Akanye ( ) or akanjeBethin, Christina Yurkiw. 1998. Slavic prosody: language change and phonological theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 152 ff. ( ; ) is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes or are realized as more or less close to . It is a case of vowel reduction.
The most familiar example is probably Russian akanye (pronounced but not systematically represented orthographically in the standard language). Akanye also occurs in: Standard Belarusian (represented orthographically) Northern (Polissian and Slobozhan) Ukrainian dialects Slovene dialects (e.g., Lower Carniolan dialects),Toporišič, Jože. 1992. Enciklopedija slovenskega jezika. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, p. 2. Some subgroups of the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian Bulgarian dialects (e.g., the Rhodope dialects, including the Smolyan dialect). Crosswhite, Katherine. 2001. Vowel reduction in optimality theory. London: Routledge, p. 53. Polish dialects (Podlasie, Kresy)
Description In Belarusian аканне (akanne), both non-softened and softened and and other phonemes phonetically merge into in unstressed positions; see Belarusian phonology.
In Russian а́канье (akan'ye) (except for Northern dialects), and phonetically merge in unstressed positions. If not preceded by a palatalized (soft) consonant, these phonemes give (sometimes also transcribed as ) in the syllable immediately before the stress and in absolute word-initial position. In other unstressed locations, non-softened and are further reduced towards a short, poorly enunciated . The phonemic dialectal feature of clear distinction of the unstressed o (i.e., no reduction) is called (), literally "o-ing".
After soft consonants, unstressed and are pronounced like in most varieties of Russian (see vowel reduction in Russian for details); this reduction is not considered a manifestation of akanye. Unlike Belarusian akanne, Russian akanye does not affect softened vowels.
In Slovene, akanje may be partial (affecting only syllables before or after the stressed vowel) or complete (affecting all vowels in a word). Examples from various Slovene dialects: domú → damú 'at home' (pretonic o), dnò → dnà 'bottom' (tonic o),Ramovš, Fran. 1936. Kratka zgodovina slovenskega jezika. I. Ljubljana: Akademska založba, pp. 233–235. léto → líəta (posttonic o), ne vém → na vém 'I don't know' (pretonic e), hléb → hlàb 'loaf' (tonic e), jêčmen → jèčman 'barley' (posttonic e).
See also Vowel reduction in Russian – about ikanye.
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