Russian language

Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýk) is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus.

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, formerly known by its Russian name Byelorussia or Belorussia, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest.

Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýk) is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes.

Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýk) is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Kyrgyz is closely related to other Turkic languages, although Russian remains widely spoken and is an official language, a legacy of a century of Russification.

The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian

Russian is also the third most widespread language on the Internet after English and German, respectively.

Other top languages, according to W3Techs, are Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish, French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian.

Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onward.

"Old Russian language" (древнерусский язык, drevnerusskij jazyk), or

Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch.

The most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Spanish, English, Portuguese, Bengali, Punjabi, and Russian, each with over 100 million speakers, with German, French, Marathi, Italian, and Persian also having more than 50 million.

From the point of view of spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn, the other three languages in the East Slavic languages.

It is the official state language of Ukraine and first of two principal languages of Ukrainians; it is one of the three official languages in the unrecognized state of Transnistria, the other two being Romanian and Russian.

From the point of view of spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn, the other three languages in the East Slavic languages.

Before Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was only known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, transliterating the Russian name, белорусский язык Belorusskiy yazyk, or alternatively as White Ruthenian or White Russian.

Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress, such as to distinguish between homographic words, for example замо́к (zamók, meaning a lock) and за́мок (zámok, meaning a castle), or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names.

Other languages, like English and Russian, have variable stress, where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way.

Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the seventh by total number of speakers.

It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991.

The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т (sovét) meaning council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord and all ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti ("to inform"), related to Slavic věst ("news"), English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or" (which came to English through French), or the Dutch weten ("to know"; cf. wetenschap meaning "science").

For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language.

This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect (unless otherwise noted).

In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus.

Surzhyk refers to a range of mixed (macaronic) sociolects of Ukrainian and Russian languages used in certain regions of Ukraine and adjacent lands.

In the 19th century (in Russia until 1917), the language was often called "Great Russian" to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called "White Russian" and Ukrainian, then called "Little Russian".

Great Russian language (Russian: Великорусский язык, Velikorusskiy yazyk) is a name given in the 19th century to the Russian language as opposed to the other two major East Slavic languages: Belarusian ("White Russian") and Ukrainian ("Little Russian").

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds.

In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like большой, царь and Катя.

In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus.

Trasianka refers to a mixed form of speech in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures alternate in rapid succession.

Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress, such as to distinguish between homographic words, for example замо́к (zamók, meaning a lock) and за́мок (zámok, meaning a castle), or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names.

Russian. Stress is irregular in Russian, and in reference and teaching materials (dictionaries and books for children or foreigners), stress is indicated by an acute accent above the stressed vowel. The acute accent can be used both in the Cyrillic and sometimes in the romanised text.

Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýk) is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Russian is used as a lingua franca most notably in the North Caucasus.

Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýk) is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The existing East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian; Rusyn is considered to be either a separate language or a dialect of Ukrainian.

It is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus', a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid 13th centuries.

Nationalist accounts have suggested that the Rus' were present before the arrival of the Varangians, noting that only a handful of Scandinavian words can be found in modern Russian and that Scandinavian names in the early chronicles were soon replaced by Slavic names.

It arose in the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter the Great, and developed from the Moscow (Middle or Central Russian) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancellery language.

Central or Middle Russian dialects is one of the main groups of the Russian dialects.

Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features (such as fricative in Southern Russian dialects) are still observed in colloquial speech.

Southern Russian is one of the main groups of Russian dialects.

Mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755; in 1783 the Russian Academy's first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared.

Lomonosov was also a poet and influenced the formation of the modern Russian literary language.

On 18 February 2012, Latvia held a constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language.

Proposed amendments included Articles 4, 18, 21, 101 and 104 of the Constitution of Latvia by adding the condition about Russian as the second official language, as well as prescribing two working languages — Latvian and Russian — for self-government institutions.