Russian language

The Russian language (in Russian, русский язык, romanization russki yazyk, pronunciation [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk ]) is an Indo-European language of the East Slavic branch. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan; widely used in eastern Ukraine, being a recognized regional language in some regions and cities in the south and east of the country, as well as official in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. He is also an official in the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. It is in wide use in Estonia and Latvia (whose populations are between a quarter and a third Russian-speaking) and de facto official in Transnistria (Moldova region). In addition, it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations Organization. It is also spoken by important sectors of the population of the other nations that once belonged to the Soviet Union.

It is the most widely spoken among the Slavic languages and ranks among the 10 most spoken languages in the world by number of total speakers, ranking with its 273 million in eighth position according to the "Ethnologue" of the year 2022.

Historical, social and cultural aspects

Geographic distribution

Russian is spoken primarily in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and to a lesser extent in the other countries that made up the USSR and Mongolia. Until 1917, it was the only official language of the Russian Empire. Since the Soviet period, the attitude towards the languages of other ethnic groups fluctuates. Although each of the Soviet republics had its own official language, the highest prestige was reserved for Russian. After the breakup in 1991, the newly independent nations have promoted their native languages. This has fostered a decline in knowledge of Russian by some nations, although it remains the language of political and economic exchange in the region.

Russian competition in the countries of the former USSR, 2004.

In Latvia its official recognition and its legality in the classroom has been a topic of important debate in a country where more than a third of the population speaks Russian, especially among those who migrated from the Russian SFSR, Byelorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR following the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union. Similarly, in Estonia, Soviet-era immigrants and their descendants make up about a quarter of the current population. As for Lithuania, a much smaller Russian-speaking population has been assimilated after independence and currently represents less than a tenth of the country's total population. However, unlike its neighboring countries, the Russian minority and Russian-speaking Lithuanians are assured of language education in the country.

In the 20th century, Russian was often taught in the communist nations of the former Warsaw Pact and other satellite countries, such as Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. However, the younger generations do not master it, since Russian is not compulsory in their educational system.

In Finland it is spoken by the Russian minority resident in the country and is widespread in towns near the Russian border.

About 750,000 Jewish immigrants from the former USSR live in Israel, and the Israeli press frequently publishes in Russian. Also in North America and Western Europe, there are hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking people. In general, the descendants of emigrants lose Russian speech before the fourth generation. Russian-speaking communities in Western Europe number approximately 3 million.

In the past, the descendants of Russian emigrants tended to lose their language in the third generation. Now given the ease of travel and access to Russian TV and websites, he is likely to survive longer.

Approximate population of Russian speakers:

Officiality

Russian is the official language of Russia and one of the official languages of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and is also co-official in the disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and New Russia.

It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian education is still a popular option for many native or learners of Russian in many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of public education students in Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova. The Russian minority resident in Lithuania (6.3% of the population) and Russian-speaking ethnic Lithuanians (unspecified figure) also have access to education in Russian.

In March 2014, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol adopted Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar as official languages.

Dialects

Russian Dialects 1915:

Northern Dialects 1. Dialecto de Arjánguelsk 2. Olonets Dialecto 3. Dialecto de Nóvgorod 4. Dialecto de Viatka 5. Vladimir Dialecto

Central Dialects 6. Dialecto de Moscow 7. Tver Dialecto Dialectos del Sur 8. Oriol Dialecto (Don) 9. Dialecto de Riazan 10. Tula Dialecto 11. Smolensk Dialecto

Other 12. Russian North Dialecto with Belarusian influence 13. Sloboda and dialects of steppe of Ukraine 14. Dialect of Ukrainian steppe with Russian influence

Despite leveling after 1900, especially regarding vocabulary, there are a large number of dialects in Russia. Some linguists divide Russian dialects into two main regional groups, "northern" and the "southern", with Moscow as a transition zone between the two. Others divide it into three groups: "northern", "central" and "southern", with Moscow in the central group. Dialectologists recognize dozens of minor varieties within Russia.

