Talk:Belarusian phonology

NO glottal fricatives

This IPA table is crap! Acc to Padluzhny, 1979, belarusan has NO glottal fricatives. When yer put any competentive source for opposite, you'll return that table.

Your personal opinion is not a reason to do what you've done. Unomano 20:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. It would be much better to just blank out the questionable entries. This table wasn't all "crap". I wasn't able to find any academic source for the IPA equivalence, but initially there were some fairly reasonable, "no-alternative" guesses in this table. Later it got "developed" from the Omniglot, which is completely no reliable source in that matter. Yury Tarasievich 06:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Mostly to Unomano: it would be better to have not only the IPA form of the articulation table, but also the old form of the table, which quoted the translated Belarusian phonological definitions of the phonemes. That was there for a good reason. Yury Tarasievich 06:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Bilabial fricative?

Something is wrong here and I'm not sure how to fix it. Short U cites Беларуская мова in saying that Belarusian has a bilabial fricative (represented by <ў>). If it is, instead, a /w/ after a vowel (as short U also seems to be saying, which then makes it contradict itself), then it seems very much like /w/ is an allophone of /u/ after a vowel (/w/, by the way, is generally considered rounded velar, not bilabial). Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:36, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The Short U in Belarusian denotes the sonorant bilabial fricative consonant (Template:Lang-be), which evolved in Mediaeval out of V and velar L after the vowels (Padluzhny, Stsyatsko).

The assertion on its equivalence with English phoneme wasn't mine; e.g. the text on reverse approximation (English->Belarusian transcription; in Academy's Belarusian Linguistics, Vol.52, 2002) talks about approximate equivalence of English W and Belarusian Short U and V (which isn't articulated same as the as Russian V)

In fact, I've no idea how to write this in IPA, and that's why I asked for help with this long before. What user:Unomano bases his classification on, I don't know and he/she won't tell. Help of linguist knowing both phonetic classifications would be welcome. Yury Tarasievich 11:13, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The thing about a sonorant bilabial fricative is that it's self-contradictory. According to sonorant, it is frictionless but a fricative, by definition, produces some frication. If it's just a bilabial fricative it would be [β] but I have a strong feeling that it is actually non-vocalic /u/ in the syllable coda. There was a debate at Talk:Short U about the exact character of this sound and it was never described as a bilabial fricative (or even bilabial for that matter). User:Kwamikagami might have some sources and insight on the matter. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 11:43, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Then sonorant (consonant) just isn't the right translation for the term "санорны". It's defined in Belarusian (East Slavonic?) linguistics as being considerably voiced, so not voiceless, but no so much as to be classified as voiced. Bilabial and fricative are the academic classification of it — Padluzhny, Phonetics of the Belarusian literary language, 1981. Yury Tarasievich 11:53, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the translation is correct but the source you're citing is too vague to be helpful in our situation. /w/ has been described as bilabial and it's been described as a fricative but these are both incorrect most of the time and are only described as such for simplicity since languages tend to not contrast fricatives and homorganic approximants and /w/ is usually the only labiovelar sound in a language. Does Padluzhny use IPA? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the monographs of Padluzhny rather are not "vague" but *the* source on the phonetics (esp. instrumental) and phonology of Belarusian language. :))

The big problem here is that the classification of the articulation in East Slavonic linguistics scientific schools seems to be conducted slightly different than in the West. Also, the scientific lingo seems to be not term-to-term compatible.

E.g., the *approximate* ubiquituous classification of the "U short" phoneme is "sonorant bilabial fricative".

The articulative-physiological characteristic of same is "sonorant oral glide (плаўны), labial hard" (by the active artic. organ) and "sonorant glide, bilabial hard" (by the passive artic. organ).

The two variants of "J" are "noise-only (voiceless?) fricative voiced?(звонкі) middle-tongue" and "sonorant oral glide, middle-tongue" (by the act. art. organ) and these are merged into one "sonorant glide, front-palatal (alveolar?) palatalised" by the passive art. organ. Everything per the classif. tables in Padluzhny, p.61.

