Belarusian phonology

Distinctive features

As an East Slavic language, Belarusian phonology is very similar to both Russian and Ukrainian phonology. The primary differences are:

• Akannye () – the merger of unstressed into . The pronunciation of the merged vowel is a clear open front unrounded vowel , including after soft consonants and . In standard Russian akanye, the merger happens only after hard consonants; after soft consonants, merges with instead. Ukrainian does not have this merger at all. In Belarusian, unlike Russian, this change is reflected in spelling: compare "head", pronounced , with Russian and Ukrainian .
• Lack of ikanye (the Russian sound change in which unstressed has merged with , and unstressed and with after soft consonants). Instead, unstressed merges with (yakannye). Compare Belarusian with Russian and Ukrainian . Not all instances of are subject to yakannye in literary Belarusian, for example instead of па́ляц , which occurs only dialectally. In standard Belarusian, yakannye after palatalized consonants occurs in the syllable immediately preceding the tonic syllable: "song" — "singer" — "singers". Exceptions are allowed in loanwords: "medal".
• Tsyekannye () and dzyekannye () – the pronunciation of underlying as soft affricates . This occurs, for instances, in:
  • Belarusian "woodpecker" ; compare Russian and Ukrainian .
  • Belarusian ця́га "draught" ; compare Russian and Ukrainian тяг ~ тя́га .
  • Many Russian speakers similarly affricate phonemic , but this is not universal and not written.
• Belarusian distinguishes the soft sound which comes from tsyekannye of underlying and the hard sound which comes from Common Slavonic *c (which is thought to be in Old East Slavic, but hardened to in all positions in Russian and Belarusian and before in Ukrainian); for example: CSl. * yielded Belarusian "sheep (dated)" and Russian but Ukrainian ). Both the soft and hard sounds can be seen in the Belarusian word for "father (dated)" аце́ц from CSl. *, whence also Russian but Ukrainian .
• Relatively stronger palatalization of and .
• Postalveolar consonants in Belarusian (/ʐ, ʂ, tʂ, dʐ/) are all hard (laminal retroflex), whereas Russian has both either both hard (/ʐ, ʂ/) or soft postalveolars (/tɕ, ɕː/, as well as /ʑː/ for some speakers). Compare:
  • Belarusian "rye" and Russian "grain; rye (dated or regional)" ; Belarusian гараджа́нін "townsman" and Russian ; Belarusian шып "thorn" and Russian ; Belarusian чын "rank" and Russian ; Belarusian "shield" and Russian , Belarusian "yeast" vs. Russian ~ , etc.
• The phoneme has hardened and merged with ; compare:
  • Belarusian рэ́дзька "radish" and Russian , Belarusian "row, line" and Russian , Belarusian вастрыё "tip" and Russian , Belarusian "birch" and Russian , Belarusian "tsar (nominative, singular)" and Russian , Belarusian цару́ "tsar (dative, singular)" and Russian царю́ , etc.
• The soft labials have hardened in word-final position (as in Ukrainian); compare Belarusian сем and Ukrainian сім "seven" with Russian семь .
• Unlike in standard Russian, historical before consonants has merged with and is pronounced . This is reflected in the spelling, which uses a special symbol known as "non-syllabic u" (), written as an with a breve diacritic on top of it: ,? .? For example: Belarusian воўк — Russian волк . The merger did not occur before suffixes (before historical ⟨ъ⟩ in the word middle): Russian and "stick".
• Lenition of to similarly to Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, or southern Russian dialects, and unlike standard Russian and Polish.
• Late Old East Slavic (inherited from Proto-Slavic or front yer *ь ()) shifted to Belarusian and Russian when stressed and not before a soft consonant (i.e. at word-final position or before a hard consonant). Compare:
  • Belarusian "spear" from *, whence also Russian .
  • Belarusian "green" from *, whence also Russian but Ukrainian .
  • Belarusian "dog" from *, whence also Russian but Ukrainian .
• Aforesaid Belarusian and Russian , and /ʲo/ from epenthetic as well, can further shift to after a hardened soft consonant. For example:
  • Belarusian "eagle" from *, whence also Russian but Ukrainian .
  • Belarusian "egg" from *, whence also Russian but Ukrainian ;
  • Belarusian "sun" (unstressed ) from *, whence also Russian (unstressed , written as /ʲe/), but Ukrainian .
  • Belarusian "birch" from *, whence also Russian , but Ukrainian .
  • Belarusian "bank, shore, coast" (unstressed ) from *, whence also Russian (unstressed , written as /ʲe/), but Ukrainian or dated .

Unlike in Russian but like in Ukrainian, Belarusian spelling closely represents surface phonology rather than the underlying morphophonology. For example, akannye, tsyekannye, dzyekannye and the allophone of and are all written. The representation of akannye in particular introduces striking differences between Russian and Belarusian orthography.

Vowels

As with Russian, is not a separate phoneme, but an allophone of occurring after non-palatalized consonants.

Consonants

The consonants of Belarusian are as follows:

The rare phonemes and are present only in several borrowed words: ганак , гузік , and in some native words containing the combinations , , : мазгі , джгаць . Other borrowed words have the fricative pronunciation: геаграфія ('geography'). In addition, and are allophones of and respectively, when voiced by regressive assimilation, as in вакзал 'train station'.

In the syllable coda, is pronounced or , forming diphthongs, and is spelled . sometimes derives etymologically from , as with воўк ('wolf'), which comes from Proto-Slavic *vьlkъ. Similar to Ukrainian, there are also alternations between and in the past tense of verbs: for example, ду́маў "(he) thought" versus ду́мала "(she) thought". This evolved historically from a form with (as in Russian: ду́мал) which vocalized like the Ł in Polish (cognate dumał, "he mused").

The geminated variations are transcribed as follows:

• падарожжа
• ззяць
• стагоддзе
• каханне
• калоссе
• ліхалецце
• сярэднявечча .

Those sounds arose from assimilation of consonant+ combinations.

References

Bibliography

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References

1. {{Harvcoltxt. Sussex. Cubberly. 2006
2. "Stronger than in Russian, weaker than in Polish", per {{lang. be. Беларуская мова...
3. {{Harvcoltxt. Padluzhny. 1989
4. Русинов, Н.Д.. (1977). "Древнерусский язык". Высшая школа.
5. {{Harvcoltxt. Blinava. 1991
6. {{Harvcoltxt. Blinava. 1991
7. {{Harvcoltxt. Mayo. 2002
8. {{Harvcoltxt. Mayo. 2002
9. Young, S.. (2006). "Belorussian".
10. {{Harvcoltxt. Mayo. 2002