Akanye

Akanye or akanje (аканне, а́канье, ), literally "a-ing", is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes or  are realized as more or less close to. It is a case of vowel reduction.

The most familiar example is probably Russian akanye (pronounced but not represented orthographically in the standard language). Akanye also occurs in:
 * Standard Belarusian (represented orthographically)
 * Northern (Polissian) Ukrainian dialects
 * Slovene dialects (e.g., Lower Carniolan dialects),
 * Some subgroups of the Kajkavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian
 * Bulgarian dialects (e.g., the Rhodope dialects, including the Smolyan dialect).
 * Polish dialects (Podlasie, Kresy)

Description
In Belarusian аканне (akanne), both non-softened and softened and  and other phonemes phonetically merge into  in unstressed positions; see Belarusian phonology.

In Russian а́канье (akan'ye), (except for Northern dialects), and  phonetically merge in unstressed positions. If not preceded by a palatalized (soft) consonant, these phonemes give (sometimes also transcribed as ) in the syllable immediately before the stress and in absolute word-initial position. In other unstressed locations, non-softened and  are further reduced towards a short, poorly enunciated. The phonemic dialectal feature of clear distinction of the unstressed o (i.e., no reduction) is called okanye (о́канье), literally "o-ing".

After soft consonants, unstressed and  are pronounced like  in most varieties of Russian (see vowel reduction in Russian for details); this reduction is not considered a manifestation of akanye. Unlike Belarusian akanne, Russian akanye does not affect softened vowels.

Slovene akanje may be partial (affecting only syllables before or after the stressed vowel) or complete (affecting all vowels in a word). Examples from various Slovene dialects: domú → damú 'at home' (pretonic o), dnò → dnà 'bottom' (tonic o), léto → líəta (posttonic o), ne vém → na vém 'I don't know' (pretonic e), hléb → hlàb 'loaf' (tonic e), jêčmen → jèčman 'barley' (posttonic e).