1985 and 2008. It was developed from the initial form set down by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič (first printed in Vilnius, 1918), and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk-Vilnius region. Historically, there have been several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar. Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall quite similar to Russian grammar. Belarusian orthography, however, differs significantly from Russian orthography in some respects, due to the fact that it is a phonetic orthography that closely represents the surface phonology, whereas Russian orthography represents the underlying morphophonology. The most significant instance of this is found in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular akanje, the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, which exists in both Russian and Belarusian. Belarusian always spells this merged sound as , whereas Russian uses either or , according to what the "underlying" phoneme is (determined by identifying the related words where the vowel is being stressed or, if no such words exist, by written tradition, mostly but not always conforming to etymology). This means that Belarusian noun and verb paradigms, in their written form, have numerous instances of alternations between written and , whereas no such alternations exist in the corresponding written paradigms in Russian. This can significantly complicate the foreign speakers' task of learning these paradigms; on the other hand, though, it makes spelling easier for native speakers. An example illustrating the contrast between the treatment of akanje in Russian and Belarusian orthography is the spelling of the word for “products; food”: In Ukrainian: продукти (pronounced “produkty”, IPA: [proˈduktɪ]) In Russian: продукты (pronounced “pradukty”, IPA: [prɐˈduktɨ]) In Belarusian: прадукты (pronounced “pradukty”, IPA: [praˈduktɨ]) Dialects Besides the standardized lect, there are two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there is a transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group and the separate West Polesian dialect group. The North-Eastern and the South-Western dialects are separated by a hypothetical line Ashmyany–Minsk–Babruysk–Homyel, with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line. The North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by the "soft sounding R" () and "strong akanye" (), and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the "hard sounding R" () and "moderate akanye" (). The West Polesian dialect group is separated from the rest of the country by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Telekhany–Luninyets–Stolin. Classification and relationship to other languages There is