However, I suspect that what's called "санорны" shouldn't be translated as "sonorant" but as "voiced", and that's "звонкі" that'd be translated as "sonorant".

Padluzhny uses IPA just once, providing the table of correspondence between the symbols of Belarusian phonetic transcription and IPA. Symbols of IPA are corrupted in print (approximated by other Cyrillic, Latin, Greek graphemes), however. I could mail the scan to you if need be.Yury Tarasievich 08:19, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that you need to mail it to me. If he uses <w> as the IPA correspondance, then I think that the classification differences between the two schools can be glossed over for the purpose of our understanding. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Wrong cells

Why do /l/ and /w/ are put into /ɹ/ and /ɰ/ cells (see IPA table) ? Unomano 20:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

/l/ and /w/ are approximants. /l/ is a lateral approximant, meaning air flows on the side of the tongue and /w/ has simultaneous lip rounding. In either case this is non-contrastive so extra rows or columns aren't necessary. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

velar fricative?

While arguing at my home wikipedia about the most suitable transcription to Алякса́ндар Па́ўлавіч Глеб‏ someone, Belarusian speaker, claimed that Belarusian doesn't have velar fricative constant and that Г represents /h/. He even directed me to an online Belarusian radio ([1], click "Слухаць") to back it up.

So, what say you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Omergold (talk • contribs) 18:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The Belarusian service of Radio Liberty (which the URL points to) is cultivating the particular sort of orphoepy (tarashkevitsa), with one of the particularities concerning the issue of G phoneme (generally, the argumentation issuing from there is aimed to prove the "necessity" of "re-juvenation" of the (almost) lost "plosive g" and of introduction of the additional letter Ge with upturn; the English /h/ is suggested to be the "real" equivalent of the Bel. fricative /г/ etc.)

The academic point if view is that the prevailing variant of the Belarusian phoneme denoted by "Гг" is (velar) fricative (/gamma/), with "plosive g" occuring rarely, either traditionally (in some assimilated words) or "naturally" (in some phoneme combinations). The glottal consonant is considered to occur in the speech of some speakers and is regarded just as the spoken variant of the fricative cons. The Belarusian-to-English transliteration Г->H is the historically formed convention.

Cf. Padluzhny. Phonology of the Belarusian literary language, Minsk, 1989, and Stsyatsko. Introduction to the linguistics, Hrodna, 2001. Incidentally, and just out of interest, was the person arguing Amir E. Aharoni (aka Amire80)? Yury Tarasievich (talk) 16:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, i am mentioned by someone whom i hardly know - i'm a celebrity :)

I wasn't the one who brought up the issue there and i don't claim to be a Belarusian speaker, but i did participate in that discussion. Strangely enough, it wasn't about /g/ (ג) vs. /h/ (ה) as it is often the case in discussions of Russian/Belarusian names, but about /h/ (ה) vs. /χ/ (ח). The issue was that it is common in Israeli sports press to write the footballer's name with the letter ח, which has the sound of /χ/ (it's close to the Russian х). My guess is that the editors of Israeli sports newspapers read his name as Hleb in English and transliterated it with a letter that represents /χ/, as if it was written Хлеб. This is definitely wrong, but unfortunately common. Transliterating it as Gleb or Hleb would be better; although i tend to prefer Hleb, Gleb is still far better than "Khleb". In any case, i have better things to do than to argue with editors of sports supplements.

But anyway, i was wondering about the real Belarusian phoneme ... I do have some knowledge of linguistics, but my understanding of phonetics is very weak. Voiced velar fricative, /ɣ/, is the sound of the Arabic letter غ (i am bringing up Arabic, because it is relevant to Hebrew speakers). Such a sound doesn't exist in Israeli Hebrew. Transliterating it the way it is transliterated from Arabic (ע') would be very weird in a Belarusian word, but ה is reasonable. The letter ה is the voiceless glottal fricative and i thought that that is the way that г is pronounced in Belarusian.

