Steve/Mark, thanks a lot for adding the Italian accents! Maybe you could also add Central Italian: Italian spoken in Central Italy is a mix of Tuscan and Roman accents. It isn’t urgent, so you can take your time.
I think there is no need to distinguish regional accents of Russian. The overwhelming majority of Russian speakers consider Moscow/St.Petersburg accent as a sole standard which they should approach for in their speech. It is obviously not prestigious to “have an accent” here in Russia, no matter which region this accent belongs to.
Dmitry, the question is not to establish which accent is standard or prestigious, but just to make users aware of the speaker’s origin, from my point of view.
steve “Russian: 0 please let me know what you would like to see here”
Russian:
- Northern dialect
- Central dialects -Western and Еastern
- Southern dialect
Dmitry_DA “It is obviously not prestigious to “have an accent” here in Russia, no matter which region this accent belongs to.”
It is obviously not prestigious in Moscow/St.Petersburg :)))
Thanks Annabell, and thanks for answering delaf on the issue of points.
Just out of curiosity, what are the geographical limits of the Northern, Central and Southern accents.
I read your bio. Our company recently purchased some lumber in Syvtyvkar for sale to Japan. I have also read Yama by Kuprin which I enjoyed very much and I agree that Russian is a beautiful and enchanting language.
I found this map, but surely there are others on the Internet
http://tinyurl.com/25pewcs
Wow, this is a fascinating map. Many thanks.
I wonder if you or one of our Russian members could record some of this and place the recording and text in our Russian library with a link to the map in the Notes section.
We have permission from Wikipedia to record and use their content.
Annabell
would it make sense to have 4 accents
- Northern
- West Central
- East Central
- Southern
Unfortunately I’m not a philologist and most speakers of these dialects too 
Easier to specify where speaker was born.
“Central dialects are transitional group between the two other dialects, and not forming a single whole” http://tinyurl.com/25pewcs
It’s funny, but you made a mistake in “SyKtyvkar” as most Russian do. It is the word in the Komi language, difficult for Russian-speaking :))
I agree with Dmitry – there is no need to add accents for Russian. All content providers speak standard Russian. And even if there is someone who normally speaks non-standard Russian, he will record lessons in standard Russian (except ones with Southern accent – they always speak with Ukranian-ish accent).
There is no harm in having the accents and just letting most of the content default to “no accent”.
There is also the issue of a conversation between people of different accents like when they interview Gorbachev on Echo Moskvi or some Georgian or Abkhazian. What do others think we should do?
It is exactly what I wanted to say, but did not.
Among native Russians there are almost no an accent. By “native Russians” I mean people, to whom Russian is the first language. I am also “a native Russian” in this meaning.
Yes, there are slight differences, but the majority of Russians can’t tell have they any accent or not, and if they have – what exact accent. We watch the same TV, and all announcers speak Standard Russian.
But among bilingual Russian citizens – my cousins for example – there are many who has an accent. But it is not “Northern / West Central / East Central / Southern”. My cousins have Turkic accent, I think. They sometimes unintentionally pronounce “k” like “q” (ق in Arabic), “b” like “p”, and have a way more vowels in they speech than Standard Russian has (not just а, и, у, э, о, я, ю, е, ё, ы, but a row of vowels between a and е, and а and э, also I sometimes found their ё to be somewhere between the Engliish “ur” and the Russian “ё”).
As we have a joke about “польшой кород Чепоксары” (Большой город Чебоксары), I suppose Chuvashs have the same problem.
Also I am against of geographical division, as the place where you born does not define the accent you speak. There are Ukranian villages in Siberia and Far East. They speak with a strong and very lovely Southern accent. But they have never been in Ukraine, they live somewhere near to Ussuriysk, for example. And just in 5 km there could be another village where the majority would speak Standard Russian.
So, living in Magnitogorsk near to Bashkortostan, have been in Tatarstan a lot of times, in Komi twice (not only Syktyvkar, but a small Russian village on Pechora bank), in Moscow, SPb, Vladivostok, and having a Russian client in Kazakhstan — there is no much difference. The only thing that chocked me in some regions — they say “aga” with normal Russian “г”, while I usually say it with Ukrainian voiced “х”. But if Russian is not the main language, people tend to have some accent, even if they speak Russian like a native.
Forget to write:
I agree to have Standard and Southern.
On the other hand we does not have cockney and AAVE as accents for English here. Why we should have non-standard accents for Russian?
no but we have a variety of regional accents in several languages. I must say I can only hear the Southern Hovorit po russki, the occasional gutteral “r”, and those people with heavy “a”’ pachemu, patamu chto…
Heavy “a” is now known as “maaaskovky russky” :))
Cakypa “I agree to have Standard and Southern.”
But what about people with heavy “о” in the speech - Northern?
http://tinyurl.com/25k9u4g
I meant write guttural “r” but this does not seem to be a regional trait.
I don’t think that heavy “o” is Northern accent itself. It is one of features of Northern accents. Heavy “o” is widely known as “okanie”. People with Southern accent also “okayut”. Here, at Southern (!!!) Urals there is a village where people “okayut”. But it does not mean that they speak Northern dialect. Moreover, they even don’t speak Southern dialect. They just “okayut”.
But, as you see we speak about villages…
And accourding to Wikipedia,
"Диалекты русского языка
Современное положение
Степень диалектных различий не препятствует взаимопониманию носителей. В XX веке широкое развитие образования и СМИ, масштабная миграция населения способствовали резкому сокращению носителей традиционных говоров; сейчас это в основном сельские жители старшего поколения. В речи городского населения различных регионов России имеются незначительные отличия, главным образом лексического, отчасти также фонетического характера, иногда опосредованно (через просторечие) связанные с традиционными говорами данного региона."