
Russian (''русский язык'' ) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit language, Greek language, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic languages, Romance languages, and Celtic languages languages, including English language, French language, and Irish language. 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 International Phonetic Alphabet. ==Classification== Russian is a Slavic languages language, in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian language and Ukrainian language, the other two national languages in the East Slavic languages group. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic language, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic languages 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 that are heavily polonized. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain 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 slightly different meanings. For details, see Russian phonetics#Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek language, Latin, French language, German language, and English language. ==Geographic distribution== Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union. 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 break-up 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 because the language is increasingly challenged by English. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country with a 36% Russian-speaking population (Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians). The same is true for Estonia, where Russian remains the native language of at least a quarter of its population residing close to the Russian border. The pressure from the EU committee might soon force these countries' governments to recognize the rights of the Russian speakers. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Soviet Empire and in other Communist state that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jew immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million: they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the first generation immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It's important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. The overwhelming majority are Russian-speaking Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling, in the case of Germany, 2 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of German people, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for employment. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and have also access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian: {| align=center cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 border=0 |- !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, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia (country) received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 10% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 10% in Moldova, 1% in Azerbaijan, 1% in Georgia. ===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 clearly (the phenomenon called okanye ''оканье''); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of 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 Mikhail 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'' ), 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=== *Fenya or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary. * Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine * Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus. *Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian language grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula. ==Writing system== ===Alphabet=== [[Image:Meletius Smotrisky Cyrillic Alphabet.PNG|thumb|Meletius Smotrytsky presented the Cyrillic alphabet in this 1619 publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modern version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with International Phonetic Alphabet values for each letter's typical sound: {| align=center cellpadding=4 style="text-align:center;" |- |A (Cyrillic)
||Be (Cyrillic)
||Ve (Cyrillic)
||Ge (Cyrillic)
||De (Cyrillic)
||Ye (Cyrillic)
||Yo (Cyrillic)
||Zhe (Cyrillic)
||Ze (Cyrillic)
||I (Cyrillic)
||Short I
|- |Ka (Cyrillic)
||El (Cyrillic)
||Em (Cyrillic)
||En (Cyrillic)
||O (Cyrillic)
||Pe (Cyrillic)
||Er (Cyrillic)
||Es (Cyrillic)
||Te (Cyrillic)
||U (Cyrillic)
||Ef (Cyrillic)
|- |Kha (Cyrillic)
||Tse (Cyrillic)
||Che (Cyrillic)
||Sha
||Shcha
||Hard sign
||Yery
||Soft sign
||E (Cyrillic)
||Yu (Cyrillic)
||Ya (letter)
|} Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The Yer ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ''ultra-short'' or ''reduced'' , (conventional transcription, not IPA). ===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== The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are given separate letters depending on whether or not they palatalize a preceding consonant. The consonants typically come in pairs, hard and soft (palatalization). The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate modulation in pitch (which is not a lexical differentiator). Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Consonant clusters tend to be simplified. The spoken dialects show a very large number of variations. ==Grammar== Russian has preserved an Indo-European Synthetic_language-inflection structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses * a highly Synthetic_language morphology * a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements: ** a polished vernacular foundation; ** a Church Slavonic language inheritance; ** a Western Europe 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 Russian grammar#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: {| align="center" cellpadding="4" style="text-align:left" |- ! 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 |- |Dahl'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. (As a historical aside, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective ''русский'', 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, be spelled ''руский'' with one s, 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 s lengthened or doubled.) ===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 conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (''артистичная ругань'' ) 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'' ). 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'' ("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 article'': ''Russian proverbs, Russian sayings'' Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (''пословица'' ) and sayings (''поговоркa'' ). 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. ==History and examples== ''See also'': Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods. *History of Russian language#Origins *History of Russian language#The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries) *History of Russian language#Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries) *History of Russian language#The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries) *History of Russian language#Empire (18th-19th centuries) *History of Russian language#Soviet period and beyond (20th century) ''See also:'' *History of Russian language#Examples 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 fourteenth 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 Smotrytsky 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 language, less often German language, 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. Reading of excerpt of Pushkin's "Winter Evening" (Зимний вечер), 1825. 