In any case, this discussion is not about sounds, but about the way people think about them and represent them in writing, and that often takes weird forms. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Considering what today is Belarus was 100 years ago in the heart of the Jewish settlement of the Russian Empire, you'd think there would be some established conventions for rendering Belarusian names into the Hebrew alphabet (at least by way of Yiddish). Gomel/Homiel/Гомель, for example, is called האָמל (Homl) in Yiddish, suggesting that Belarusian г was interpreted as h by Yiddish speakers. If that interpretation extends to Hebrew, then הלב (suggesting [hleb]) would seem to be a better Hebrew transliteration than חלב (suggesting [xleb]). Incidentally, I notice Arabic Wikipedia calls him هليب (hlayb), not غليب (ɣlayb). —Angr 19:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a nice comment! The Arabic spelling has been brought up in that discussion. (هليب doesn't have to be "hlayb", in Arabic the letter ي (y) is often written in place of "e" in foreign words.) The Hebrew letter ה is a reasonable way to render /h/. The ח is completely wrong, it's a too-common mistake in newspapers.

I didn't know that academic sources say that the Belarusian г is not a /h/ but a /ɣ/, but i still think that ה would be the most reasonable transliteration. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Not many people will care, but Arabic names with غ /ɣ/ or/ʁ/ are often transliterated in Hebrew with ר <r> /ʁ/ (uvular, not velar /ɣ/), as in Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the last element of which the Hebrew Wikipedia writes sometimes with ר <r> and sometimes with ג <g> (https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%91%D7%95%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A1_%D7%91%D7%95%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A1_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99). And my grandmother grew up not far from Gomel/Homel, as a Yiddish speaker pre-1917, though she knew some Russian too, and she definitely pronounced it /gomel/. Linguistatlunch (talk) 19:25, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• Heh, is this still about the Belarusian phonology? :) To sum it up -- academic considers that in Belarusian orphoep. the velar fric. is the "reference" sound, and the glottal is spoken variant (dialectal), while the plosive is of rare occurence. All these are represented by Cyrillic letter Г in academic orthography.

  And sorry Amir, I hope you don't *terribly* mind me mentioning you, but I just couldn't keep myself from verifying my guess, seeing the Radio Liberty broadcasts offered as a "reference material". All other things aside, those guys are Sunday speakers, and have to conform to a, frankly, unusual orphoepy, at that. All kinds of freakish sounds may happen -- I witnessed palat-ed /R/ and /CZ/ -- no rural Belarusian speaker would ever manage to utter those. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 06:15, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, i'm honored :)

Apparently i'm good at faking that i'm an expert :)

I didn't provide the Radyjo Svaboda link because i support their political agenda, but because it's the only online Belarusian radio station that i know. I'm sure that there are others, but Svaboda probably has better PR people. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Re recent changes

Guys, these alteractions are hollow. First, the Cyrillics in square brackets actually mean a lot, only not for the English speakers -- those are the Belarusian phonetic transcription symbols. Second, there actually *exists* an IPA table for writing down the phonemes of the spoken Belarusian, prepared by Padluzhny. However, the book was published in 1989, so some of the IPA symbols are approximated by "the closest looking" equivalents. I was able to decipher some of those (like [ы] represented by /t/ there) but more fine complications (like with [е]) had me stopped. Third, there exists the detailed description of phonemes as "practiced by speakers" (again in Padluzhny's book), only I have trouble translating local phonology terms to English.

If somebody could take on such cleanup and translation? For current tables in this article are unsourced guesswork. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 07:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Padluzhny's book, and I can't read Belarussian anyway (though I can read the Cyrillic alphabet, so if it uses international Latinate terms I can figure them out - if I see something that looks similar to "алвеолар" I'll know what it means!). I assume that [ы] is represented by /ɨ/ not /t/, though. Do you have a copy of the book? If so, maybe you could e-mail me scans of the relevant pages (they couldn't be uploaded to Wikipedia because of copyright). —Angr 10:18, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Right, that's what I said -- I'm able to do obvious corrections, like [ы] is represented by /ɨ/ not /t/ -- but I can't deal with finer issues, like what exactly should mean the /e with dot under/ used in Padluzhny's book. Possibly there existed some conventional substitutions used in situations where typecast resources were not adequate?? Anyway, I made the wiki-table from the book's table content, with symbols represented exactly as in the book (will post here after a moment).

