Russian (russkiy yazyk) Pronunciation ruskj jzk Spoken in Russia countries of the former Soviet Union emigrant communities around the world notably the UK Germany Israel the United States Canada Australia and Latin America. Total speakers Primary language: about 175 million Secondary language: 114 million (2006)1 to 125 million2 Total: 300 million Language family Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Russian Writing system Cyrillic (Russian variant) Official status Official language in  Russia  Belarus (co-official)  Kazakhstan (co-official)  Kyrgyzstan (co-official)  Abkhazia4 (co-official)  South Ossetia4 (co-official)  Gagauzia (co-official)  Transnistria (co-official) IAEA  United Nations Recognised minority language in  Ukraine (regional)  Moldova (regional)  Turkmenistan (inter-ethnic communication)  Uzbekistan (inter-ethnic communication)  Tajikistan (inter-ethnic communication) Regulated by Russian Language Institute 3 at the Russian Academy of Sciences

Language codes ISO 639-1 ru ISO 639-2 rus ISO 639-3 rus Linguasphere 53-AAA-ea < 53-AAA-e (varieties: 53-AAA-eaa to 53-AAA-eat) Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Russian ( russkiy yazyk pronounced ruskj jzk) is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia Belarus Ukraine Uzbekistan Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine Moldova Latvia Tajikistan Turkmenistan and Estonia and to a lesser extent the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR.5

It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or four including Rusyn) living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress which is unpredictable is not normally indicated orthographically6 though an optional acute accent ( znak udareniya) may and sometimes should be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names). Contents 1 Classification 2 Geographic distribution 2.1 Official status 2.2 Dialects 2.3 Derived languages 2.4 Alphabet 2.4.1 Transliteration 2.4.2 Computing 2.5 Orthography 3 Sounds 3.1 Consonants 4 Grammar 5 Vocabulary 5.1 Proverbs and sayings 6 History and examples 7 See also 7.1 Language description 7.2 Related languages 7.3 Other 8 References 8.1 In English 8.2 In Russian 9 External links Classification

Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. 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 mixture e.g. Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect although vanished during the 15th or 16th century is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of the modern Russian language. The next closest relatives are the West Slavic languages especially Polish and Slovak; next are the South Slavic languages although Bulgarian especially has somewhat different grammar.citation needed

The vocabulary (mainly abstract and literary words) principles of word formations and to some extent inflections and literary style of Russian have been also influenced by Church Slavonic a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. However the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use with many different meanings. For details see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language.

Russian phonology and syntax (especially in northern dialects) have also been influenced to some extent by numerous Finnic and related languages of the Uralic family: Merya Moksha Muromian Meshcherian Veps et cetera. These languages some of them now extinct used to be spoken in the center and in the north of what is now the European part of Russia. They came in contact with Eastern Slavic as far back as the early Middle Ages and eventually served as substratum for the modern Russian language. The Russian dialects spoken north north-east and north-west of Moscow have a considerable number of words of Uralic origin.78 Over the course of centuries the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Polish Latin Dutch German French and English.9

According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakerscitation needed requiring approximately 780 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. It is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a "hard target" language due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. Geographic distribution

During the Soviet period the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian although it was declared the official language only in 1990.10 Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991 several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian though its role as the language of post-Soviet national discourse throughout the region has continued. Ethnographic map of the Slavic peoples prepared by Czech ethnographer Lubor Niederle showing territorial boundaries of Slavic languages in Eastern Europe in the mid 1920s In Latvia its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than one-third of the population is Russian-speaking (see Russians in Latvia). Similarly in Estonia Russophones constitute 25.6% of the country's current population and 58.6% of the native Estonian population is also able to speak Russian.11 In all 67.8% of Estonia's population can speak Russian.11 Command of Russian language however is rapidly decreasing among younger Estonians (primarily being replaced by the command of English). For example if 53% of ethnic Estonians between 1519 claim to speak some Russian then among the 1014 year old group command of Russian has fallen to 19% (which is about one-third the percentage of those who claim to have command of English).11 In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Russian remains a co-official language