The most noticeable characteristic of the northern dialects is the clear pronunciation of the phoneme /o/ in unstressed positions –a phenomenon called ókanye (оканье)–, while in the accents from the center of the country and the south –including Moscow– it becomes pronounced /ʌ/, ákanye (aканье). Likewise, in the southern accent the phoneme /t/ is palatalized in final position and the phonemes /g/ are aspirated, which become more similar to the phoneme /h/. It is also these common features with modern Ukrainian, which indicates the influence between the two.

Among the first to study Russian dialectology was Lomonosov in the 18th century. In the 19th century, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialect vocabulary. Detailed study of Russian dialects began at the beginning of the XX century. The Dialectological Atlas of the Russian language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка), published in three volumes between 1986 and 1989, after four decades of work, stands out.

The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect with its characteristic ákanye (for example, спасибо –thank you in Russian–, instead from spasibo, pronounced spasiba).

In the town of Ninilchik, Alaska, United States, there is a group of elderly people who retain a dialect of Russian as their mother tongue, existing from the period when Russia owned Alaska. This dialect, as characteristics, has lost the neuter gender and the feminine has reduced its use. Common Russian words from Russia are used, but some have changed their meaning. They also use some Siberian and native Alaskan languages and English.

Derived languages

• Fenya or Fenka, a criminal argot of ancient origin, with Russian grammar but with different vocabulary.
• Súrzhyk is a mixed variety, mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine.
• Trasianka is a mixture of Russian and Belarus used by a large percentage of the rural population in Belarus.
• Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin that used Norwegian Russian and grammar vocabulary used to communicate by the Russians and Norwegians of Svalbard and the Kola Peninsula.

History

The history of Russian can be divided into the following stages:

• Origen (Idioma protoeslavo).
• The period of the Kyiv Rus (siglos) IX Al XI).
• The period of the Vladimir Principality (siglos XII Al XIV).
• Moscow period (siglos XV Al XVII).
• The period of the Russian Empire (from the century XVIII at the beginning of the centuryXX.).
• It was Soviet and present time (sixteenth century)XX. a centuryXXI).

Judged by historical records, in the early 11th century, the group that dominated most of the Modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia were East Slavs, speaking a number of closely related dialects. The political unification of the region into Kievan Rus', from which both Russia and Ukraine originate, was followed shortly thereafter by the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988 and the founding of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. It was at this time that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular, and simultaneously the literary language began to change to resemble Old East Slavonic (see Russian literature).

Dialectological differentiation accelerated after the beginning of the decline of Kievan Rus' in 1100 as well as with the fall of the medieval state after the Mongol invasion in 1240. Following the end of Golden Horde rule at the end of the XIV century, the political and linguistic center of European Russia became moved to Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered separate languages at the latest from this period. Until the end of the XVII century, a derivative of Church Slavonic was the official language, but despite attempts at standardization, by characters like Meletius Smotritski (circa 1620), his integrity was already compromised by an incipient secular literature.

Peter the Great's political reforms were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and the goal of secularization was achieved following the Western model. Large amounts of specialized vocabulary were introduced into Russian from Western Europe. In 1800, a significant number of the aristocracy spoke daily French and, to a lesser extent, German. The modern literary language is considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the XIX century.

The political turmoil of the early 20th century and radical changes in political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after spelling reform of 1918. The political circumstances and the Soviet achievements in the military, scientific and technological branches (especially in the space race) gave the Russian international prestige, although sometimes in a resentful way.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the fashion for Western-style, economic uncertainties, and difficulties with the educational system make a rapid change in language inevitable. Today's Russian is a boiling language.

2007 was designated the International Year of the Russian Language.

Writing

Alphabet

Russian is written with a modern version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.

