Belarusian writes what it says. Unstressed о and э become а, and е becomes я in the syllable before the stress - which is why the same root looks different in different forms.
I can spell unstressed vowels correctly, counting syllables from the stress to decide between е and я.
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Вада ў возеры была цёплая.
The water in the lake was warm.
Лясная сцяжынка вяла да ракі.
A forest path led to the river.
Лесавік у казках жыве ў пушчы.
The forest spirit in the tales lives in the wilderness.
Ён сардэчна падзякаваў гаспадыні.
He thanked the hostess warmly.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Russian spelling is morphological: вода and воды keep the same о, and you work out the pronunciation from the stress. Belarusian spelling is phonetic: it writes the vowel that is actually said. This single difference is behind most of the spelling errors a Russian speaker makes.
Unstressed о and э are written а:
| Stressed | Unstressed |
|---|---|
| воды | вада |
| дом | дамы |
| сэрца | сардэчны |
Unstressed е is written я, but only in the syllable immediately before the stress. Further away it stays е:
This is the rule people get wrong most often, and the fix is mechanical: count syllables back from the stress. One syllable, я. More, е.
Because the writing follows the sound, one root can look like three: сэрца - сардэчны - сярдзіты. Recognising that they are one family is a reading skill, not just a spelling one.
Apply this grammar in B2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesTypical errors: writing я in every unstressed syllable rather than only the one before the stress, and carrying Russian о spellings over unchanged.
Keeping the Russian о in unstressed position
It is written а: вада, дамы, галава.
Writing я more than one syllable before the stress
Only the syllable before the stress: лясны but лесавік.
Leaving е in the syllable before the stress
It becomes я: сямнаццаць, вясна.
Writing а in a borrowing that keeps о
Радыё, трыо, Токіо keep their о.
Вада ў возеры была цёплая.
The water in the lake was warm.
Unstressed о is written а: <em>вада</em>, from stressed <em>воды</em>.
Лясная сцяжынка вяла да ракі.
A forest path led to the river.
One syllable before the stress, so <em>лясная</em> with я.
Лесавік у казках жыве ў пушчы.
The forest spirit in the tales lives in the wilderness.
Two syllables from the stress, so е stays - the same root as <em>лясная</em>.
Ён сардэчна падзякаваў гаспадыні.
He thanked the hostess warmly.
<em>Сэрца</em> gives <em>сардэчна</em> - the same root, two spellings.
Па радыё перадавалі прагноз надвор'я.
The forecast was being broadcast on the radio.
A borrowing that keeps its о: <em>радыё</em>.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in B2 course exercises
The state orthographic norm in force since 1 September 2010, cited as the law itself. It is what makes the written forms of akanne and jakanne, the obligatory ё, ў after a vowel and the apostrophe in place of a hard sign normative rather than conventional. No URL is given deliberately: the rules text is not published at a stable public address - the pages that carry the law show only its enacting articles - so a link here would imply a verification a reader cannot perform.
The current academic reference grammar; the linked edition serves the full text. Its morphology part is the source for the paradigms used here. On the neuter noun it states the nominative singular endings as -а (-о) and -е (-ё), and gives the nominative plural as -ы after a hard consonant (сёлы, вёдры) against -і after a soft consonant and after к, х (палі, воблакі).
The academic reference grammar behind the phonology, orthoepy and morphology sections: the 32-letter inventory, дж and дз as digraphs rather than letters, and the normative description of akanne and jakanne. A print work; no URL is given, because the only one available is a library catalogue record that carries none of the text.