Russian philology
districts); and secondary formation (other territory). Dialectology within Russia recognizes
dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of
pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient
usage now completely discarded by the standard language.
The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce
unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye (). Besides the absence of vowel
reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /ei/ in the place of Proto-Slavic *
and /ou/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/
and /o/. An interesting morphological feature is a post-posed definite article -to, -ta, -te
similarly to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian.
In the Southern Russian dialects, instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized
annaabi.ee 