The following table presents its capital forms, with a transcription of the typical sound of each letter in the IPA:

There are older letters that have been abolished but may appear in some editions, such as ѣ /ě:/ or /e/, і /i/, and ѧ /ja/ or /ʲa/. The yers, or hard and soft signs respectively ъ and ь originally corresponded to the ultra-short phonemes /ŭ/ and /ĭ/, respectively.

For situations or environments in which it is not possible to use the Cyrillic alphabet, the use of romanization systems is common.

Spelling

Russian orthography reflects relatively faithfully the articulation of phonemes, although, like most living languages, it has some controversial points and inconsistencies. The current spelling is based on the Great Reformation of 1918 and the final codification of 1956. A change was proposed in the late 20th century century, but has not been well received and ultimately not adopted.

Punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was changed with the influence of German and French in the 17th centuries and XVIII.

Linguistic description

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family. Considering only speech, the most similar languages are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other national languages in the East Slavic group.

The basic vocabulary, morphology, and literary style have been influenced by Old East Slavonic and Church Slavonic, a language of the South Slavic group that was used by the Russian Orthodox Church. For this reason, much of the current literary vocabulary is more similar to Bulgarian than to Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms remain in the various dialects, resulting in cases where both forms are used, with slightly different meanings (cf. flee and flee).

Phonology

Russian's phonological system is a heritage from Common Slavonic, but it underwent a number of changes in its early historical stages, before becoming globally established around the 19th century XV.

The language has five vowels, which in turn correspond to two letters each, depending on whether they palatalize the previous consonant or, in word-onset contexts, if they have a palatal appendage articulated as /j/. Consonants can also be classified in pairs depending on whether they are made palatalized or not. The standard language, based on the Muscovite dialect, has a very strong prosodic accent and moderate pitch modulation (which, however, does not act as a lexical differentiator). Stressed vowels are lengthened to a certain extent in certain phonological contexts and according to expressive and intonation needs, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to a schwa. Consonant clusters of three or more elements are often simplified.

Different dialects can show radical variations in phonetics.

Grammar

Russian is an inflectional synthetic language typical of the fusion languages, although it has leveled off considerably. Among the most outstanding basic characteristics are the following:

• Highly flexive nominal and verbal morphology.
• A syntax that, for literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements
  • A vernacular origin.
  • The legacy of the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church.
  • Western European style.
• The spoken language has been markedly influenced by the literary, but retains characteristic forms. The dialects possess many grammatical elements that are not standard, of which some are treated as arcaisms already discarded by literary language.

Patronymic names or patronyms

Russians have a patronymic name (patrony) made up of the father's given name plus the suffixes ich (ич), óvich (oвич), or évich (eвич), meaning "son of", the equivalent for women are ichna (ична), ovna (овна) or evna (евна), "daughter of." Finally, in the family surname there is a distinction between male and female: ov (oв), ev (eв) or in (ин), for men, and ova (oвa), eva (eвa) or ina (ина), for women.

For example: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Mikhail's son) or Zhanna Vladimirovna Kopylova (Vladimir's daughter); Dmitri Yúrievich Ivanov (son of Yuri Ivanov, male) or Yekaterina Yúrievna Ivanova (daughter of Yuri Ivanov, female); Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin) (son of Iliá Ulyanov, male) or Maria Ilinichna Miloslavskaya (daughter of Iliá Miloslavski, female).

Vocabulary

The total number of words in Russian is difficult to calculate given the ability to agglutinate and create multiple compounds, diminutives, etc.

For illustrative purposes, the number of words included in the most important dictionaries of the last two centuries, as well as the total vocabulary of Aleksandr Pushkin, are listed below:

Philologists have estimated that today the language can contain between 350,000 and 500,000 words.

"Русский" or "russian"

As a historical aside, Vladimir Dal still insisted in the second half of the XIX century that the correct spelling of the adjective русский, used uniformly to refer to all Slavic subjects of the empire, as well as the official language, was руский, with a с (s), in accordance with tradition and what which he coined as "the spirit of language." He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who affirmed that the twin S's were perfectly distinguishable.