Church Slavonic Language - Recensions - Russian (Synodal) Recension - Standard (Russian) Variant

Standard (Russian) Variant

In Russia, Church Slavonic is pronounced in the same way as Russian, with some exceptions:

• Church Slavonic features okanye and yekanye, i.e., the absence of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. That is, о and е in unstressed positions are always read as and ~ respectively (like in northern Russian dialects), whereas in standard Russian pronunciation they have different allophones when unstressed.
• There should be no de-voicing of final consonants, although in practice there often is.
• The letter е is never read as ё ~ (the letter ё does not exist in Church Slavonic writing at all). This is also reflected in borrowings from Church Slavonic into Russian: in the following pairs the first word is Church Slavonic in origin, and the second is purely Russian: небо / нёбо (nebo / nëbo), надежда / надёжный (nadežda / nadëžnyj).
• The letter Γ can traditionally be read as voiced fricative velar sound (just as in Southern Russian dialects); however, occlusive (as in standard Russian pronunciation) is also possible and legal since the 20th century. When unvoiced, it becomes ; this has influenced the Russian pronunciation of Бог (Bog) as Boh .
• The adjective endings -аго/-его/-ого/-яго are pronounced as written (, ), whereas Russian -его/-ого are pronounced with instead of (and with the reduction of unstressed vowels).