Between Russian and Belarussian: Dialects of Nevel district, Pskov Oblast

Abstract

The article describes the contemporary state of the dialects spoken in the Nevelsky district (Russia, Pskov Province), which is bordering Belarus, in comparison with the north-eastern Belarusian dialects located on the other side of the state border. When establishing the linguistic areas, it was assumed that on one side of this border the dialects would change following the Standard Russian language, while on the other side they would follow Belarusian. However, the real situation is much more complicated: on one hand, some dialectal features disappeared under the influence of the respective standard language; on the other hand, quite often features of both dialects do not correspond to either Standard Russian or Standard Belarusian, and there are existing “Belarusian” features on the territory of Russian dialects.