So much for the approximation table. And what about the another issue of representing the actual phonemes? I have the detailed descriptions of all the phonemes, but to post them here I'd need a cooperation from somebody familiar with both Western and Russian/Belarusian phonologic classification -- these differ, not subtly. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 08:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Here goes the Padluzhny's table intended for writing down the spoken Belarusian (Padluzhny, Fanietyka bielaruskaj litaraturnaj movy, Minsk, 1989; pp.26,27). Arc below the symbols denotes the affricate. Column 3.1 ("correct modern IPA symbols") was added by me. Also, I didn't bother to translate the notes, right now (will do if necessary).

Belarusian phonetic notation	...notation variants	IPA symbol per Padluzhny book, pp.26,27	Correct modern symbol	Keyword	Notes
1	2	3	3.1	4	5
а		a	a	абапал
о		ọ		бок
ы	и	t	ɨ	сыр
у		u	u	тут
о̂		Ø, ọ			Сустракаецца ў паўднёва-заходніх гаворках, нагадвае [у]
е	э	ẹ		эра	Варыянт [э] выкарыстоўваецца пасля цвёрдых зычных
е̂		ẹ			Сустракаецца ў паўднёва-заходніх гаворках, нагадвае [і]
ъ		ə			Вельмі кароткі галосны, які можа мець адценні галосных няверхняга пад'ёму
й		j	j	яма [йама]
ў		w		даў
п		p		пах
б		b		бок
ф		f		форма
в		v		выць
м		m		маці
т		t		ток
д		d		дом
с		s		сад
з		z		зара
н		n		нара
ш		š		шар
ж		ξ̌		жара
ч		t͜š		чаша	Дужка пад літарамі азначае, што гэта афрыката
дж		d͜ξ̌		сяджу
ц		t͜s		цана
дз		d͜z		дзвынкаць
р		r		рот
л		l		лодка
к		k		каша
g		g		gанак
х		x		хата
г		γ		гнаць
h		h		ага

Okay, to the "Correct modern symbol" column I would add that "š" and "ξ" should be "ʃ" and "ʒ" respectively, both alone and as part of an affricate. Underdots are an older way of indicating a closer pronunciation in IPA; nowadays the diacritic is the "uptack" [ ̝] (see Relative articulation#Raised and lowered). We could either translate "ẹ" and "ọ" to "e̝" and "o̝", or we could change his "e" and "o" to "ɛ" and "ɔ" and his "ẹ" and "ọ" to "e" and "o". I'd prefer the latter, as it's IPA style to avoid diacritics whenever feasible, and if Belarussian sounds anything like other Slavic languages I've heard, it's probably more accurate to boot. —Angr 09:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Does the following help? Belarusian "e" is "...significantly changing its articulation characteristics if the preceding consonant is palatalised... [in such positions] it can become closer to [i] or [a] [in different respective dialects]... [also there] it develops weak [i]-like transition (weaker than [a] though)... [also there] its prolongation [??? exposure??? -- don't know the translation] changes". The second "e-dot" entry in the table is describing the dialectal [i]-like variant.

Belarusian "o" is "...significantly labialised, affecting also the preceding consonant... [in all but western dialects] under the strong stress its articulation, in its initial phase, is very alike to [u], and in final phase it gets somewhat alike to [a]..." (and the second "o-dot" entry in the table is describing the south-western dialectal variant). Also the [o]'s initial phase of articulation after the palatalised consonants is strongly changed. However, the [i]-like transition of the [o] [in such positions] is the least strong among the Belarusian vowels. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 21:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of that either. Could the word you translated as "prolongation" or "exposure" actually be "length"? I found another phoneme chart at [2]. It isn't strictly IPA, but it's trivial to convert it to strict IPA. Padluzhny's book seems not to treat palatalized sounds as separate phonemes, is that right? —Angr 07:30, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

If there's a "length" term, then yes, of course that's what my lame translation ought to be. Thanks.

