The four consonant rules that make a text look Belarusian: where ў is written, when д becomes дз, when a consonant doubles, and what the apostrophe does.
I can write ў, дз, дж, doubled consonants and the apostrophe where the rules require them.
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Яна была ў бібліятэцы, а ён быў у школе.
She was at the library, and he was at school.
Дзеці хадзілі ў лес па суніцы.
The children went to the forest for wild strawberries.
Жыццё ў вёсцы ідзе павольней.
Life in the village goes more slowly.
Уся сям'я сабралася на Дзяды.
The whole family gathered for Dziady.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
ў is written in place of у after a vowel:
It is not written at the start of a sentence, after a consonant, or in most recent borrowings (ва ўніверсітэце but урок). Polack has a monument to this letter, unveiled in 2003 during the Day of Belarusian Written Language - the idea of the calligrapher Pavel Siamchanka.
These are single sounds, written with two letters. Дз replaces д before a soft vowel (dzekanne): дзень, дзеці, хадзіць. Дж appears where д meets ж in verb forms: хаджу, сяджу.
Likewise ц replaces т before a soft vowel (tsekanne): цень, цяпер, цётка. This is why Belarusian sounds softer than Russian to a Russian ear.
Where Russian writes a soft consonant plus ь plus a vowel, Belarusian often doubles the consonant instead:
| Russian | Belarusian |
|---|---|
| жизнью | жыццём |
| знание | веданне |
| колосья | калоссе |
The doubling is real - the consonant is pronounced long.
The apostrophe replaces the Russian ъ and, in many positions, ь. It marks that the consonant before it is hard and a j follows: сям'я, аб'ява, надвор'е, б'е. Belarusian has no ъ at all, and this is the single most visible sign that a text is Belarusian rather than Russian.
Apply this grammar in B2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesTypical errors: writing у after a vowel where ў belongs, and using ъ, which does not exist in the alphabet.
Writing у after a vowel
Ў goes there: была ў хаце.
Using ъ
Belarusian has no ъ; the apostrophe does that job.
Not doubling the consonant
Жыццё, веданне, калоссе.
Writing д or т before a soft vowel
Дзень, цень, хадзіць, цётка.
Яна была ў бібліятэцы, а ён быў у школе.
She was at the library, and he was at school.
The same preposition twice: ў after a vowel, у after a consonant.
Дзеці хадзілі ў лес па суніцы.
The children went to the forest for wild strawberries.
Dzekanne twice: <em>дзеці</em>, <em>хадзілі</em>.
Жыццё ў вёсцы ідзе павольней.
Life in the village goes more slowly.
The doubled ц of <em>жыццё</em> is pronounced long.
Уся сям'я сабралася на Дзяды.
The whole family gathered for Dziady.
The apostrophe in <em>сям'я</em>, and Dziady is the autumn remembrance of the dead.
Я хаджу на працу пешшу.
I walk to work.
<em>Дж</em> where д meets ж, and a doubled ш in <em>пешшу</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.