with Kazakh and Kyrgyz respectively. Large Russian-speaking communities still exist in northern Kazakhstan and ethnic Russians comprise 25.6% of Kazakhstan's population.12 Those who speak Russian as a mother or secondary language in Lithuania represent approximately 60% of the population of Lithuania. Also more than half of the population of the Baltic states speak Russian either as foreign language or as mother tongue.111314 As the Grand Duchy of Finland was part of the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1918 a number of Russian speakers have remained in Finland. There are 33400 Russian-speaking Finns amounting to 0.6% of the population. Five thousand (0.1%) of them are late 19th century and 20th century immigrants or their descendants and the remaining majority are recent immigrants who have moved there in the 1990s and later.citation needed In the 20th century Russian was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be allies of the USSR. In particular these countries include Poland Bulgaria the Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary Albania former East Germany and Cuba. However younger generations are usually not fluent in it because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey15 though fluency in Russian remains fairly high (2040%) in some countries in particular those where the people speak a Slavic language and thereby have an edge in learning Russian (namely Poland Czech Republic Slovakia and Bulgaria). It is currently the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia and has been compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language since 2006.1617 Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian.citation needed Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan (Awde and Sarwan 2003). According to a BBC report from October 2009 Afghan refugee children are learning Russian in school. If they return to Afghanistan this may create a small population of second-language Russian speakers there as well. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America especially in large urban centers of the U.S. and Canada such as New York City Philadelphia Boston Los Angeles Nashville San Francisco Seattle Spokane Toronto Baltimore Miami Chicago Denver and Cleveland. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers and live in ethnic enclaves (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). Only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union the overwhelming majority of Russophones in North America were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews.vague According to the United States Census in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850000 individuals living in the United States.18 Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the 20th century each with its own flavor of language. The United Kingdom Spain Portugal France Italy Belgium Greece Brazil Norway and Austria have significant Russian-speaking communities Germany has the highest Russian-speaking population outside the former Soviet Union with approximately 3 million people.19 Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney also have Russian speaking populations with the most Russians living in southeast Melbourne particularly the suburbs of Carnegie and Caulfield. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans Greeks Jews Azerbaijanis Armenians or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment.citation needed Russians in China form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by mainland China. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian Source Native speakers Native rank Total speakers Total rank G. Weber "Top Languages" Language Monthly 3: 1218 1997 ISSN 1369-9733 160000000 8 285000000 5 World Almanac (1999) 145000000 8          (2005) 275000000 5 SIL (2000 WCD) 145000000 8 255000000 56 (tied with Arabic) CIA World Factbook (2005) 160000000 8 Official status Russian is the official language of Russia although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in the numerous ethnic autonomies within Russia such as Bashkortostan Tatarstan and Yakutia. It is also an official language of Belarus Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan and the de facto officialclarification needed language of the unrecognized country of Transnistria and partially recognized countries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics.2021 94 % 22 of the school students of Russia 75% in Belarus 41% in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan 20% in Ukraine23 23% in Kyrgyzstan 21% in Moldova 7% in Azerbaijan 5% in Georgia and 2% in Armenia and Tajikistan receive their education only or mostly in Russian. The percentage of ethnic Russians is 80% in Russia 10% in Belarus 36% in Kazakhstan 27% in Ukraine 9% in Kyrgyzstan 6% in Moldova 2% in Azerbaijan 1.5% in Georgia and less than 1% in both Armenia and Tajikistan.citation needed Russian-language schooling is also available in Latvia Estonia and Lithuania. However due to recent high school reforms in Latvia (whereby the government pays a substantial sum to a school to teach in the national language) the number of subjects taught in Russian has been reduced in the country.2425 The language has a co-official status alongside Romanian in the autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria in Moldova. In the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine Russian is recognized as a regional language alongside Crimean Tatar. According to a poll by FOM-Ukraine Russian is the most widely spoken language in Ukraine understood literally by