On palatalised sounds -- no, Padluzhny (and every other author here) treats them as separate phonemes. The table I posted is for the writing down the spoken Belarusian (so, it's simplified and serves primary for the establishing of the sound-IPA correspondences, and only mentions the palatalised sounds per the convention for writing those down (...the ' [apostrophe] sign is used for the soft consonants...)).

Yury Tarasievich (talk) 19:53, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Mayo's opinion

Moved this part of my previous post: Now, I'm narrowing the statement on /ɨ/ taken from Mayo. It's sort of very particular, and there seems to be no hint of such developments in native phonology, yet. I *think* I could see where such outlook may come from, but it seems to be, well, wrong.

The pages available are sparse, but from what can be seen of Mayo's chapter on Belarusian, it's either not very competent, or, more likely, is of somewhat eugenic nature (towards the shaping of the perception of the Belarusian language/culture history). In places, there's a complete (but characteristical) nonsence there -- esp. almost the whole section on the 16th-17th cent. history, the "preservation in school drama" and so on. The 20th cent. history is no better -- it takes something to name Tarashkyevich and not to name Karskiy. The page 57 mentions (fictitious) letter г' (cf. Tarashkyevich grammar, 1929 edition, p.49). There are no more "Central dialects", only the "transitional dialectal group". Etc. etc. etc. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 20:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Why is it wrong? Are there minimal pairs between /ɨ/ and /i/? As for г’, page 57 is in a chapter by someone called Paul Cubberley, not Mayo. —Angr 20:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

"It is wrong", chiefly, because the Belarusian academic body of knowledge considers these to be different phonemes. I grant that there still *are* arguments how many *phonemes* the Belarusian language "really" has (33, 37, 39 or 54), but these do not involve vowels, only consonants. I can't remember any "reference" minimal pairs for these right now, but these may do: [быць]-[біць] (to be-to hit) and [выць]-[віць] (to howl-to twist). These are "sort of" MPs, because there are also b-b' and v-v' differences in sounds -- which differences, however, some are considering not to be phonological. Make of it what you will :)).

Possibly, author was thinking about the *psychophonemes*, in which aspect [і] and [ы], are indeed, the closest, but so do [о] and [у]. As for the "page 57", I was careless with attributing, but I'd bet it's based on Mayo's publications, anyway. Seems it's "back to the Belarusian language articles" for me. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 07:25, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "psychophonemes", but if the closest minimal pairs for /ɨ/ and /i/ involve palatalized consonants before the latter and nonpalatalized consonants before the former, then they aren't minimal pairs at all, but show exactly the predicted complementary distribution. Basically, if [bɨtsʲ] and [bʲitsʲ] both occur, but *[bʲɨtsʲ] and *[bitsʲ] are both ill-formed, then either /b/ and /bʲ/ are separate phonemes, or /i/ and /ɨ/ are, but not both. So what's the evidence for both? Well, if /b/ and /bʲ/ contrast in other environments ("бa" vs. "бя", "бэ" vs. "бe", "бo" vs. "бë", "бy" vs. "бю", word-final "б" vs. "бь"), then they must be separate phonemes and, by extension, [i] and [ɨ] must be allophones. So why does the Belarusian academic body of knowledge consider them to be separate phonemes? What happens after consonants that don't palatalize? Are there contrasts between "тi"/"ты", "дi"/"ды", "чi"/"чы", "шi"/"шы", "жi"/"жы", or "pi"/"pы"? —Angr 08:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not answerable for the Academy's POV, am I?.. Anyway, as it's there for a time, there possibly may be something in it, right? Finally, it's Wikipedia, and one does not even have to "establish the truth", only to relay the prevailing POVs.

