Russian language
Russian (русский язык /'ruski jɪ'zɨk/) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages.
Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards.
While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian shares a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of political importance in the twentieth century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations.
NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in SAMPA (without regard to the reduction of unstressed vowels).
| Russian (русский язык) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Russia and many other countries |
| Region: | Eastern Europe and Asia |
| Total speakers: | 280 million |
| Ranking: | 4-7 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Satem phylum Slavic East Slavic Russian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, United Nations |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ru |
| ISO 639-2 | rus |
| SIL | RUS |
Classification
Russian is a Slavic language, in the Indo-European family.
From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group.
The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in form to the modern Bulgarian language than the Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various dialects. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Historical Sound Changes and History of Russian language.
It has been argued that the entire literary language is fundamentally based on Church Slavonic. Others have taken this argument a step further to suggest (controversially) that the closest relative of Russian should therefore be considered Bulgarian. Whatever the merits of the latter position, the nature of the relationship between Russian and Church Slavonic has been a main point of scientific debate in Russian philology, which in the twentieth century (since before the Soviet period) tended to draw a sharp distinction between the two.
Without a doubt, all three languages in the East Slavic group have influenced one another as well. Evaluations of this influence have changed in tune with political developments, and the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian commentators have tended to stress their own point of view.
Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.
Geographic distribution
Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. 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. Following the breakup of 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 intercourse throughout the region has continued, this status may decline in the future.
In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country with a 40% Russian-speaking minority.
In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries influenced by the USSR.
Russian is also spoken in Israel by 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian.
Sizable Russian-speaking communities (totalling in the hundreds of thousands) also exist in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of emigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. The descendants of the Russian emigrés, however, have tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation.
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: 12-18, 1997, ISSN 1369-9733 | 160,000,000 | 7 | 285,000,000 | 4 |
| SIL Ethnologue | 167,000,000 | 7 | 277,000,000 | 5 |
Official status
Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Dialects
Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguists 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. Others 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 dialects typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final /t/ and aspirate the /g/ into /h/. It should be noted that these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other.
Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка /dial'ektolog'itSesk'ij atlas russkovo jaz1ka/), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work.
The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.
Derived languages
- Russenorsk is a pidgin language combining Russian and Norwegian.
- Russian sign language allows deaf people to communicate.
- Fenya or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
Writing system
Alphabet
Main article: Russian alphabet
Russian is written using a modern version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.
The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with SAMPA values for each letter's typical sound:
| А /a/ | Б /b/ | В /v/ | Г /g/ | Д /d/ | Е /je/ | Ё /jo/ | Ж /Z/ | З /z/ | И /i/ | Й /j/ |
| К /k/ | Л /l/ | М /m/ | Н /n/ | О /o/ | П /p/ | Р /r/ | С /s/ | Т /t/ | У /u/ | Ф /f/ |
| Х /x/ | Ц /ts/ | Ч /tS'/ | Ш /S/ | Щ /S'/ | Ъ // | Ы /1/ | Ь /'/ | Э /E/ | Ю /ju/ | Я /ja/ |
Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include 
/ě:/ or /e/, i /i/, and 
/ja/ or /'a/. The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/, /ĭ/.
Orthography
Main article: Russian orthography
Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points.
The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted.
The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.
Sounds
Main article: Russian phonetics
Grammar
Main article: Russian grammar
Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place.
Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
- a polished vernacular foundation;
- a Church Slavonic inheritance;
- a Western European style.
The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.
Vocabulary
See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language.