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 === * Russian alphabet * Russian grammar * Russian orthography * Russian phonetics * History of Russian language === 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#Russian *List of commonly confused homonyms#Russian *Common phrases in different languages *Runglish ==External links== * [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries] * [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language] * [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)] * [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links] * [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.] * [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language] * [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian] * [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)] * [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)] * [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)] * [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar] * [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary] * [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text] * [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"] * [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian] * [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)] * [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses] * [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category] * [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA] * [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish] * [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America] Languages of Belarus Languages of Finland Languages of Russia Russian language Slavic languages ang:Russisc sprǽc cv:Вырăс чěлхи gd:Ruiseis ka:რუსული ენა la:Lingua Russica lv:Krievu valoda li:Rössisch ms:Bahasa Russia mo:Лимба русэ se:Ruoššagiella simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย vi:Tiếng Nga
==Early discussion== Well, I would like to say something about making articles in Wikipedia using this example. As it is now -- the article about Russian is a terrible one. What can I learn from it? Mostly nothing. As Russian is probably among the oldest (or perhaps the oldest language) of Slavic languages, it is quite idiotic just to mention how the Russian language was spoken in the areas of the Warsaw Pact and such. Yes, this is a sad (or not) fact, but here politics can't take its place, because we would like to learn something about this great language. In the same manner we would also have to check how English language became the world's most popular language (but without politics, right). It shurely was detrimental for those languages which were suppressed in the Soviet Union's times -- so they were German language, Italian language and Hungarian language to my native one -- and I don't blame them for that... My many fellow citizens think that Russian language is simple, because it sounds (sometimes) like the Slovene language, but hey, try to translate something from the Russian literature, poetry or technical field. There are many words in Russian and in Slovene, which are completely the same, but there are even more which are not. I can't also figure how non-Slavic person can learn Russian language. For me it is like someone would want to learn Chinese language or Japanese language or even the hardest one (if it really exists...) Another fact is to say that in a way Russian language represents in full the whole Earth's civilization, because of the Russian successes in Space. We all remember astronauts wearing CCCP signature on their helmets, don't we? This was simply because Russian cosmonauts mostly land on a solid ground and they have to have those markings not to be confused by local inhabitants. (I think so). If you ever have seen any Russian computer programme, you would know that they are quite extraordinary. If I'll have time I'll add something more to the present article and prevent myself from criticizing all over. I am doing my best already in filling gaps regarding Russian people... We Slovenes sometimes joke that there are approx. 220 millions Slovenes and Russians together (...so the others should be afraid of Slovenes... :-)) Well again, these were some of my thoughts at a glance. Any response is very wellcome. Best regards and, yes, not to forget, Happy New Year 2003 to all ya... --User:XJamRastafire 16:04 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC) Well, Happy New Year 2004 also... --User:XJamRastafire 15:30, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC) == Dialect or language == Can someone give some explanation or references as to why Belarusyn and Ukrainian are portrayed as dialects? What linguist holds that theory today? Isn't the only reason to hold that political? :Well, as a Russian I can understand pretty much everything in Belarussian or Ukrainian... So yes, the reason is mostly political. --User:Alikhtarov 01:48, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::Could you please tell us when and where you heard or read something in Belarusan? User:Rydel 15:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) :::[http://be.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page] :-) Mind you, I can understand about 90% of what is written there. Ditto [http://uk.wikipedia.org/]. Then again, I have had somewhat "above average" exposure to the Ukrainian language for a Russian (my mother is Ukrainian), so I guess it cannot be considered a pure experiment... User:Alikhtarov 06:08, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) :Well, as Russian and Ukrianian speaker I can understand a lot of Polish; you wouldn't consider Polish as a dialect of Russian or Ukrainian language, would you? User: WebDome Aug.18 2004 :A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. That's what linguists say (only half-jokingly). I'd say there's a dialect continuum there. --User:I@k5 15:45, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC) :: What uh... continuum? Dear, User:I@k5 can you please name the villages on Belarusan-Russian and Ukrainian-Russian border you have visited? -- User:Rydel 16:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::: I speak Russian and Ukrainian. I've visited and/or talked with people from all over Ukraine, and some from Russian regions like Belgorod and Rostov. That was quite a few years ago, and those people were mostly city dwellers. Still it is my impression that there's a continuum. As for Belarusan, I used to listen to radio in that language (the standard I'd imagine) and it was mostly intelligible. Those are just my limited personal observations.Does someone have a copy of Chambers and Trudgill, or something? --User:I@k5 17:04, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC) :::: I see. Well, there is very little doubt that Ukrainian and Belarusan are mutually intelligible to a high degree. I can testify that based on my own personal experience. Once we were going by bus from Bulgaria to Belarus via Ukraine and we stopped to buy some apples and pears, and I talked in Belarusan with the old Ukrainian lady, and at the end she said: "Boy, you speak Ukrainian with a very funny accent". And then I had exactly the same thing happening to me when I visited Lviv and I was talking to a waitress in Belarusan, and at the end she said: "You speak a strange dialect of Ukrainian". ;) As