The info you are asking for is mostly already there -- there is no final word on whether palatalised sounds constitute separate phonemes in Belarusian. Padluzhny's "Phonological system of Belarusian language" (1969) gives the number as 37 phonemes (so, palatalised sounds are considered to be realisations (? implementation?). The modern higher education textbooks leave this issue open, quoting opinions on 37, 39 or 54 phonemes.

So, while your reasoning is beyond my level, and I can't really discuss this, I still feel you may be WP:OR'ing on the basis of incomplete data. E.g., while there are 11 complementary pairs of non-palatalised-palatalised sounds, there are no palatalised [t], [d], [ch], [sh], [zh], [r] in Belarusian, and the complements of [t] and [d] are [ts'] and [dz']. Psychophonemes are units used in the studies of psycho-physiological perception -- things like sureness of recognition etc. -- don't know the English terminology Yury Tarasievich (talk) 16:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I know there are no palatalized [t], [d], [ch], [sh], [zh], [r], but does that mean that [i] can never follow them, even in loanwords? Вікіпедыя and Амерыка seem to indicate it can't. (There's no Belarusian article on Tina Turner, so I can't tell if she'd be called Tiнa or Tынa.) —Angr 17:41, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

No, [i] can never follow those sounds, whatever the word's origin. In loanwords it gets substituted either by [y], or, in cases of [d] and [t], possibly by [dz]/[ts]+[i] (likewise for [ju], [ja], [jo], [je]). Yury Tarasievich (talk) 19:00, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Then I'm really curious why the Academy considers them separate phonemes. All I can think of is the fact that "i" comes from Proto-Slavic *ī, while "ы" comes from *ū, and those were separate phonemes, but that's not really much of a reason to call them separate phonemes today. Anyway, you're quite right that the point here is to reflect all the views neutrally, so ideally we should say that some experts (cited) consider them separate phonemes (ideally with some explanation why), while others (cited) consider them allophones of the same phoneme (since they're in complementary distribution). —Angr 19:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, for I was careless. Now I've checked in the latest (2007) academic edition of the Belarusian grammar, and the issue of the <і> and <ы> being separate phonemes is actually open still (and is one of the least clear); it is allowed that sounds [ы] and [і] may be an allophones (in Belarusian -- увасабленне) of single phoneme <і>.

Anyway, Mayo's unilateral statement is too much, and my other critique stands. And yes, in olden times, there were two phonemes. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 06:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Retroflex and postalveolar

There's a similar issue at Ukrainian phonology. I don't know if the postalveolar consonants are retroflex, as in Russian, or if they're palato-alveolar. Before we change it to the former, we should find a clear source on the matter. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose, [ʂ] sound will suit better for the Belarusian [ш] sound, as [ʃ] sounds unacceptably soft for the Belarusian language. —zedlik (talk) 02:31, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a source? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:10, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Just basing on the pronunciation examples in Voiceless postalveolar fricative and Voiceless retroflex fricative. [ш] sound is always hard in Belarusian, it can't sound as in Voiceless postalveolar fricative--it's too soft there. Maybe an example in Voiceless retroflex fricative sounds a little bit harder and expressive than needed, but this pronunciation is much closer to what Belarusians say. The same is with [ч]--[tʂ] fits Belarusian pronunciation better than [tʃ]. —zedlik (talk) 04:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the article says "Postalveolar consonants are all hard (laminal retroflex) while Russian and Ukrainian have both hard and soft postalveolars." Whatever these sounds are in Ukrainian, they don't have such a contrast. AlexanderKaras (talk) 04:34, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Mere variations

The article says:

Usually, the number of 39 is quoted, excluding the 9 geminated versions of consonants as "mere variations".