The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon 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 Pushkin, are as follows:
| Work | Year | Words | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academic dictionary, I Ed. | 1789-1794 | 43,257 | Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary |
| Academic dictionary, II Ed | 1806-1822 | 51,388 | Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary |
| Pushkin opus | 1810-1837 | 21,197 | - |
| Academic dictionary, III Ed. | 1847 | 114,749 | Russian and Church Slavonic with Old Russian vocabulary |
| Dal's dictionary | 1880-1882 | 195,844 | 44,000 entries lexically grouped; attempt to catalogue the full vernacular language, includes some properly Ukrainian and Belarusian words |
| Ushakov's dictionary | 1934-1940 | 85,289 | Current language with some archaisms |
| Academic dictionary | 1950-1965 | 120,480 | full dictionary of the "Modern language" |
| Ozhegov's dictionary | 1991 | 61,458 | More or less then-current language |
| Lopatin's dictionary | 2000 | c.160,000 | Orthographic, current language |
Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words.
The language of abuse and invective
Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more liberal-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань /artistitS'eskaja rugan'/) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат /tr'oxEtaZn1j mat/).
It is interesting that the modern obscenities appear to have taken on their meaning in the eighteenth century, as euphemisms for words since lost. For example, the word блядь /bl'ad'/ ("whore"), is today considered extraordinarily offensive. It anciently meant "error, sin", as a concept in the high style, occurs in scripture in that sense, and may perhaps be heard during the liturgy.
Proverbs and sayings
Main articles: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings
Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица/poslov'itsa/) and sayings (поговоркa/pogovorka/). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.
Here are a few of them:
- в тридевятом царстве /v tr'id'ev'atom tsarstv'e/ "in the twenty-seventh kingdom", a typical beginning of a fairy tale; often used ironically in a reference to a place far away. (три /tr'i/ "three", девять /d'ev'at'/ "nine", 3x9=27; an archaic non-decimal reckoning.)
- со времён царя Гороха /so vr'em'on tsar'a goroxa/ "since the times of Tsar Green-pea" = "since time immemorial"
- ни к селу, ни к городу /n'i k s'elu, n'i k gorodu/ "neither for a town nor for a city" = "of no use or relevance whatsoever"
- до Бога высоко, до Царя далеко /do boga v1soko, do tsar'a dal'eko/ "God is up high, the Tsar is far away"
- курица не птица, баба не человек /kur'itsa n'e pt'itsa, baba n'e tS'elov'ek/ "A chicken isn't a bird, a woman is not a human being"
- голь на выдумку хитра /gol' na v1dumku x'itra/ "nakedness is cunning for invention" = "necessity is the mother of invention"
- хоть кол на голове теши /xot' kol na golov'e t'eS1/ "even if you whittled a spike on his head..." (said of someone ultimately stubborn or recalcitrant)
- сделал дело, гуляй смело /sd'elal d'elo, gul'aj sm'elo/ "task accomplished, disport bravely"
History and examples
Main article: History of Russian language See also : Reforms of Russian orthography
The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century)
See also:
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, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic.
Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late fourteeth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct languages from this period at the latest. The official language remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotritsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature.
The political reforms of Peter the Great 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. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century.
The political upheavals of the early twentieth 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 world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century.
Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.
References
The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:
In English:
- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954
In Russian:
- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987.
Many further references are listed in the books above.
Related articles
Language description
Related languages
- East Slavic languages
- Church Slavonic language
- Great Russian language
- Old Church Slavonic language
- Old Russian language
Other
- List of English words of Russian origin
- Russian literature
- Russian humour
- Russian proverbs
- Reforms of Russian orthography
- Transliteration of Russian into English
- Volapuk encoding
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- Common phrases in different languages
Wiktionary information
- For more information: Russian
External links
- MasterRussian.com - Free lessons, vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links. (http://www.masterrussian.com)
- Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in learning Russian. (http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum)
- "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian) (http://www.gramota.ru)
- "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian) (http://www.lib.ru)
- Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com) (http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html)
- Reference Grammar (http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/)
- Wikibooks Russian (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Russian:Contents)
- Russian - English Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/)
- Generator for Russian typographical filler text (http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian)
- G. Weber, "Top Languages" (http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm)
- SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=RUS)
- Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning) (http://www.linguarus.com)
- ODP Russian Language category (http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/)
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