everyone.2627Need quotation to verify However despite its widespread usage pro-Russian Crimean activists complain about the (mandatory) use of Ukrainian in schools movie theaters courts on drug prescriptions and its use in the media and for government paperwork.2829 Dialects See also: Category:Russian dialects Northern dialects   1. Arkhangelsk dialect   2. Olonets dialect   3. Novgorod dialect   4. Viatka dialect   5. Vladimir dialect Central dialects   6. Moscow dialect   7. Tver dialect Southern dialects   8. Orel (Don) dialect   9. Ryazan dialect   10. Tula dialect   11. Smolensk dialect Other   12. Northern Russian dialect with Belorussian influences   13. Sloboda and Steppe dialects of Ukrainian language   14. Steppe dialect of Ukrainian with Russian influences Despite leveling after 1900 especially in matters of vocabulary a number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguistswho divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings "Northern" and "Southern" with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Otherswho divide the language into three groupings Northern Central and Southern with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation vocabulary and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. The northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly (the phenomenon called okanye/). East of Moscow particularly in Ryazan Region unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to (like in the Moscow dialect) being instead pronounced /a/ in such positions (e.g. is pronounced nasli not nsli) this is called yakanye/ ;30 many southern dialects have a palatalized final /t/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the standard dialect) and a fricative where the standard dialect has .31 However in certain areas south of Moscow e.g. in and around Tula // is pronounced as in the Moscow and northern dialects unless it precedes a voiceless plosive or a pause. In this position // is lenited and devoiced to the fricative x e.g. drux (in Moscow's dialect only box lxkj mxkj and some derivatives follow this rule). Some of these features (e.g. a debuccalized or lenited // and palatalized final /t/ in 3rd person forms of verbs) are also present in modern Ukrainian indicating either a linguistic continuum and/or strong influence one way or the other. The city of Veliky Novgorod has historically displayed a feature called chokanye/tsokanye (/) where /t/ and /ts/ were confused. So ("heron") has been recorded as ''. Also the second palatalization of velars did not occur there so the so-called (from the Proto-Slavonic diphthong *ai) did not cause /k x/ to shift to /ts dz s/; therefore where Standard Russian has ("chain") the form kep is attested in earlier texts. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the 18th century. In the 19th Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the 20th century. In modern times the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language ( dlktlitskj atls ruskv jzka) was published in three folio volumes 19861989 after four decades of preparatory work. Derived languages Balachka a dialect spoken primarily by Cossacks in the regions of Don Kuban and Terek. Fenya a criminal argot of ancient origin with Russian grammar but with distinct vocabulary. Padonkaffsky jargon is a slang language developed by padonki of Runet. Quelia a pseudo pidgin of German and Russian. Runglish Russian-English pidgin. This word is also used by English speakers to describe the way in which Russians attempt to speak English using Russian morphology and/or syntax. Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with mostly Russian vocabulary and mostly Norwegian grammar used for communication between Russians and Norwegian traders in the Pomor trade in Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula. Surzhyk is a heavily russified variety of Ukrainian. It is used by a large portion of the population of Ukraine especially in the eastern and central areas of the country. Trasianka is a language with Russian and Belarusian features used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus. Alphabet A page from Azbuka (Alphabet book) the first Russian printed textbook. Printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic alphabet. Main article: Russian alphabet Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic () alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their upper case forms along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: /a/ /b/ /v/ // /d/ /je/ /jo/ // /z/ /i/ /j/ /k/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /o/ /p/ /r/ /s/ /t/ /u/ /f/ /x/ /ts/ /t/ // // /-/ // /e/ /ju/ /ja/ Older letters of the Russian alphabet include which merged to (/je/ or /e/); and which both merged to (/i/); which merged to (/f/); which merged to (/u/); which merged to (/ju/ or /u/); and / which later were graphically reshaped into <> and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /a/. While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another they may be used in this and related articles. The yers and originally indicated the pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced // //. Transliteration Further information: Romanization of Russian and Informal romanizations of Russian Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example (frost) is transliterated moroz and (mouse) mysh or my. Once commonly used by the majority those living outside Russia transliteration is being used less frequently by Russian speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs leveraging this Unicode extension are available which