Talk:Akanye

Russian only?[edit]

My uninformed guess has always been that this phenomenon is not limited to Russia with the area around Moscow pronouncing /o/s as /a/s, but that the entire East Slavic language region can be roughly divided into:

a northern akanye half with northern Russian dialects – I have learnt about exceptions such as Vologda from this article – and Belarusian, and
a southern okanye half with southern Russian dialects and Ukrainian.

Unfortunately, the WP articles on the Belarusian language and its alphabet don't have a section on phonology or sounds, so I wasn't able to check.

If my guess is true, the article should at least mention Belarusian – the introductory sentence could be rephrased to read:

“Akanye (Аканье in Russian Cyrillic) is the term ~~in the Russian language~~…”

(misleading – it should be clear by now that it is originally a Russian word)

“…for the merger of /o/ and /a/ in unstressed syllables in the phonology of some Russian and all Belarusian dialects, including both languages' standard forms.”

How's that? Wikipeditor 12:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the impression that the term itself is Russian. If they use the term as well as exhibit the feature in other languages then that sounds fine. AEuSoes1 19:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In Belarusian language there is no vowel reduction for a simple reason: similarly to Slovak language, Belarussian orthography is based on the phonemic principle (that is "Write as you hear"): Russian "zoloto" (gold) is "zolata" in Belarussian. (the first syllable is stressed) `'mikkanarxi 05:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merger[edit]

Anon user marked Akanye, Ikanye, Okanye, Yekanye, and Yakanye as needing to be merged into one article (I'm assuming it would have to do with Russian vowel reduction in general). What does everybody think? They describe similar phenomena and all have to do with Russian phonology. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "anon user" was actually me Davidleeroth 10:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC). You can check the page and see that we share the same IP. I think that they are all extremely related and should be merged. On a side note, аканье is extremely hard when learning new words :)[reply]

Yeah, I agree with you. It's possible that we could just merge them all into the Russian phonology page. Or we could have a new page called Russian vowel reduction or something (I think Mikkalai might have a better suggestion). Be sure to sign your name with four tildes ~~~~ Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 10:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If we were to merge them into Russian vowel reduction, would we delete the a/ye/o/i kanye pages? Davidleeroth 10:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. We'd create the new page and delete the quartet. At least, that's how I'd do it. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 11:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong. We create redirects. `'mikkanarxi 00:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! I was close. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vote[edit]

Let's have a vote to see who wants to start the new page?

I vote yes. Davidleeroth 00:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and redirect the other pages to it. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone may start a new page, Vowel reduction in the Russian language, right away, keeping in mind that the topic is not a mere sum of the five articles. These five describe dialectical variations'. The common article must start from the description of the Russian language standard. So I'd say this vote is pretty much meaningless at this moment. But if you wish, I oppose to mechanically putting them together without having the basic text first. Only after that you may move all these "-kanye"s into sections, which would make sense: the articles are small and similar, and seeing these texts side-by-side is indeed convenient. `'mikkanarxi 05:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Naturally the prose would be altered. Maybe, since this is would be an interdialectal topic, we could name the article Russian dialects and also incorporate other things. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forget 3/4 of what I've just wrote: there already is Russian_phonology#Vowel_reduction. Since the term "Russian language" means both standard and dialects, we can mechanically start this new article right away. `'mikkanarxi 05:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. And now I see that the section Russian_phonology#Vowel_reduction was poor. Unfortunately I am done for today. I'll post it in Portal:Russia/New article announcements for other Russians to fix. `'mikkanarxi 05:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Russian dialects overview article is indeed missing and dialect articles are miserable, see Category:Russian dialects. `'mikkanarxi 05:52, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Пожалуйста (Thanks!). Have fun learning Russian/Russian orthography ;) Davidleeroth 07:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]