I marked it as "vague". It may be true, but examples for the "usually" part would make the article better. Thank you. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:21, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is so slanted! Who drew it up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elishua Porush (talk • contribs) 23:56, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

@Elishua Porush: Slanted i.e. biased? Towards what? Peter238 (talk) 22:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Padluzhny (1989)

This source contains way more information than there presently is in the article. If you read the Cyrillic alphabet fluently, and understand Belarusian (even Russian might do, as it's similar), please mine that source and improve this article. Peter238 (talk) 13:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Please don't make broad assumptions about how close Russian is to Belarusian, Ukrainian or other Eastern Slavic languages actually are. If you were truly a linguist, you'd know that the level of mutual intelligibility is a misnomer popularised by the tourist trade in particular. As you're a native Polish speaker, you should know better than engage in such OR as to push your POV that these languages are so close. In fact, they're comparable to Romance languages: speaking one does not automatically make another intelligible to you. For example, if you were tossed into an exclusively Ukrainian speaking situation, do you imagine that you would be able to understand anything? Sorry, but I know Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish. You're right off tangent. Having common aspects in the morphology and etymology in language groups only makes for related languages, not candidates for source mining. Padluzhny is relevant to Belarusian. This doesn't mean that Russian readers will actually be able to do anything other than guestimate his analysis (quite possibly/likely incorrectly). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:51, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: Remain civil or this is my last message.

- WP:OR does not apply to talk pages. It says so in the first paragraph.

- I was specifically talking about Belarusian and Russian, not other languages.

- I am an amateur linguist. I've never claimed to be a professional. To be honest, in this field, I don't really care about anything besides phonetics (and improving my English, of course).

- Once again, WP:OR does not apply to talk pages. WP:POV says nothing about talk pages, and I'm not pushing any point of view. It was my first message here! And it's not really my point of view per se, I was just repeating what I remembered, probably from talking to people from Russia and Belarus. Besides: 1. you're a native speaker of English, not Russian or Belarusian. 2. I don't see Belarusian (nor Polish, for that matter) in your profile. Your knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian, as you say, is intermediate. Well, if you're telling the truth, you should update your profile. If you're lying, stop the arrogant show offs, such as the first part of your message. The last three sentences would be more than enough. They're perfectly neutral.

- Thanks anyway for the correction (if it's actually accurate, I'll check that with other people), but work on your tone, and actually read the rules you link to. Peter238 (talk) 02:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

A) You were encouraging others (stating that "If you read the Cyrillic alphabet fluently, and understand Belarusian (even Russian might do, as it's similar), please mine that source and improve this article.") to engage in OR as there is a large discrepancy in Slavic languages even in minutia. I was not discussing OR or POV on the talk page, but the consequences of following your encouragement to introduce such content to the article. Even using Google translate ends up as a fiasco as many words in Belarusian (and Ukrainian) are mistakenly translated into Russian where it produces what appears to be a match, but has a different meaning (and vice versa). When you start playing with phonemes on the assumption that they are the same in related languages, you are really going to get yourself in deep water unless you truly know how they are pronounced.

B) As you've brought up the point of civility, please have the courtesy to read the first paragraph on my talk page, rather than simply looking at my Babel box. In fact, rather than showing off my 'skills', I prefer to understate them. I have a very good working knowledge of both Polish and Belarusian as well (although these have now come down to understanding, but very weak in speaking the languages). No Wikipedian is under obligation to disclose any more about themselves than they feel they want or need to, therefore I am under no obligation to update my user page. Under such circumstances, you are breaching WP:CIVIL in your personal attack "Well, if you're telling the truth, you should update your profile. If you're lying, stop the arrogant show offs, such as the first part of your message. The last three sentences would be more than enough." and asking me to disclose personal information I prefer not to (partially for the sake of modesty, but also in order to avoid being asked to translate, cite check, and involve myself in more articles than the hundreds on my watchlist already). This is covered in WP:TALKNO: "Do not ask for another's personal details". --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to check with native Russian speaking editors or, better yet, native Belarusian editors as to the veracity of my observation. (Oh, and incidentally, Belarusian and Ukrainian are linguistically closer than Russian and Belarusian... including phonemes that don't exist in Russian. Some phonemes resemble Polish phonemes, and don't exist in either Russian or Ukrainian.) --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: You were encouraging others (stating that "If you read the Cyrillic alphabet fluently, and understand Belarusian (even Russian might do, as it's similar), please mine that source and improve this article.") to engage in OR as there is a large discrepancy in Slavic languages even in minutia. - I actually changed that bit to what you quoted. It was more strongly worded before. Anyway, to state that I was encouraging others to engage in OR is ludicrous. I wasn't even aware of it, which I already said in the second message.