allow users to type Russian characters even on western 'QWERTY' keyboards.32 Computing The Russian alphabet has many systems of character encoding. KOI8-R was designed by the government and was intended to serve as the standard encoding. This encoding was and still is widely used in UNIX-like operating systems. Nevertheless the spread of MS-DOS and OS/2 (IBM866) traditional Macintosh (ISO/IEC 8859-5) and Microsoft Windows (CP1251) created chaos and ended by establishing different encodings as de-facto standards with Windows-1251 becoming a de facto standard in Russian Internet and e-mail communication during the period of roughly 1995-2005. But nowadays all the obsolete 8-bit encodings are rarely used in the communication protocols and text exchange data formats being mostly replaced with UTF-8. A number of encoding conversion applications were developed. "iconv" is an example that is supported by most versions of Linux Macintosh and some other operating systems; but you rarely still need those converters unless accessing texts created more than a few years ago. Aside the modern Russian alphabet glyphs Unicode (and thus UTF-8) also supports the letters of the Early Cyrillic alphabet which have many similarities with the Greek alphabet as well as glyphs of all other slavic and non-slavic but Cyrillic based alphabets. Orthography Main article: Russian orthography Russian spelling is reasonably phonemic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonemics morphology etymology and grammar; and like that of most living languages has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. A number of rigid spelling rules introduced between the 1880s and 1910s have been responsible for the former whilst trying to eliminate the latter. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918 and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990s has met a hostile reception and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation originally based on Byzantine Greek was in the 17th and 18th centuries reformulated on the French and German models. According to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences an optional acute accent ( ) may and sometimes should be used to mark stress. For example it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words especially when context does not make it obvious: / (lock/castle) / (worthwhile/standing) / (this is odd/this is marvelous) / (attaboy/fine young man) / (I shall learn it/I am recognizing it) / (to cut/to have cut); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words especially personal and family names ( ) and to express the stressed word in the sentence ( / / Was it you who ate the cookie/Did you eat the cookie/Was the cookie your meal). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. Sounds Main article: Russian phonology The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period before being largely settled around the year 1400. The language possesses five vowels (or six under the St.Petersburg Phonological school) which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The hard consonants are often velarized especially before back vowels as in Irish although in some dialects the velarization is limited to hard /l/). The standard language based on the Moscow dialect possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat lengthened while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to near-close vowels or an unclear schwa. (See also: vowel reduction in Russian.) The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Clusters of four consonants are not very common however especially within a morpheme. Examples: (/vzlat/ "glance") (/stritlstf/ "of constructions"). Consonants   Bilabial Labio- dental Dental & Alveolar Post- alveolar Palatal Velar Nasal hard /m/   /n/       soft /m/   /n/       Plosive hard /p/   /b/   /t/   /d/     /k/   // soft /p/   /b/   /t/   /d/     /k/*   Affricate hard     /ts/ dz            soft         /t/ d        Fricative hard   /f/   /v/ /s/   /z/ //   //   /x/   soft   /f/   /v/ /s/   /z/ //*   //*   x   Trill hard     /r/       soft     /r/       Approximant hard     /l/       soft     /l/   /j/   Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/ // /x/ do have palatalized allophones k x only /k/ might be considered a phoneme though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive (the only native minimal pair which argues for /k/ to be a separate phoneme is " " (/t tkot/ "it weaves")/" " (/tt kot/ "this cat")). Palatalization means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. In the case of /t/ and /d/ the tongue is raised enough to produce slight frication (affricate sounds). These sounds: /t d ts s z n and r/ are dental that is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the teeth rather than against the alveolar ridge. Grammar Main article: Russian grammar This section requires expansion. Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure although considerable leveling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses a highly synthetic morphology a syntax that for the literary language is the conscious fusion of three elements:citation needed a polished vernacular foundation; a Church Slavonic inheritance; a Western European style. The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical featurescitation needed some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language. Vocabulary This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter . See History of the Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to ascertain because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds diminutives etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries and the total vocabulary of Alexander Pushkin (who is credited with greatly augmenting and codifying literary Russian) are as follows: Work Year Words Notes Academic dictionary I Ed. 17891794 43257 Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary Academic dictionary II Ed 18061822 51388 Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary Pushkin opus 18101837 21197 - Academic dictionary III Ed. 1847 114749 Russian and Church Slavonic with Old Russian vocabulary Dahls dictionary 18801882 195844 44000 entries lexically grouped; attempt to catalogue the full vernacular language includes some properly Ukrainian and Belarusian words Ushakov's dictionary 19341940 85289 Current language with some archaisms Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language 19501965 120480 full dictionary of the "Modern language" Ozhegov's dictionary 1950s1960s 61458 More or less than-current language Lopatin's dictionary 2000 163293 Orthographic current language As a historical aside Dahl was in the second half of the 19th century still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire as well as to its one official language should be <> with one <> in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot who distinctly heard the <> lengthened or doubled. Proverbs and sayings Main articles: Russian proverbs and Russian sayings The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs ( pslovts) and sayings (a pvork). These were already tabulated by the 17th century and collected and studied in the 19th and 20th with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source. History and examples Main article: History of the Russian language See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods. Kievan period and feudal breakup Tatar yoke and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Moscovite period (15th17th centuries) Empire (18th19th centuries) Soviet period and beyond (20th century) Judging by the historical records by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia Ukraine and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus' in about 880 from which modern Russia Ukraine and Belarus trace their origins established Old East Slavic as a literary and commercial language. It was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the introduction of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and official language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the Old East Slavic and spoken dialects at this time which in their turn modified the Old Church Slavonic as well. The Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest East Slavic book known one of many medieval illuminated manuscripts preserved in the Russian National Library. Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100. On the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine emerged Ruthenian and in modern Russia medieval Russian. They definitely became distinct since the 13th century i.e. following the division of that land between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Poland and Hungary in the west and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal republics plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of the Tatars) in the east. The official language in Moscow and Novgorod and later in the growing Muscovy was Church Slavonic which evolved from Old Church Slavonic and remained the literary language for centuries until the Petrine age when its usage shrank drastically to biblical and liturgical texts. Russian developed under a strong influence of Church Slavonic until the close of the 17th century; afterwards the influence reversed leading to corruption of liturgical texts. The political reforms of Peter the Great ( Pytr Velkiy) were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800 a significant portion of the gentry spoke French less often German on an everyday basis. Many Russian novels of the 19th century e.g. Leo Tolstoy's ( ) War and Peace contain entire paragraphs and even pages in French with no translation given with an assumption that educated readers would not need one. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Aleksandr Pushkin ( ) in the first third of the 19th century. Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic grammar and vocabulary (so called " " "high style") in favor of grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of the time. Even modern readers of younger age may only experience slight difficulties understanding some words in Pushkins texts since relatively few words used by Pushkin have become archaic or changed meaning. In fact many expressions used by Russian writers of the early 19th century in particular Pushkin Mikhail Lermontov ( ) Nikolai Gogol ( ) Alexandr Griboyedov ( ) became proverbs or sayings which can be frequently found even in the modern Russian colloquial speech. Winter Evening Reading of excerpt of Pushkins "Winter Evening" ( ) 1825. Problems listening to this file See media help. IPA: zimnj vetr bur mloju nb krot ; vixr snn kruta to kak zver na zvot to zplatt kak dta to pkrovl bvtalj vdruk slomj zumit to kak putnk zpzdalj . knam vkok zstutit The political upheavals of the early 20th century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military scientific and technological matters (especially cosmonautics) gave Russian a worldwide prestige especially during the middle third of the 20th century. See also Language description History of the Russian language List of Russian language topics Russian alphabet Russian grammar Russian orthography Russian phonology Related languages Church Slavonic language East Slavic languages Great Russian language Old Church Slavonic language Old East Slavic language Slavic languages Other Computer russification List of English words of Russian origin Non-native pronunciations of English Reforms of Russian orthography Romanization of Russian Runglish Russian humour Russian literature Russian proverbs Volapuk encoding References "How do you say that in Russian". Expert. 