for the Russian - Ukrainian, and Russian - Belarusan, more often than not I heard stories that people don't really get much at all. And again my own experience proves that. When I am in a company of Russian speakers, and someone calls me up on a mobile, and I start speaking in Belarusan, after I hang up most of the time Russians say something like: "Wow, I didn't get anything." Again, just personal experience. And I also noted that Polish speakers and Belarusan speakers in Western Belarus can understand each other pretty well, there is a relatively high degree of mutual understanding. I don't know how it helps though in this discussion about "continuum". For example, Czech and Slovak are almost 100% mutually intelligible, yet they are considered different languages, not dialects. Also, I don't quite get why you mention Chambers and Trudgill. I heard it's a great ''theoretical'' text on dialectology, but I didn't know whether there was any practical information regarding East Slavic languages in that book. -- User:Rydel 17:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::::: Chambers and Trudgill is supposed to have a map of European dialects which may be of some help. ::::: Dear Rydel, I think it's just because you talked to certain Russians, probably from Moscow or St.Petersburg. Please take in consideration that Russian Federation is a large country, and Russian language has many dialects. There is a dialect continuum, i.e. some dialects of Russian language have much more differences than some dialects of Russian and Ukrainian languages. Decision whether to call them dialects or separate languages is political. Ditto with Ukrainian vs Belorussian. You confirmed that they are very close languages (linguistically), nonetheless, we consider them as different languages (politically) User:Drbug[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Drbug&action=edit§ion=new ] User:Drbug 07:41, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Revision time!!! == I have revised most of the article, basically writing it anew, although I tried to preserve everything that had not been poisoned by inter-Slavonic recriminations. User:A. Shetsen, June 28, 2004 My work on this is now done (for now). Looking over it, I think the following areas may require more work: * phonology. Especially, standardize the transcription. A note to Wiki developers: is there any way properly to generate IPA of the fly based on a custom input markup language, rather than SAMPA or something else? For Russian standardized transcription is difficult, because Slavic specialists in the West often appear to insist on a custom, vaguely Czech-based, transcription system. * dialectology. Since my interest is almost entirely from the point of view of the literary language and its history, it would be nice if someone who knows enough about the maze of Russian dialects could fill in this section. * history. I've deliberately left a lot unsaid here, including: **''historical grammar'' **''writing system'' (this too is not as straighforward as often supposed: черты и резы? глаголица? тайнопись? типография и орфография?) **''LITERATURE''. My main interest, actually, but since another article exists and does a good job providing a summary (a real critic could quibble with everything, but that's hardly the point), I'm not sure at this point how the two articles should relate to each other. More input would be highly appreciated. *pictures. Only scans of documents: books, posters, manuscripts, etc., properly illustrate the language, as opposed to its bearers or the place they inhabit. Of course, copyright violation is thus extremely difficult. At any rate, I've provided none for now. User:A. Shetsen 04:07, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)= NB Since writing the above, I've tried to convert all the transcriptions to SAMPA and added a few notes on the writing system, split between the "Notes on the alphabet" and "History". I've also provided a few notes about pre-eighteenth century literature under "History", but in such a way that this article's should remain on the language. User:A. Shetsen 07:33, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC) One last kick at the can on the Russian/Ukrainian thing. Nothing whatever has convinced me that the national, as opposed to dialectal, distinction existed until the Muscovite period. In times of the Russian Empire there appear to have been more than a few ''хохлы'' (no disrespect intended!) who functioned well among the ''москали'' (no disrespect intended!): Gogol comes to mind. I would never quarrel with a modern Ukrainian's emotional attachment to the term ''Русь'', and I would hope that the same Ukrainian would not contest the equivalent Russian's feelings. User:A. Shetsen 07:42, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==Peer review== :''Requested comments at Wikipedia:Peer Review'' Just some random comments on what seems to be an informative article! A couple of comments from a non-linguist layperson. 1) The "Alphabet and Phonology" section is quite long and technical, but the rest of the article is quite accessible to a general reader. For this reason could I recommend moving the "Alphabet and Phonology" section either to a page of its own (perhaps, Alphabet and Phonology of the Russian language) and summarising here, or maybe just move it to the end of the article? 2) Layout-wise, in the "Alphabet and Phonology" section, the pictures don't sit too well to the left of the table; perhaps they could be interspersed later in the section? 3) Could a map be made for the "Geographic distribution" section? 4) For some of the technical sections, it might help if the technical terms were linked to the relevant article, e.g. linking the dative case, and so on. User:Matt Crypto 03:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC) : Pictures and maps. I do have TWO maps planned: geographic distribution and dialects.As regards the existing pictures: I have about three more candidates for history, but putting them in takes time (several more days). Vocabulary and grammar are very difficult to illustrate. The three pictures next to the alphabet are all ABC. That's why I put them there. I've rearranged the existing pictures, and now have several more candidates. Scanning will take a while.
: Technical. Yes, I see what you mean. I'll think about how to simplify it. The difficulty is that to create a separate article would require a lot of work, since there is a lot I have NOT said that really should go into a separate article. I've created a sub-article for the notes, and now display only the modern alphabet and the sampa values in the main text.
: Links: yes, I'll try (if you don't do it first :)!) ---I've now put in a bunch.
:User:A. Shetsen 06:52, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I appreciate that a lot of interesting and valuable information was added to this article, but I'm not entirely certain why the Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages format has been foregone in favor of a new organizational scheme. At one point, this article conformed to the WikiProject's template, but it has since diverged substantially. Unless anyone can give a good reason why I shouldn't, I think I will reorganize so the article conforms to that format. User:Nohat 04:07, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
:My reasoning was as follows. If you know nothing about a language, you might ask questions in the following order:
::Where is is spoken?
