Central Russian dialects

Central or Middle Russian dialects is one of the main groups of the Russian dialects. Of Northern Russian origin, it has nonetheless assumed many Southern Russian features.

The official dialect (Standard Russian) originates from a dialect from this group.

Territory 
 The territory of the primary formation (e.g. that consist of "Old" Russia of the 16th century before Eastern conquests by Ivan IV) is fully or partially modern regions (oblasts): Moscow, Tver, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Pskov, Novgorod, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl (in Rostov), Ryazan (in Kasimov) and the enclave of Chukhloma.
 The territory of the second formation (e.g. where Russians settled after the 16th century) consist of most the land to the South-East of Moscow, that is the middle and lower Volga, Ural as well as Siberia and Far East. It also includes Saint-Petersburg, whose dialect is fairly close to Standard Russian.

Features 
Central Russian is a transitional stage between the North and the South, so some of its dialects closer to the North have northern features, and those closer to the South have the southern ones.

Classification 
There are two types of internal differentiation of Central Russian dialects, the first is based on the methods of linguistic geography (areal classification) , the second is based on typological patterns (structural-typological classification)

The most well known and widespread are areal classification.

The main groups in the central russian dialects:

     Pskov group of dialects;
     Western group of dialects;
     Eastern group of dialects.

Pskov group  is   transitional to the dialects of the Belarus.

Notes

References

External links
 R. Ronko, E. Volf, M. Grebenkina, M. Ershova, A. Okhapkina, A. Hadasevich, V. Morozova. Opochka Dialect Corpus. 2019 Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, NRU HSE; Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

See also
 Northern Russian dialects
 Southern Russian dialects
 Old Novgorod dialect
 Vowel reduction in Russian

Category:Russian dialects