2006. http://eng.expert.ru/printissues/countries/2006/09/russkiyyazykvblizhayshemzarubezhe/. Retrieved 2008-02-26.  "The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages". Sint Ignatius High School. http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm.  "Russian Language Institute". Ruslang.ru. http://www.ruslang.ru/. Retrieved 2010-05-16.  a b Abkhazia and South Ossetia are only partionally recognized countries "Gallup.com". Gallup.com. http://www.gallup.com/poll/109228/russian-language-enjoying-boost-postsoviet-states.aspx. Retrieved 2010-05-16.  Timberlake (2004:17) "Academic credit". . . 5. . 1828. 1982. http://www.philology.ru/linguistics2/filin-82.htm. Retrieved 2006-04-29.  "Academic credit". - . http://www.ksu.ru/f10/publications/konf/articles11.phpid5&num17000000. Retrieved 2006-04-29.  "Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911". http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/RussianLanguage.  " 24.04.1990 " (The 1990 USSR Law about the Languages of the USSR) (Russian) a b c d "Population census of Estonia 2000. Population by mother tongue command of foreign languages and citizenship". Statistics Estonia. http://pub.stat.ee/px-web.2001/Dialog/varval.aspmaPC227&tiPOPULATION+BY+MOTHER+TONGUE%2C+COMMAND+OF+FOREIGN+LANGUAGES+AND+CITIZENSHIP&path../IDatabas/Populationcensus/08Ethnicnationality.Mothertongue.Commandofforeignlanguages/&lang1. Retrieved 2007-10-23.  "Kazakhstan's News Bulletin April 20 2007". Kazakhstan News Bulletin. April 20 2007. http://prosites-kazakhembus.homestead.com/042007.html. Retrieved May 16 2009.  "Population by other languages which they know by county and municipality". Statistics Lithuania. http://stat.gov.lt/en/pages/view/id1738. Retrieved 2009-05-16.  "Population by mother tongue and more widespread language skills in 2000". Statistics Latvia. http://data.csb.gov.lv/Dialog/varval.aspmatsk06a&tiPOPULATION+BY+MOTHER+TONGUE+AND+MORE+WIDESPREAD+LANGUAGE+SKILLS&path../DATABASEEN/tautassk/Results%20of%20Population%20Census%202000%20in%20brief/&lang1. Retrieved 2009-05-16.  http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/doc631en.pdf Brooke James (February 15 2005). "For Mongolians E Is for English F Is for Future". The New York Times. New York Times. http://nytimes.com/2005/02/15/international/asia/15mongolia.htmlr2&pagewantedall. Retrieved May 16 2009.  " " (in Russian). . September 21 2006. http://pda.nr2.ru/83966.html. Retrieved May 16 2009.  Language Use in the United States: 2007 census.gov Vgl. Bernhard Brehmer: Sprechen Sie Qwelja Formen und Folgen russisch-deutscher Zweisprachigkeit in Deutschland. In: Tanja Anstatt (Hrsg.): Mehrsprachigkeit bei Kindern und Erwachsenen. Tbingen 2007 S. 163185 hier: 166 f. basierend auf dem Migrationsbericht 2005 des Bundesamtes fr Migration und Flchtlinge. (PDF) Russias Language Could Be Ticket in for Migrants Gallup Retrieved on May 26 2010 Russian Language Enjoying a Boost in Post-Soviet States Gallup Retrieved on 08-03-2009 " . ." (in Russian) (Doc). MINELRES. p. 80. http://www.minelres.lv/reports/russia/FCNM%20-%20Russian%20NGO%20report%20-%20rus28mar06.doc. Retrieved 2009-05-16.  2006/2007 figures (Russian) "Russia to raise language concerns". BBC. September 4 2003. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3497348.stm. Retrieved May 15 2009.  " " (in Russian). NEWSru.com. March 10 2004. http://txt.newsru.com/world/04sep2003/russianschool.html. Retrieved May 15 2009.  2009 FOM-Ukraine Retrieved on 08-03-2009 The language situation in Ukraine Retrieved on 08-03-2009 After Georgia Crimea Some fear Russia's goals Kyiv Post (September 29 2008) Ukraine-Russia tensions rise in Crimea Los Angeles Times (September 28 2008) "The Language of the Russian Village" (in Russian). http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map13.html. Retrieved 2006-07-04.  "The Language of the Russian Village" (in Russian). http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map14.html. Retrieved 2009-03-06.  Caloni Wanderley (2007-02-15). "RusKey: mapping the Russian keyboard layout into the Latin alphabets". The Code Project. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/winsdk/ruskey.aspx. Retrieved 2011-01-28.  The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language: In English Comrie Bernard Gerald Stone Maria Polinsky (1996). The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019824066X.  Timberlake Alan (2004). A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 0521772923  Carleton T.R. (1991). Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages. Columbus Ohio: Slavica Press.  Cubberley P. (2002). Russian: A Linguistic Introduction (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521796415.  titleA Comprehensive Russian Grammaredition2ndlocationOxfordpublisherBlackwell Publishingyear2000isbn0631207570 In Russian .. - : .- 1990. 99c. .: . - . . . . .. . . . . 1987. .. . . 1990. .. XVXVII . . 1978. .. : .- : 2003. . . ; . . 1982 5. . 1828 .. 1970. .. .. .. . . 1961. . . 1958 2-e . 1983. External links Look up Category:Russian language in Wiktionary the free dictionary. 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