::Where is it official?
::What's the alphabet?
::How does it sound?
::What's the grammar?
::And vocabulary?
::Any deviations from the norm? (i.e. dialects?)
::And how did it get to be what it is?
::So, how to learn it?
:That's the order everything's in.
:I realize that perhaps the vocabulary should precede the grammar. However, the alphabet must come before, and the sounds naturally follow. The descriptions of any deviations from the standard, i.e. dialects, really make sense only if you already know something about the language (alphabet, sounds, vocabulary, grammar).
:Finally, history. I know very well Wikistyle puts history AT THE VERY FRONT. I consider that very flawed. Unless you already know the language, its history must be preceded by as full a description as possible. That's what sets the context.
:Since this is a Wiki, I'm certainly not going to prevent you from doing anything. I'd like to point out, however, that since the article was arranged in such a way that every section built on the one preceding, rearranging would, I think, take more work than just cutting and pasting, and might require a fairly good knowledge of the language. If you feel you're up to the task, enjoy!
:User:A. Shetsen 06:52, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
::I hadn't heard before that putting history first is a bad idea. I haven't really thought about it. Perhaps it should be moved to a later part of the template. Other than that, the order of the questions you come up with seems just as arbitrary as any other order. However, we already have a set order for describing languages, so unless there is a compelling reason for deviating from it I figure we should stick with it. User:Nohat 07:57, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
:::I appreciate the changes to remove "technical" words from the headings. However, the alphabet should come before the sounds, since the sounds are given in Cyrillic, and the history after grammar and vocabulary, since that's what gives the context. Remember that phonetic symbols are absolute in their pronunciation; letters of an alphabet are not. That's the main advantage to using the native alphabet. I've changed it back. Templates are templates, not cages. User:A. Shetsen 17:07, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
== ж or жж... ==
Quick comment about readability. Two quotes from the consonants section. I don't know enough (read, any) russian to properly fix this, so if someone wouldn't mind, please try your hand at it. --User:128.175.100.74 16:44, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"The ж/Z/ is similar to the English [s] in pleasure, but considerably harder."
"The consonant ж is palatalized if doubled in writing, e.g. жжёшь/Z'oS/, "you (sg) burn", and in the single word жюри/Z'uri´/ "jury". A palatalized жж is similar to the English [s] in pleasure. A soft sign ь is written after the ж/Z/ as historical tradition in feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms, but the sound remains hard."
* I've revised the entire consonants section, defining ccarefully the distinction between hard and soft consonants, and going from there. Does that make it easier to follow? User:A. Shetsen 19:05, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
== article size ==
This article is rather huge as it is but it set up in a such a way that this could be minimized. For example Russian grammar is a stub, yet the ==Russian grammar== section in this article is really complete - with perhaps too much detail for a survey article. Moving that detail to the separate article and leaving a good summary of that article here (several paragraphs or maybe a few short sub-sections), would serve users who just want the summary and those that want the detail about that aspect. This makes the article more useful to more people. See Wikipedia:Summary style. --User:Maveric149 06:53, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
==Phenya or Fenya (Ôåíÿ)==
I removed the following section.
''Russian Crypto language, criminal slang. Word "Phenya" delivered from name of Phoenician Language. Phoenician Merchants use special dialect to communicate with each other, that no one will understand price negotiation.
Despite, that early phenya was popular among criminals, now it is consider to be a Russian dialect. Phenya consist of usual russian words, but with different meaning, and also words borrowed from different languages, for example Yiddish.
Some Examples:
Áàöèëëà (Batsilla) - ñàëî, âûñîêîêàëîðèéíûå ïðîäóêòû, ïåðåäà÷à (Bacon, high calories products).
Áîáû (Bob'y)- ïàòðîíû(cartridges, patrons).''
The topic is interesting and it deserves even a separate article, but unfortunately this text is helplessly bad. I will try to write a stub. User:Mikkalai 23:21, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
=== From Vladimir Dal's vocabulary ===
(Public domain now)
As a preliminary reference, to be the base of the Fenya article.
ОФЕНЯ, офенская речь, см. афеня.
