What kind of accent do people in Daugavpils have?

To put it in a nutshell, people in Daugavpils speak Russian without any accent. Why have we come to this conclusion? Let’s look into it together.

First, we should decide what an accent is. Dictionaries provide the following definition for the word “accent”: peculiarities of pronunciation typical of a person speaking in a non- mother tongue. The crucial words here are ” a non- mother tongue”. Russian is a mother tongue; therefore, they speak Russian without any accent.< Why does this issue arise at all? The thing is that people sometimes consider linguistic peculiarities of a region to be an accent. Daugavpils was part of different states during all its history; today it's a cross-border city. This fact could not but influence the language. In the speech of local Russians there is a number of words borrowed from neighboring languages, mainly from the Polish and Belarusian languages. There are also borrowings from Latvian, although they are used less often and only in particular situations. Is it bad for learning Russian? No. In other words, it is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. Regional differences are typical to many languages. For example, the speech of Moscovites is different from the speech of Petersburgers. However, both versions are considered to be a norm. Nowadays all regional differences within Russia as well as outside it are gradually disappearing. First of all, it can be explained by the fact that people quite often move quite, and by the common media scene. Russians in Russia and Russian outside it watch the same TV channels, read the same newspapers and in this way they absorb the language norm of mass media.

It should be mentioned that the state language of Latvia, Latvian, has not affected the phonetics of Russian in Latvia. For example, in Belarus and Ukraine, local languages have influenced dramatically the pronunciation of local Russian-speakers.

Daugavpils Russian speech can be called “correct”. Although, you should remember that the “correctness” of a language is rather nominal.

The fact that Latvia is one of the EU states and at Daugavpils University there is a department of Russian language makes our city a unique place for learning Russian in Europe.