17

We all agree that the letter г in Russian is equal to G in English. But Why does the letter г in some of the Russian words sound different as it should be?

For example:

  • сегодня = pronounced as if it is written: севодня .
  • ничего = pronounced as if it is written: ничево.
  • его (for example: его семья) = pronounced as if it is written: ево.
  • Льва Толстого = Lva Tolstova
  • хорошого дня = haroshovo dnya
  • для того что = Dela tovo chto

I would like to see more examples of this phenomenon, and I'll add them here -in the question- later.

enter image description here

Improve this question
1
  • exactly for the reasons that there are dozens of cases when English words are not read as they "should be".
    – shabunc ♦
    May 13, 2017 at 15:45

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
28

The Russian orthography is based on morphological-historical principles, which means it tries to write down morphemes the same way all the time and keep the historical spellings of the morphemes (the latter is the main feature of the English spelling, too).

This Г read as B is an example of historical spelling. It is found only in the genitive case of masculine and neuter gender forms of

  • pronouns: его, моего, этого, того, всего, чего, кого, какого;
  • adjectives: маленького, синего, зелёного;
  • participles: написанного, взятого.

The point is that all the rest of the Slavic languages have a [g]-type sound in those forms, it is only in Russian that [g] changed to [v] in the genitive case endings. Still, the Russian orthography keeps the traditional spelling with Г. Perhaps the reason for this is that in the dialect of Moscow which was later taken as the basis for Standard Russian [g] changed to [v] no earlier than in the 17th century, that is quite recently. The reason why the change occurred is the fact that bisyllabic unstressed endings tend to weaken: [оgо] > [оо] > [оvо] — first [g] dropped out and then the epenthetic [w] > [v] appeared. This trend originated in the Northern Russian dialects and can also be traced in some Pomeranian Lechitic dialects.

As for the word сегодня in which the Г read as B is in the middle of the word and not in the ending, that is also a trick of orthography. Cегодня is an adverb which is actually a frozen noun phrase сего дня "[on] this day", in which both words are in the genitive case, сего being the genitive case singular masculine form of the archaic demonstrative pronoun сей "this" which is not used anymore, it got substituted by этот. Writing adverbs that appeared from free phrases as a single word without spaces or hyphens is typical of Russian: вперёд (forward) < в перёд (to front), завтра (tomorrow) < за утро (after morning), etc. As you can see, even with сегодня it is in the genitive case ending that Г is read as B.

Also note that when I say "ending" that means a grammatical ending, not just the last sounds of the word. In Russian there are some words that end in /evo/, but nevertheles are spelled with B because that /evo/ is not an ending of the genitive case, for example марево ['ma.rʲi.və] "haze, mirage". In this word the root is марев- and -o is the nominative case singular neuter ending. Once in a Latvian newspaper in Russian I saw an add that started with ДЁШЕГО! which means "Cheap!" and is pronounced ['dʲo.ʂɪ.və]. That is really a funny mistake since the word must actually be spelled дёшево because it is not in the genitive case. The root of the word is дёшев- and -o is the suffix that turns adjectives into adverbs. Remember, not every Russian word that ends in [və] is written with Г.

With animate nouns the accusative case coincides with the genitive case, so everything which was said above about the genitive case is valid for the accusative case animate, too.

Improve this answer
11
  • 1
    Judging by historical sources of that time (the 18th century), the intervocal g was changing into [h/γ] and then changing into v, not disappeared and then 'suddenly substituted by epinthetic [v]'. "Вдруг, откуда ни возьмись, ниоткуда не взялось".
    – Manjusri
    May 13, 2017 at 5:19
  • 2
    @Manjusri It still had to disappear before the [v] emerged. Or at the very least, that's the predictable thing. [h/γ] changing directly into [v], now that would've been an откуда ни возьмись for the ages.
    – Nikolay Ershov
    May 13, 2017 at 14:11
  • 1
    @NikolayErshov It's very common typologically for [ɣ] (though not [h]) to become [w] or [v].
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    May 13, 2017 at 22:27
  • 1
    @Manjusri "I saw it", in that British pronunciation where an /r/ is inserted and it sounds like "I soar it". That [w] was an actual consonant in the Old English sāwe. It disappeared, and a new, unrelated consonant sprang up, very much out of nothing, to close up the hiatus.
    – Nikolay Ershov
    May 13, 2017 at 22:52
  • 2
    @MartinPeters: because бог is something you most often hear in Church Slavonic in a church, and in Russian rendition of Church Slavonic г is fricative and hence gives х when devoiced.
    – Quassnoi ♦
    May 15, 2017 at 14:55
4

Historical phonetics, I guess. In some southern dialects of Modern Russian, the letter Г г is still pronounced as [ɣ] almost in any position (as in modern Ukrainian). For some times, the Russian koine was a mix of competing dialects without a unified standard.

The trend resulted in interesting competition between the phonems [g] and [h/ɣ] in times of Derzhavin and Lomonosov. Namely, in words for 'spiritual' and 'high' lexis (such as Б-г, ангелы, богатство and господа) the trend was to pronounce the letter Г г as [h/γ], the former variety matching the intervocal position. The unified modern way to pronounce Б-г as [boχ] is a relic of that time.

The trend went as far as proposals for two different letters for two distinct sounds made by Trediakovsky.

For details, see the humorous poem by Lomonosov of that time (in modern orthography).

Later, the intervocal [ɣ] developed into [v] (as it was the case with some Frankish loanwords into French, where intervocal [ɣ] became [w] or [v].

Basically, in addition to сегодня any combination of -ого and -его for a Genitive Neutrum / Masculine Singular is pronounced as [-óva /-ava] or [-éva/-iva] respectively, whether with a stressed vowel or not, and the only exception I can think of now is the words of много [mnóga]-type.

Improve this answer
8
  • 4
    Minor niggle: if you’re using IPA, I think you mean [ɣ] (IPA symbol for voiced velar fricative), not [γ] (Greek letter gamma). Is the tendency for loan words that have /h/ in the source language to be spelt with г, like гамбургер, etc., not also related to this? I always assumed it was, at least.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    May 13, 2017 at 9:35
  • Много is by far not the only exception. Here's a few others where -ого sounds like -о[г]о: до́рого, стро́го, поло́го, убо́го. As @YellowSky mentioned in their answer, it is only the genitive ending that the Г that sounds like a В. That said, your theory whereby "the intervocal [γ] developed into [v]" is highly questionable. I'd like to see examples / references.
    – Sergey Slepov
    May 13, 2017 at 15:25
  • @Sergey Slepov You can see theexample of the Lomonosov's text with comments on it
    – Manjusri
    May 13, 2017 at 22:22
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet of course. Yes, I think that is related and there were also examples of prothetic г under the influence of Germanic languages (mainly German) in the times of Peter the Great: гистория, гишпанский. See also the spelling Петербурх instead of Петербург
    – Manjusri
    May 13, 2017 at 22:23
  • 1
    By the way, [ɣ] is not really “Ukrainian” Г, it is “Belarusian” Г. ukrainian.stackexchange.com/questions/1137/…
    – yalov
    May 16, 2017 at 16:56

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.