АФЕНЯ, офеня об. ходебщик, кантюжник, разносчик с извозом, коробейник, щепетильник, мелочной торгаш вразноску и вразвозку по малым городам, селам, деревням, с книгами, бумагой, шелком, иглами, с сыром и колбасой, с серьгами и колечками и пр. Корень афеней влад. губ., ковровск. уезд, есть и костромские и тверские. Чтобы афеня взято было от Афин, невероятно; от г. Офен (Пешт) и венгерских ходебщиков (словаков) - также; о мнимом афенском народе VII века летописи молчат; сами офени зовут себя масыками и обзетильниками (мас - я; масы - мы; масыги - мы, свои, наши; обзетить - обмануть, сплутовать; обзетильник, плут); но офениться, знач. молиться, креститься; офест, крест; посему офеня значило бы просто крещеный, православный. Коли в языке офеней, кроме хирга, рука, нахиреги, рукавицы, и частью счета, есть греческие слова, то они искони занесены ими с Сурожья, т. е. с азовского поморья и из-за Дуная. Для беседы между собою, при торговле, офенями искони придуман свой офенский, кантюжный, ламанский, аламанский или галивонский язык; это частью переиначенные русские слова: масья, мать, мастырить, делать; или им дано иное значение: косать, бить; костер, город; или вновь составленные, по русскому складу: шерсно, сукно; скрыпы, двери; пащенок, дитя; или вовсе вымышленные: юсы, деньги; воксари, дрова; Стод, Бог и пр. Грамматика русская, склад речи также. На этом же языке австрийские (белокриницкие) раскольники переписываются с нашими. Похожий, но менее полный язык есть у костромских шерстобитов, у тверских и др. нищих, где нищенство составляет промысел; также у конских барышников, из татарских и немногих цыганских слов; у воров или мазуриков в столицах (см. бабковый язык) и пр. Счет офеней: екой, взю (кокур), кумар (стрем, стема), кисера (дщера, чивак), пинда (пенда, вычур), шонда, сезюм, вондара, девера (кивера), декан. Вот образчик офенской беседы: Ропа кимать, полумеркот, рыхло закурещат ворыханы. Пора спать, полночь; скоро запоют петухи. Да позагорбил басве слемзить: астона басвинска ухалила дряботницей. Да позабыл тебе сказать: жена твоя померла весною.
Bravo! By the way, is Fenya still alive? The last crypto-reference I know off the top of my head is the "Афонский рекрут" character in "Кондуит и Швамбрания"... Does anyone know anything more? User:A. Shetsen 06:38, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
== Transliteration ==
Please! Lets talk at Talk:Transliteration of Russian into English! User:Mikkalai 22:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
==ODP==
This article appears to be appropriate for [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category].
Wikipedia - Russian Language - A collaboratively edited article covering classification,
geographic distribution, writing system, sounds, grammar, vocabulary and history of the language.
-- User:Sabre23t 04:00, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
== word counts ==
It would be nice to have a source and/or precise details about the following, removed from the "Vocabulary" section:
* However, if you buy a CD-ROM English-Russian or Russian-English dictionary you will be able to translate about 800,000 English words into Russian and about 1,000,000 Russian words into English. Thus, one may conclude that Russian contains at least one million words.
User:A. Shetsen 05:21, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
== Bulgarian the closest relative of Russian? ==
This is the first time I'm stumbling upon such a statement, and I'd like to see some sources. I reverted that. --User:I@k5 23:45, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
== Where spoken ==
''Sizable Russian-speaking communities (totalling in the hundreds of thousands) also exist in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Western Europe.''
Should there be extra mention of Germany? AFAIK there is a considerable number of speakers, partly due to Auslandsdeutsche. There are several Russian-language German newspapers, and it is not uncommon to here Russian spoken in Berlin at least. This would set the situation apart of the rest of 'Western Europe' (whatever that may be).
== IPA ==
I've reverted the IPA back to the version that had spaces between the syllables. That is the common way syllabification is marked in phonetic dictionaries. Especially because Russian syllabification is (a) different from the English one and (b) inherits the ancient Slavonic open-syllable structure, I believe that the extra information provided by the syllables being marked should be preserved. If there are display problems with the transcriptions going across line breaks, non-breaking spaces can be used. User:A. Shetsen 22:10, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: It's a bit difficult to spot the word breaks in such a long string of separated syllables, but I'm not strongly opposed. Definitely use non-breaking spaces in the middle of words. But wouldn't it be better to be consistent with other IPA usage?
: The IPA references say to mark syllable breaks with periods, and put a vertical line at the start of stressed syllables (high for main stress, low for secondary). But I've seen people use periods to mark word breaks, so I don't know if this is a universal convention. How does this look (with & withoutwithout and with template:IPA)? ''—User:Mzajac 22:35, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)''
/dʲə.ʌˌlʲe.ktə.lʌˈgʲi.tʲʆə.skʲəj ˈa.tləs ˈʀu.skə.və jə.zɨˈka/
OK. periods it can be. The stress marks are also sometimes put at the end of the syllable, but that can also be changed. User:A. Shetsen 23:23, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) On IE the second one only is readable. User:A. Shetsen 23:24, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: I was confused when I first saw the IPA stress marks, but you get used to it quickly—one more reason to remain consistent. Yup, I checked it in IE, but I wanted to see how the two looked in other browsers. I'm getting more convinced that an IE-specific stylesheet is a good way to deal with this. Have to get to work right now, but I'll write up a little proposal later. ''—User:Mzajac 23:45, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)''
Why is the Russian 'р' rendered as the uvular trill in the IPA transcriptions throughout the article? User:Alikhtarov 22:27, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
: Ok, since nobody responded, I am going to replace all the 'ʀ's with 'r's. User:Alikhtarov 03:21, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== Removal ==
I remove the following sentence:
Some Russian historians hold that the southern Russian dialect is self-sustaining, while Ukrainian philologists assert that the southern Russian dialect results from the influence of Ukrainian or the Old language of Rus'.
