Wikipedia:Stress marks in East Slavic words

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Stress marks are used in Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian-language elementary-school primers, readers, and in headwords of dictionaries and encyclopedias, to indicate syllabic stress. They also appear in references on Old East Slavic and Ruthenian languages. They are only used in such special types of literature and are only exceptionally added to other types of modern texts.

Because they have been used in comparable printed reference works, the stress marks have made their way, to some extent, into the Russian Wikipedia. Consequently, copying text from the Russian Wikipedia into the English Wikipedia in particular, but also from the aforementioned types of works which include them, has caused the stress marks to be found in the English Wikipedia as well.

While native readers don't have any issues with understanding text that includes them, English Wikipedia users can be mislead: The words are not spelled this way in everyday practice or in normal prose found in reliable sources. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, neither it is a Slavic language primer, therefore for readers without knowledge of Russian/Balarusian/etc. language, stress marks contribute little to understanding of the encyclopedic content of the article.

For these reasons, in English Wikipedia there is an agreement among editors to generally omit these stress marks. When it comes to normal, general-audience prose (such as encyclopedic prose) they are about as exceptional in native languages as they would be in English and should not be included unless necessary. They should especially not be used in romanized (Latin-alphabet) Belarusian, Russian, or Ukrainian words.

The International Phonetic Alphabet, already present in most articles that need it, is the correct way to represent pronunciation, including stresses (a stress mark goes just before the stressed syllable). The tools to implement this include the {{IPA}} template and the {{lang-rus}} template with its |p= parameter. This does not imply that all Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian terms and names should include the IPA spelling.

In some cases it may be advisable to relegate pronunciation issues to a footnote, especially when several languages are involved, to avoid clutter in the lede.

The 2009 redaction of the official reference Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation (Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации) recommends the following selective usage of stress marks:[1]

  • In multisyllabic head words of most encyclopedic dictionaries
  • In ordinary texts stress marks must be used sparingly:
    • For proper identification of words whose meaning depends on stress, e.g., до́роги ("precious") vs. доро́ги ("roads") or во́роны ("ravens") vs. воро́ны ("crows").
    • To prevent wrong stress in uncommon words (гу́ру, ю́кола) and in uncommon proper nouns (Гарси́а, Конакри́, Фе́рми)
    • in some special cases of lexical distinction, for example over letter е to prevent its misinterpretation as ё (because in the past diacritics were commonly omitted over ё). For example the surname Оле́ша (Olesha) may be erroneously read as Олёша under the influence of a common given name Алёша (Alyosha).

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации. Полный академический справочник [Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation: The Complete Academic Guide], ed. Vladimir Lopatin [ru], Moscow, АСТ-Пресс, 2009, ISBN 5462009305
    • The 2009 redaction is the amendment addressing the criticisms of the 2006 redaction. The 2006 redaction was the long overdue replacement of the 1956 redaction, which no longer properly addressed the changes in Russian language published in various reference texts and textbooks.
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