Belarusians’ pronunciation: Belarusian or Russian? Evidence from Belarusian-Russian mixed speech

Abstract

The study investigates the influence of Russian on the pronunciation of Belarusians (in Belarus). The central variety in which this influence can be observed is Belarusian-Russian mixed speech (BRMS). BRMS is practised by hundreds of thousands if not millions of speakers in non-official speech situations. Based on the analysis of two corpora, we will demonstrate the strength of the Russian influence on nine variables that can be counted as belonging to the most important phonetic differences between Russian and Belarusian. The variables subject to the strongest Russian influence are those that exhibit a certain degree of morphonologisation in Belarusian. Where purely phonic (phonological or ‘pure’ phonetic) differences exist between Belarusian and Russian, speakers tend more strongly towards the Belarusian pronunciation variant. But even for these variables there is a hierarchy of resistance toward ‘Russification’. The variations are by no means chaotic. This hierarchy of the variables mirroring the strength of the Russian influence is statistically constant in each of the seven towns investigated, across all speaker types and in different communication settings. Thus the hierarchy can be understood as evidence for a usus in BRMS. Furthermore, this hierarchy is also observed in ‘pure’ Russian and ‘pure’ Belarusian (and not mixed) parts of the discourse.