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We all agree that the letter г in Russian is equivalent to g in English. But why is the letter г in some Russian words pronounced [v]?

For example:

  • сегодня = pronounced as if it is written: севодня

    TV logo - Сегодня

  • 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

CocoPop
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Influx
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3 Answers3

32

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

This г read as в is an example of historical spelling. It's only found 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's only in Russian that [g] changed to [v] in the genitive case endings. Still, the Russian orthography preserves the traditional spelling with г. Perhaps the reason for this is that in the Moscow dialect, which was later taken as the basis for Standard Russian, [g] changed to [v] no earlier than in the 17th century, i.e. quite recently. The reason 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 в, it's in the middle of the word and not in the ending, and 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 no longer in use. It was replaced 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's in the genitive case ending that г is read as в.

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 nevertheless are spelled with в because that /evo/ is not a genitive ending, for example марево ['ma.rʲɪ.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 ad that started with ДЁШЕГО! which means "Cheap!" and is pronounced ['dʲo.ʂɪ.və]. That is really a funny mistake since the word is actually spelled дёшево because it isn't 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 as well.

CocoPop
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Yellow Sky
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    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 '17 at 05:19
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    @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 '17 at 14:11
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    @NikolayErshov It's very common typologically for [ɣ] (though not [h]) to become [w] or [v]. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 13 '17 at 22:27
  • @NikolayErshov Any example of a sound disappearing in pronunciation and then a new sound appearing at the place of the disappeared one out of nothing? I think it was more likely first [h] evolving intervocally into [ɣ] and then becoming [w] or [v]. – Manjusri May 13 '17 at 22:31
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    @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 '17 at 22:52
  • @Nikolay Ershov But it didn't appear 'out of nothing'; it appeared of [w]. – Manjusri May 14 '17 at 11:40
  • Is there also a way to explain Бог being pronounced like бох? – Martin Peters May 14 '17 at 13:44
  • @Manjusri No. It's got nothing to do with the [w]. It appeared by analogy with the intervocalic /r/ where British Engilsh preserved it at word boundaries. The reason it appeared was the reason epenthetic vowels appear in general, there was nothing between the two vowels and languages are often uncomfortable with hiatus. – Nikolay Ershov May 14 '17 at 16:34
  • @Martin Peters I think the explanation is the two competing forms of pronunciation in the 17th century – Manjusri May 14 '17 at 17:06
  • @Nikolay Ershov Interesting, but still it's not 'out of nothing'. It's by analogy with existing pronunciation patterns. – Manjusri May 14 '17 at 17:08
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    @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 '17 at 14:55
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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.

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

That trend led Trediakovsky to posit two different letters for two distinct sounds.

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

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

Basically, in addition to сегодня, any combination of -ого and -его for a genitive masculine/neuter 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 are words of the много [mnóga]-type.

CocoPop
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Manjusri
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    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 '17 at 09:35
  • 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 '17 at 15:25
  • @Sergey Slepov You can see theexample of the Lomonosov's text with comments on it – Manjusri May 13 '17 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 '17 at 22:23
  • @Sergey Stepov Also, pls see the examples from the Peter's time above (just two, but I believe there are many more to find) – Manjusri May 13 '17 at 22:28
  • @Sergey Slepov And of course the systematic sound change covers the Genitive forms, but that fact doesn't have anything to do with the fact of competing norms in the 17th-18th centuries, nor makes it his assumption of [h] => [nothing] => [ɣ] feasible. – Manjusri May 13 '17 at 22:42
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    By the way, [ɣ] is not really “Ukrainian” Г, it is “Belarusian” Г. https://ukrainian.stackexchange.com/questions/1137/what-are-the-types-of-ge-sounds-in-the-east-slavic-languages – yalov May 16 '17 at 16:56
  • @yalov That's an irrelevant and too chatty a comment, because neither Ukrainian phonetics nor grammar are unificially codified at the moment. Since there is a dialectal chain between Southern Russian dialects and Ukrainian, the [ɣ] here shall represent the unified fricative sound for the East-Slavic languages in general. – Manjusri May 16 '17 at 17:16
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Сначала звук "г" стал произноситься фрикативно, как он сейчас произносится в украинском языке и часто в южнорусских говорах (Украина и соседние регионы, например Белгородская область). Так, например, Брежнев произносил "г" фрикативно, потому что он был из Днепропетровской области.

Потом в -ого- мягкое "г" вообще перестало произноситься. "Красного"->"красного" с мягким "г" -> "красноо".

Потом между двумя буквами "о" стали добавлять "в".

Первые слова с таким "в" употребляются в 14 веке. Сначала это произошло в Ростово-Суздальской земле, потом такое произношение проникло в Москву и стало восприниматься как правильное столичное произношение, а тогда уже распространилось повсюду.

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