Southern Russian dialects

Southern Russian is one of the main groups of Russian dialects.

Territory

 * The territory of the primary formation (i.e. that consists of "Old" Russia of the 16th century before Eastern conquests by Ivan IV) is entirely 11 modern regions (oblasts): Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Oryol, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tambov, Tula, Voronezh; and some southern parts of 3 regions: Moscow, Pskov, and Tver
 * The territory of the second formation (i.e. where Russians settled after the 16th century) consists of most of the land of lower Don and Volga, the Northern Caucasus, as well as Southern Ural, Siberia, and Far East.

Phonology

 * Unstressed undergoes different degrees of vowel reduction mainly to  (strong akanye), less often to, ,.
 * Unstressed, ,  following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to  (like in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced  in such positions (e.g. несли is pronounced , not ) – this is called yakanye/яканье.
 * Fricative instead of the Standard and Northern . Soft  is usually.
 * Semivowel in the place of the Standard and Northern  and final.
 * where the Standard and Northern have.
 * Prosthetic before  and stressed : во́кна, ву́лица, Standard Russian окна, улица "windows, street".
 * Prosthetic before  and : етот, ентот, Standard Russian этот "this".
 * In Pskov (southern) and Ryazan sub-groups only one voiceless affricate exists. Merging of Standard Russian and  into one consonant whether  or.

Morphology

 * Palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects): он ходить, они ходять "he goes, they go"
 * Occasional dropping of the 3rd person ending at all: он ходи, они ходя "he goes, they go"
 * Oblique case forms of personal pronouns мяне́, табе́, сабе́ instead of Standard Russian мне, тебе, себе "me, you, -self".

Relation to other languages
Some of these features such as akanye/yakanye, a debuccalized or lenited, a semivowel , and palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs are also present in modern Belarusian and some dialects of Ukrainian (Eastern Polesian), indicating a linguistic continuum.