What is a "self-sustaining" dialect? Or, conversely, one that is not? Who are the historians and the philologists? What does influence have to do with sustainability? The sentence seems meaningless, at least until explained. User:A. Shetsen 05:04, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I'd love to know! The southern Russian dialect is developed from the influence of the older Ukrainian language! Rusian Imperialists find this hard to take!
User:Genyo 05:11, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: Does that mean you can't explain your own sentence ("I'd love to know")? OK, out it goes... User:A. Shetsen 06:49, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Translation Request ==
I am in need of a Russian speaker to translate a quote from ''Talk:Cloak and Dagger (movie)''. I have the quote on sound file and can send it via e-mail. Please visit my User:Husnock if anyone is able to translate this. Thank you! -User:Husnock 15Jan05
== "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.
shouldn't that be "conservative" instead of "liberal"? conservative thought is characterized by an aversion of extremes, of which invective language is one type.
i actually think that entire sentence should be removed, unless there's a real source for it... and "conservative/liberal" has a strong political connotation today, inappropriate for use in language discussion.
== Sign Language ==
The sign used in this region is not derived from or in any other way connected with spoken Russian so I removed it from the related languages list. User:Qaz 04:48, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
== Reading of Pushkin ==
Ok, we now have a sound file for pronunciation of the language!
I also recorded a snippet of Pushkin that i found at History of the Russian language and put it up there by the poem, but then I realized; why stash the only proper sample of Russian that we have right now in a subcategory. How about putting it here instead? It's a tad shameless promoting one's own reading so blatantly, but I think we should really let people become aware of the Template:Audio, and this is a good way to do it.
Oh, and do let me know if I mispronounced anything. My Russian can be rusty at times, especially when it comes to word stress.
From "Winter Evening" (Зимний вечер), 1825. Modern spelling.
Буря мглою небо кроет,
Вихри снежные крутя;
То, как зверь, она завоет,
То заплачет, как дитя,
То по кровле обветшалой
Вдруг соломой зашумит,
То, как путник запоздалый,
К нам в окошко застучит. Tempest covers sky in haze[s],
Twisting whirls [in driven] snow,
Like a beast begins to howl,
Like a child it wails [anew].
On the worn-out roof it clamours
Suddenly upon the thatch,
Then, as though a traveller tardy
Starts to knock upon our hatch. (''lit.'', window) :Well, since no one has objected, I'll just put it up in the History and Examples-section. User:Karmosin 13:33, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC) ::Excellent! That's the way we are taught to read poetry at school. Although few people do it that way, it is a representative example of pronunciation except one mispronounced consonant. In the 5th line the word "обветшалой" sounded like "ответшалой". ==IPA note== Hi. The palatalized fricatives with curly tails are no longer standard IPA. They were in previous IPA publications, but the current recommendation is that palatalization be symbolized with a [j] superscript. Perhaps you should make a note concerning this? Thats it. Peace. - User:Ish ishwar 07:33, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC) ==Pronounciation Request== If someone can tell me how to pronounce the following text (In English phonetic thinkgs, like dictionaries have) I will be eternally grateful (I know you have a IPA guide and everything but I don't get it, yet...):
Я не знаю его имя
Thanks very much if you can tell me. N.B. I do know what it means (well, I Babelfished it from English to Russian. It should mean: 'I do not know his name') :Roughly, it's "Yah Neh-Znayoo evo emya". It does infact mean "I do not know his name". I've recorded a small audio sample with my pronounciation. I'm a native Russian speaker, but since I've been talking mostly in English most of my life, I'm sure I have a bit of an accent now in Russian, so someone could probably do a better job: [http://rapidshare.de/files/1301817/Russian-IDontKnowHisName.mp3.html] Scroll down, click "Free", wait about 30 seconds, and then the download link will come up. User:Rc251 04:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you very much. I'm not that bothered about it being completely accurate, just so long as it means and sounds vaguely like it. Once again, thank you very much! --User:80.229.152.246 09:51, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Latvia== "Russian speaking" vs. "Russian" minorities in the context of classroom: Mother tongue ans ethnicity are not the same. Balarusians and Ukrainians in Lithuania, Latvia and Russia speak predominantly Russian. What is more, in Belarus in the context of classsrooms the majority of parents speak against the itroduction of Belarussian language as main language of education, sad as it is. User:Mikkalai 17:18, 22 May 2005 (UTC) :"Russian speaking" implies "main communication language" rather then "mother tongue", I'm not sure how this is reflected by the actual statistics. Also there aren't just Balarusians and Ukrainians in the the Russian-speaking minority, but also Poles, Lithuanians and others. The term alone can be considered (passive) Russification. ==Slavicist's input required== I've started a page on The verb \"to be\" in Indo-European languages, which is intended to place the irregular paradigms in a historical context. Left to my own devices I will no doubt eventually get round to filling in the info on a broad range of languages, but I really can't do Slavonic. It would be good if one of you who know this field could go over there, check everything, add a table of Slavonic paradigms and make any necessary comments underneath it. And then, if and when you are happy that it is useful to you, link it from the various Slavonic language sites. (My own area of competence, and the necessesity for starting the page in the first place, lie on the Germanic side!) --Doric Loon 21:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == Millions of speakers == Where was the number 285 million speakers obtained? This would make Russian one of the top 7 most spoken languages (it is usually reported to have more or less the same number of million speakers as Portuguese)... User:Paulo Oliveira 11:28, 23 May 2005 (UTC) == IPA symbol for ш == Is the proper IPA for <ш> really ? I'm a native speaker of Swedish (and Russian, more or less) and to me it definetly sounds like the retroflex , which is a very common assimilation of /rs/ in Swedish. I've also studied Mandarin, which also features this sound, and like the Swedish and Russian sounds, they all sound more like one another than , which is used for the English sound ususally spelled with. Is this some sort of compromise involving phonemic analysis or something similar?
