Pre revolution spoken Russian

[Превед]

Does Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna exhibit any features of the Pre-Revolutionary accent in her speech, as heard in connection with the current Quatercentenary?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri7geUgWVFM

[Tsarfan]

For perhaps the best English-language description of the evolution of written and spoken Russian throughout the 19th century, one should read Orlando Figes' Natasha's Dance.  In fact, one should read this book for several other reasons.  It examines the cultural history of Russia in a way that political and social histories barely touch, much less fully explore . . . and it ties that cultural history coherently into the social and political movements of the time.  I would go so far as to say that trying really to grasp what happened in Russia in the century leading up to the revolution is all but impossible without resort to this book.

[Превед]

For perhaps the best English-language description of the evolution of written and spoken Russian throughout the 19th century, one should read Orlando Figes' Natasha's Dance.

Does it really delve into linguistics? I.e. the issue of palatalisation?

Here is for example a wonderful brief insight into aristocratic Dutch. (Which you can hear shades of in Princess Beatrix's speech, as it is her "private mother tongue".) With sound samples. I wonder if something similar can be found for Russian?

[Svetabel]

Does Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna exhibit any features of the Pre-Revolutionary accent in her speech, as heard in connection with the current Quatercentenary?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri7geUgWVFM

I'd say only a slight accent of a person who knows several languages and possibly a slight Georgian accent. Very good and clear modern Russian anyway.

[Tsarfan]

Does it really delve into linguistics? I.e. the issue of palatalisation?

No.  It's really more philological and etiological in its approach.

[Forum Admin]

Does Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna exhibit any features of the Pre-Revolutionary accent in her speech, as heard in connection with the current Quatercentenary?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri7geUgWVFM

I heard my late "Tante Lilly" speak in a perfect pre-Revolution accent in Russian many many times (it was a delight to listen to her recite her favorite Pushkin poems, she was born a Grafina Tarasova in Moscow in 1902 and lived until 1997).  Maria has absolutely no trace of the pre-Imperial accent whatsoever.

[Превед]

Thank you all three, for your answers. Seems like the hunt for sound proof (in both senses of the word) of that elusive pre-Revolutionary accent of the FA's Tante Lilly and others continues, à la Proust and his evocations of the ancien-régime French of the family cook Françoise and the Duchesse de Guermantes.

[Forum Admin]

I found this online.  It gives you some small idea of the accent and pronunications.

http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=7238

[Превед]

I found this online.  It gives you some small idea of the accent and pronunications.
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=7238

Lovely song, but hard to tell if very distinct pronunciations are due to a different accent or peculiar pronunciation when singing.

But I just found something interesting in an old pre-Revolutionary Russian grammar I inherited. In "Russisk grammatik" (1916, publisher: Gad), Holger Pedersen, Professor of Copenhagen University says that while the standard Moscow pronunciation has akanye....

"Men under inflydelse af den skrevne form, andre dialekter og grammatisk analogi udtales i Petrograd ubetonet -o i slutningen av af et ord ofte som å; og denne udtale turde endogså være at anbefale udlændinge." (p 12)
=
But due to influence from the written form, other [Northern okanye] dialects and grammatical analogy, unstressed -o at the end of words is often pronounced å [= o] in Petrograd; and this pronunciation may even be recommended to foreigners.

Sounds like this hyper-correct, archaïc spelling pronunciation was a prestigeous, more cosmopolitan standard.

I wonder if Professor Pedersen, who BTW was born just north of the new Dano-German border in 1867, published Albanian fairytales and took his doctorate on "aspiration in Irish" ever had tea at Видёре (Hvidøre) and listened to Maria Fyodorovna's pronunciation!

[Forum Admin]

Yes, Tante Lilly's accent was a very precise, clear and light one.  The o was a soft and light sound.  Also, Moscow's elite and Petersburg's had slightly  different accents. Moscow felt Petersburg was too "French" and Petersburg felt Moscow's was too "provincial". LOL. 

[Petr]

Also Alixz alluded in an earlier post to the fact that nannies and governesses had a possible impact. We had a family friend whose mother was a Princess Belosselsky-Belozersky and who had been brought up with English nannies and governesses (the family was well known as Anglophiles) and he spoke Russian with an English Accent (it didn't hurt that he later went to an English Boarding School). However, my mother had both an English and French governess (plus she spent her youth in Belgium) so her Russian (and English)  had what I believe was a slight French accent (she was also born in St. Petersburg) so who knows what was the dominant influence. That is what makes the study of languages so fascinating.  I've heard said that a trained linguist can place you within twelve miles of the place of your birth.       

[Kalafrana]

Petr

This is very interesting.

'I've heard said that a trained linguist can place you within twelve miles of the place of your birth.'       

I think the linguists would have trouble with me, as I moved away from the place of my birth after my first six weeks! However, it has been said of me that I have a touch of Teesside (the area around Middlesbrough, north-east England) in the way I say 'hello', and that is where we were living when I learned to speak.

Ann

[Превед]

It's intriguing that it's often said that Russian had and has, considering its vast size, relatively little dialectal variation, yet Rasputin is described as speaking "an almost unintelligible Siberian dialect".

[Inok Nikolai]

I've heard said that a trained linguist can place you within twelve miles of the place of your birth.      

The famous Russian lexicographer, V. I. Dahl, son of a Danish immigrant, was credited with a similar talent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Dahl

When visiting the new colonies of his native Novo-Rossia, Dahl enjoyed listening to the new settlers speaking, whereby he was able to identify where each of them had come from in the Russian Empire.

Once he was approached by two "monks" who were gathering alms for their monastery. When he asked them where their monastery was located, they told him in Novgorod. Whereupon he reported them to the local police. An investigation revealed that they were not monks at all, but impostors. When asked how he knew, Dahl replied that they did not speak a Novgorodian dialect.

[Превед]

The famous Russian lexicographer, V. I. Dahl, son of a Danish immigrant

His father, Dr. Johan Christian von Dahl (for starters, a cool mix of Danish and German in that name!), Statskiy Sovyetnik, hailed from Preetz (originally Slavic Po-rece = On-the-river) in Holstein, fittingly located on the old northwesternmost border of the Slavic and Germanic languages (the river Schwentine (originally: Sventana - the holy one), the Limes Saxoniæ) and came to Russia (through an uncle) no doubt as a part of the "Holsteinian entourage" of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanovs.