Wikipedia:Stress marks in East Slavic words

This is an essay on East Slavic (Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian) orthography and romanization.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:SLAVICSTRESS

This page in a nutshell: Editors generally agree to omit East Slavic stress marks, consistent with guidelines such as WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:DIACRITICS. They should only be used in special circumstances, consistent with their use in reliable English-language sources when those sources incorporate original Cyrillic text.

Use IPA when needed instead

The International Phonetic Alphabet, already present in most articles that need it, is the correct way to represent pronunciation, including stresses.^{[note 1]}

Use the templates {{IPA}} and {{lang-rus}} with the |p= parameter to accomplish this.^{[note 2]}

See also the IPA keys for Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian.

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.^{[note 3]} Because they are used in comparable printed reference works, the stress marks have made their way into the Russian Wikipedia, primarily in the headwords.^{[note 4]} Consequently, imitating the style of—and copying text from—the Russian Wikipedia and the aforementioned types of works has caused them to enter the English Wikipedia as well.

While native readers are used to occasionally seeing them in specific contexts, readers of the English Wikipedia at large, who overwhelmingly do not know what these marks indicate, can be mislead: The words are not spelled this way in everyday practice or in ordinary prose found in reliable sources. As Wikipedia is not a dictionary, nor is it an East Slavic-language primer, these marks do not aid understanding for readers and do not serve their intended purpose here.

For these reasons, in English Wikipedia there is an agreement among editors to generally omit these stress marks. When it comes to ordinary, general-audience 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 Belarusian, Russian, or Ukrainian words.

The native stress marks should only be used where the best-quality English language sources demonstrate that their use is generally accepted as a best practice, per a 2021 RfC.

Notes

^ This does not suggest that all Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian terms and names should include the IPA spelling.
^ To avoid clutter in the lead, especially when several languages are involved, it is advisable to relegate pronunciation issues to a footnote.
^
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).
^ The English Wikipedia does not use headwords, while the Russian Wikipedia does. MOS:BOLDLEAD terms are particularly formatted first occurrences of an article's title in the lead, where that word or phrase is a natural part of the sentence (it must be fully incorporated in a grammatically complete sentence, or the sentence should be rewritten). They are a substitute for headwords, which are used at the start of a dictionary-style definition that is not a grammatically complete sentence (see an example Russian Wikipedia article's lead, starting with the following text (translated): "Bread – bakery product obtained by baking dough (consisting of at least flour and water) loosened with yeast or sourdough"; note the lack of a verb).

References

^
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.

[1] This does not suggest that all Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian terms and names should include the IPA spelling.

[2] To avoid clutter in the lead, especially when several languages are involved, it is advisable to relegate pronunciation issues to a footnote.

[pravila-3] 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).

[4] In multisyllabic head words of most encyclopedic dictionaries

[5] 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).

[6] For proper identification of words whose meaning depends on stress, e.g., до́роги ("precious") vs. доро́ги ("roads") or во́роны ("ravens") vs. воро́ны ("crows").

[7] To prevent wrong stress in uncommon words (гу́ру, ю́кола) and in uncommon proper nouns (Гарси́а, Конакри́, Фе́рми)

[8] 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).

[headword-4] The English Wikipedia does not use headwords, while the Russian Wikipedia does. MOS:BOLDLEAD terms are particularly formatted first occurrences of an article's title in the lead, where that word or phrase is a natural part of the sentence (it must be fully incorporated in a grammatically complete sentence, or the sentence should be rewritten). They are a substitute for headwords, which are used at the start of a dictionary-style definition that is not a grammatically complete sentence (see an example Russian Wikipedia article's lead, starting with the following text (translated): "Bread – bakery product obtained by baking dough (consisting of at least flour and water) loosened with yeast or sourdough"; note the lack of a verb).

[5] 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.

[11] 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.

[note 1]

[note 2]

[note 3]

[note 4]

[1]