('log hut'), квашня, озимь ('winter crop'), лаять ('to bark'), ухват, орать ('to plough'), жито ('rye'), беседки ('gathering'), шибко ('very much'), баской ('beautiful') and others. They also have about 200 words of Uralic origin.

Notes

References

• Crosswhite, Katherine Margaret (2000), "Vowel Reduction in Russian: A Unified Account of Standard, Dialectal, and 'Dissimilative' Patterns" (PDF), University of Rochester Working Papers in the Language Sciences, 1 (1): 107–172, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-06
• Kuraszkiewicz, Władysław (1963). Zarys dialektologii wschodniosłowiańskiej z wyborem tekstów gwarowych (in Polish). Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• ISBN 978-0-521-22315-7
  .

• Michael Daniel, Nina Dobrushina, Ruprecht von Waldenfels. The language of the Ustja river basin. A corpus of North Russian dialectal speech. 2013–2018. Bern, Moscow.

See also

• Central Russian dialects
• Southern Russian dialects
• Old Novgorod dialect
• Boris Shergin – a writer of the Pomor dialect
• Vowel reduction in Russian