Russian voice overs: what you need to know

Russian is a widely spoken East Slavic language, native to Russia and Eastern Europe. An impressive 150 million people are native Russian speakers. In addition, another 110 million speak it as a foreign language.

Russian is the official language in 11 countries, including Russia and Belarus. However, its reach is widespread throughout Europe and Asia. Russian speaking communities are extensive in most post-soviet countries — the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and others.

In fact, Russian is the most abundant native language in Europe as well as the most widespread language in Eurasia.

Language History

Russian, just like other Indo-European languages, has developed from the Proto-Indo-European. However, Russian as a distinctive language emerged somewhere between the 14th-16th centuries. Until then, a common East Slavic language was used in today’s territories of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Similarly to other Slavic languages, Russian has been greatly influenced by Old Church Slavonic — a liturgical language of the Orthodox church. During the 18th-19th century, Russian was greatly modernized and Westernized — it extensively borrowed from other European languages and moved further from the influential religious language.

Russian became one of the most widely used and thought languages in Europe during the Soviet Union era. While each Soviet republic had its own independent language, primarily Russian was used in education, official matters, and public life.

Close Relations

Russian is closely related to several other Slavic languages. In fact, Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian share a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Generally, the speakers of all three languages can hold a conversation despite the language barriers. Linguists claim that written Russian has an 85% mutual intelligibility with written Belarussian and Ukrainian.

Russian is also closely related to the Ruthene (Rusyn) language. While there’s some controversy about whether Rusyn is an independent language or a Ukrainian dialect, this language variety has many similarities to Russian.

Just like other Slavic languages, Russian inherited the majority of its vocabulary.  However, Russian vocabulary was greatly shaped by foreign loanwords. Russian extensively borrowed from Italian, French, and German.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

Because of its broad spread throughout Europe and Asia, Russian has many dialects and regional varieties. Generally, the Russian dialects are divided into three groups: Southern, Northern, and Central (Middle).

Standard Russian that’s used as the official language, as well as the literary standard, is based on the Moscow dialect (Central Russian). While the majority of Russian dialects are mutually intelligible, the standard language variant is preferred and used by the majority of Russian speakers.

Since Russian is an East Slavic language, it’s important to pay attention that just like other languages in this group, Russian has a very particular tone and syllable stress. Additionally, Russian has many consonant clusters that are quite difficult to pronounce and understand for non-native speakers.

When recording a Russian recording, make sure you’re paying attention to the word stress, and the word endings. Russian is a highly inflected language — word endings can change their meaning!