Northern Russian dialects

Map of the Russian dialects of the primary formation (Northern Russian is dark green)

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 the land to the North and North-East of Central Russia, that is Karelia, Murmansk, Vyatka, Perm, Komi, Udmurtia, and as well as Siberia and Far East.

List of sub-dialects

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

Phonology

• Dialects of this group do not exhibit typical vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.^[1] Unstressed /o/ is pronounced clearly (the phenomenon called okanye/оканье).^[2]
• Some dialects have high or diphthongal /e̝~i̯ɛ/ in the place of Proto-Slavic *ě and /o̝~u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (like in some Ukrainian dialects) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/.^[2]
• In Novgorod sub-group only one voiceless affricate exists. Merging of Standard Russian /t͡ʃ/ and /t͡s/ into one consonant whether /t͡s/ or /t͡ɕ/ (like in Pskov and Ryazan Southern Russian dialects).
• In Vologda region substitution of final hard /ɫ/ by semivowel /w~u̯/.
• /ɡ/, /v/, /f/ are like in Standard Russian (differs from Southern Russian). Nevertheless, in some sub-dialects /v/, /f/ can also be replaced with semivowel /w~u̯/ like in Southern Russian.

Morphology

• 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.

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. It has also about 200 words of Uralic origin.

Notes

1. Crosswhite 2000, p. 109.
2. Sussex & Cubberley 2006, pp. 521–526.

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
• Sussex, Roland; Cubberley, Paul (2006). "Dialects of Russian". The Slavic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 521–526. ISBN 978-0-521-22315-7.

See also

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