I was not discussing OR or POV on the talk page, but the consequences of following your encouragement to introduce such content to the article. - Yes, you were. Re-read your first message - that is not what you wrote there.

Playing with phonemes on the assumption that they are the same in related languages Care to elaborate? I don't do that.

These do not apply to this particular situation:

- No Wikipedian is under obligation to disclose any more about themselves than they feel they want or need to, therefore I am under no obligation to update my user page.

- Under such circumstances, you are breaching WP:CIVIL in your personal attack "Well, if you're telling the truth, you should update your profile. If you're lying, stop the arrogant show offs, such as the first part of your message. The last three sentences would be more than enough." and asking me to disclose personal information I prefer not to (...). This is covered in WP:TALKNO: "Do not ask for another's personal details".

You disclosed the languages you speak without me even asking (including Ukrainian and Polish there contributed to my opinion that it was a show off), and I asked that you update your profile according to that - which, the way I did it, I could do. Re-read your first message and my response to it.

So what, are you now going to call your first message "a helpful, neutral correction"? That's what the last three sentences of it are. The rest of the message is, for the most part, "look how smart and better than you I am". Read WP:Wikipedia is not therapy.

I also don't see a problem in being asked to translate, cite check, and involve myself in more articles than the hundreds on my watchlist already. You simply say "no", exactly the way you refused to update your profile. Or you can simply say "I translate and cite check only things in Russian and Ukrainian", or something like that.

Feel free to check with native Russian speaking editors or, better yet, native Belarusian editors as to the veracity of my observation. - I will. Peter238 (talk) 12:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peter238: Have you checked with other users on the point as to whether Russian and Belarusian are interchangeable as yet? More to the point, can you honestly say that you understand the source you're asking others to 'mine'? Probably most importantly, can you provide an online link to the relevant textbook? All I've been able to establish is that it exists, but is only available in a few select reference sections of libraries around the world. It certainly seems like a futile argument for us to conduct on an article talk page. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:41, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: Not on WP - in real life, but yes. What you wrote was accurate, so I stand corrected.

- I understood many words like "teeth", "tongue", "dental", "alveolar", as well as (more or less) descriptions of the specific sounds as a whole. The thing is, I really hate reading long texts in Cyrillic, because it's simply exhausting. That is why I just took a look at some of the sounds, made some very general notes (on the exact place of articulation of dental/alveolar consonants) and returned the book. I ask people to mine it because that book (seems to) describe Belarusian sounds in a rather detailed way, which I'm fairly certain about.

- I have no idea where you can read or buy it. I was in Białystok a few months ago, and read it in a library (probably this one, but I'm not completely sure - it was my first and only time there.) I don't have access to it now - I didn't even scan it (legal here when for private use). Peter238 (talk) 12:17, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peter238: Hmm. That's unfortunate. I'll check with a couple of Slavic linguist friends (and the universities they're attached to), but reliable texts on Belarusian grammar, phonology, etymology, morphology, etc. are like gems: few and far between. I can access a number of texts on virtually every other Slavic language, but Belarusian is an area deeply neglected in Slavistics in Western tertiary institutions. There appears to be more information available pertaining Upper and Lower Silesian than Belarusian.

Have you checked JSTOR or other paywall sites for this publication? It certainly sounds as if it would be an excellent source if it were more freely available. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:44, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: Nope, no success. I can't find a single legal copy available. Mayo (2002, cited in the article) is also not bad, but it certainly looks less specific than Padluzhny (1989). Peter238 (talk) 17:14, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peter238: What a pity. I guess it's one for the wishlist. With any luck, someone else who has access to it will read this and ping us to let us know. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)