Linguistic overview

Brief characterisation

Similarly to the Polish and standard Belarusian languages, the varieties presented here are inflected languages, in which a number of inflections occurs, such as tense and person inflection of verbs, number and case inflection of nouns.
Among the features distinguishing the Belarusian language from among East Slavic languages are:

• Akanie i.e. the old unaccented vowel [o] after hard consonants shifted to [a], which is, incidentally, rendered in the standard orthography,
• Ciakanie and dziakanie – i.e. an affricative pronunciation (i.e. using an affricate consonant) of the old soft [t'] and [d'] as [c'] and [dz'].
• Depalatalisation, i.e. pronouncing the old [r'] with place of articulation on the hard palate in most dialects, - the presence of a fricative consonant [h] in place of Proto-Salvic [*g] (Fałowski 2011: 146, 154, 157-159Fałowski 2011 / komentarz/comment/r /
  Fałowski, Adam 2011. „Język białoruski”, w: Barbara Oczkowa & Elżbieta Szczepańska (red.) Słowiańskie języki literackie. Rys historyczny. Kraków: UJ, s. 145-160.
  ).

M. Sajewicz considers ciakanie and dziakanie the most important features distinguishing Belarusian dialects from other East-Slavic varieties in the Białystok region (Sajewicz 1997Sajewicz 1997 / komentarz/comment/r /
Sajewicz, Michał 1997. „O białorusko-ukraińskiej granicy językowej na Białostocczyźnie.”, w: Feliks Czyżewski & Michał Łesiów (red.) Ze studiów nad gwarami wschodniosłowiańskimi w Polsce. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, s. 91-107.
).