Do Russians capitalize the word ‘God’?
In which cases should the word ‘бог’ (‘bog’) be capitalized and in which with a lowercase letter? The rules have changed over time, subject to the dominant ideology at the time. Find out below how to spell and pronounce this powerful word correctly.
According to the reference book ‘Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation’, the word ‘Бог’ (‘Bog’), which is ‘God’ in English, should be capitalized if it refers to the “one supreme being in monotheistic religions”.
When the text refers to pagan gods, a lowercase letter should be used: бог ‘Ра’ (the god ‘Ra’), богиня ‘Афина’ (the goddess ‘Athena’).
But, it’s not so simple. “In a number of cases, the writer can decide for themselves which letter to use. If the author of a text considers a particular deity to be supreme and primordial in a specific tradition, they may prefer the capitalized variant: Бог ‘Шива’ (God ‘Shiva’), Бог ‘Ахура-Мазда’ (God ‘Ahura Mazda’),” writes Andrey Gorshkov, an editor at Gramota.ru (Грамота.ру).
The Soviet trace in spelling
During the Soviet era, as part of the fight against “religious prejudices”, it was adopted to always write words like ‘бог’ (‘god’), ‘святой дух’ (‘holy spirit’), ‘троица’ (‘trinity’), etc., with a lowercase letter. This norm was reflected, among other places, in the ‘Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation’ from 1956, but it is no longer relevant today.
Furthermore, writing ‘bог’ (with a lowercase ‘б’) can be a feature of informal written internet language. Often messaging app users do not use capital letters in any words and this is simply a matter of convenience, not worldview.
Also, one can encounter spellings like ‘Б-г’ instead of ‘Бог’ and ‘Г-дь’ instead of ‘Господь’ (Lord) online.
What about idioms?
In the Russian language, there are a huge number of proverbs, sayings and fixed combinations that use the word ‘God’.
Moreover, one and the same expression can have several orthographic variants recorded in dictionaries, for example:
- “дай Бог…” (вам здоровья, счастья и т. п.) – God grant you health, happiness, etc.,
- “дай бог…” (боже) as a predicate and interjection (a high appraisal of something; very much, a great many).
Therefore, those who want to write in accordance with current norms will have to check the dictionary each time when writing phraseological units. Otherwise, they will have to rely on their own perception of their meaning.
Pronunciation: What instead of ‘г’?
Usually, the ‘г’ (‘g’) letter at the end of words is pronounced as a ‘k’ (друг – ‘friend’ – should be pronounced as ‘druk’, while ‘снег’ – ‘snow’ – as ‘snek’). A clear ‘г’ (‘g’) is heard only in case forms (друга – ‘of a friend’, снега – ‘of snow’).
However, the word ‘Бог’ was greatly influenced by the South Russian dialect (in the 17th century, bearers of book culture from South-Western Old Russia actively emigrated to the Muscovite state). Therefore, at the end of the word ‘Бог’ in Russian, the so-called ‘fricative g’ [ɣ] is pronounced, that is, with a very light ‘h’ sound – ‘Boh’. But, in the case forms, ‘г’ (‘g’) is heard – ‘Бога’ (‘of God’).