User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 17:20, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
== Tables ==
Thank goodness this article has sensibly designed tables: minimalist borders or none at all. Well done. User:Xmnemonic 20:52, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
Slavic languages Languages of Russia
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Russian_language:
Russian-language_operas
Russian_language
Russian_language
Russian_language
Russian_language/Russian_alphabet_notes
Russian_language/Russian_alphabet_notes
Russian_language_films
Russian_Language_Institute
Russian language
Russian (''русский язык'' ) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit language, Greek language, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic languages, Romance languages, and Celtic languages languages, including English language, French language, and Irish language. 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 International Phonetic Alphabet. ==Classification== Russian is a Slavic languages language, in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian language and Ukrainian language, the other two national languages in the East Slavic languages group. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic language, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic languages 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 that are heavily polonized. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain 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 slightly different meanings. For details, see Russian phonetics#Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek language, Latin, French language, German language, and English language. ==Geographic distribution== Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union. 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 break-up 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 because the language is increasingly challenged by English. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country with a 36% Russian-speaking population (Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians). The same is true for Estonia, where Russian remains the native language of at least a quarter of its population residing close to the Russian border. The pressure from the EU committee might soon force these countries' governments to recognize the rights of the Russian speakers. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Soviet Empire and in other Communist state that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jew immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million: they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the first generation immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It's important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. The overwhelming majority are Russian-speaking Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling, in the case of Germany, 2 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of German people, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for employment. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and have also access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian: {| align=center cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 border=0 |- !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, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia (country) received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 10% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 10% in Moldova, 1% in Azerbaijan, 1% in Georgia. ===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 clearly (the phenomenon called okanye ''оканье''); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of 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 Mikhail 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'' ), 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=== *Fenya or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary. * Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine * Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus. *Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian language grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula. ==Writing system== ===Alphabet=== [[Image:Meletius Smotrisky Cyrillic Alphabet.PNG|thumb|Meletius Smotrytsky presented the Cyrillic alphabet in this 1619 publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modern version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with International Phonetic Alphabet values for each letter's typical sound: {| align=center cellpadding=4 style="text-align:center;" |- |A (Cyrillic)
||Be (Cyrillic)
||Ve (Cyrillic)
||Ge (Cyrillic)
||De (Cyrillic)
||Ye (Cyrillic)
||Yo (Cyrillic)
||Zhe (Cyrillic)
||Ze (Cyrillic)
||I (Cyrillic)
||Short I
|- |Ka (Cyrillic)
||El (Cyrillic)
||Em (Cyrillic)
||En (Cyrillic)
||O (Cyrillic)
||Pe (Cyrillic)
||Er (Cyrillic)
||Es (Cyrillic)
||Te (Cyrillic)
||U (Cyrillic)
||Ef (Cyrillic)
|- |Kha (Cyrillic)
||Tse (Cyrillic)
||Che (Cyrillic)
||Sha
||Shcha
||Hard sign
||Yery
||Soft sign
||E (Cyrillic)
||Yu (Cyrillic)
||Ya (letter)
|} Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The Yer ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ''ultra-short'' or ''reduced'' , (conventional transcription, not IPA). ===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== The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are given separate letters depending on whether or not they palatalize a preceding consonant. The consonants typically come in pairs, hard and soft (palatalization). The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate modulation in pitch (which is not a lexical differentiator). Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Consonant clusters tend to be simplified. The spoken dialects show a very large number of variations. ==Grammar== Russian has preserved an Indo-European Synthetic_language-inflection structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses * a highly Synthetic_language morphology * a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements: ** a polished vernacular foundation; ** a Church Slavonic language inheritance; ** a Western Europe 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 Russian grammar#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: {| align="center" cellpadding="4" style="text-align:left" |- ! 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 |- |Dahl'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. (As a historical aside, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective ''русский'', 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, be spelled ''руский'' with one s, 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 s lengthened or doubled.) ===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 conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (''артистичная ругань'' ) 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'' ). 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'' ("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 article'': ''Russian proverbs, Russian sayings'' Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (''пословица'' ) and sayings (''поговоркa'' ). 