Akanye

Akanye or akanje (Belarusian: аканне, Russian: а́канье, Russian pronunciation: [ˈakənʲjɪ]), literally "a-ing", is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes /o/ or /e/ are realized as more or less close to [a]. 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).