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. ==History and examples== ''See also'': Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods. *History of Russian language#Origins *History of Russian language#The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries) *History of Russian language#Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries) *History of Russian language#The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries) *History of Russian language#Empire (18th-19th centuries) *History of Russian language#Soviet period and beyond (20th century) ''See also:'' *History of Russian language#Examples 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 fourteenth 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 Smotrytsky 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 language, less often German language, 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. Reading of excerpt of Pushkin's "Winter Evening" (Зимний вечер), 1825. 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 === * Russian alphabet * Russian grammar * Russian orthography * Russian phonetics * History of Russian language === 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#Russian *List of commonly confused homonyms#Russian *Common phrases in different languages *Runglish ==External links== * [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries] * [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language] * [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)] * [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links] * [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.] * [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language] * [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian] * [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)] * [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)] * [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)] * [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar] * [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary] * [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text] * [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"] * [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian] * [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)] * [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses] * [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category] * [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA] * [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish] * [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America] Languages of Belarus Languages of Finland Languages of Russia Russian language Slavic languages ang:Russisc sprǽc cv:Вырăс чěлхи gd:Ruiseis ka:რუსული ენა la:Lingua Russica lv:Krievu valoda li:Rössisch ms:Bahasa Russia mo:Лимба русэ se:Ruoššagiella simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย vi:Tiếng Nga
Russian language
==Early discussion== Well, I would like to say something about making articles in Wikipedia using this example. As it is now -- the article about Russian is a terrible one. What can I learn from it? Mostly nothing. As Russian is probably among the oldest (or perhaps the oldest language) of Slavic languages, it is quite idiotic just to mention how the Russian language was spoken in the areas of the Warsaw Pact and such. Yes, this is a sad (or not) fact, but here politics can't take its place, because we would like to learn something about this great language. In the same manner we would also have to check how English language became the world's most popular language (but without politics, right). It shurely was detrimental for those languages which were suppressed in the Soviet Union's times -- so they were German language, Italian language and Hungarian language to my native one -- and I don't blame them for that... My many fellow citizens think that Russian language is simple, because it sounds (sometimes) like the Slovene language, but hey, try to translate something from the Russian literature, poetry or technical field. There are many words in Russian and in Slovene, which are completely the same, but there are even more which are not. I can't also figure how non-Slavic person can learn Russian language. For me it is like someone would want to learn Chinese language or Japanese language or even the hardest one (if it really exists...) Another fact is to say that in a way Russian language represents in full the whole Earth's civilization, because of the Russian successes in Space. We all remember astronauts wearing CCCP signature on their helmets, don't we? This was simply because Russian cosmonauts mostly land on a solid ground and they have to have those markings not to be confused by local inhabitants. (I think so). If you ever have seen any Russian computer programme, you would know that they are quite extraordinary. If I'll have time I'll add something more to the present article and prevent myself from criticizing all over. I am doing my best already in filling gaps regarding Russian people... We Slovenes sometimes joke that there are approx. 220 millions Slovenes and Russians together (...so the others should be afraid of Slovenes... :-)) Well again, these were some of my thoughts at a glance. Any response is very wellcome. Best regards and, yes, not to forget, Happy New Year 2003 to all ya... --User:XJamRastafire 16:04 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC) Well, Happy New Year 2004 also... --User:XJamRastafire 15:30, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC) == Dialect or language == Can someone give some explanation or references as to why Belarusyn and Ukrainian are portrayed as dialects? What linguist holds that theory today? Isn't the only reason to hold that political? :Well, as a Russian I can understand pretty much everything in Belarussian or Ukrainian... So yes, the reason is mostly political. --User:Alikhtarov 01:48, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::Could you please tell us when and where you heard or read something in Belarusan? User:Rydel 15:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) :::[http://be.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page] :-) Mind you, I can understand about 90% of what is written there. Ditto [http://uk.wikipedia.org/]. Then again, I have had somewhat "above average" exposure to the Ukrainian language for a Russian (my mother is Ukrainian), so I guess it cannot be considered a pure experiment... User:Alikhtarov 06:08, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) :Well, as Russian and Ukrianian speaker I can understand a lot of Polish; you wouldn't consider Polish as a dialect of Russian or Ukrainian language, would you? User: WebDome Aug.18 2004 :A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. That's what linguists say (only half-jokingly). I'd say there's a dialect continuum there. --User:I@k5 15:45, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC) :: What uh... continuum? Dear, User:I@k5 can you please name the villages on Belarusan-Russian and Ukrainian-Russian border you have visited? -- User:Rydel 16:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::: I speak Russian and Ukrainian. I've visited and/or talked with people from all over Ukraine, and some from Russian regions like Belgorod and Rostov. That was quite a few years ago, and those people were mostly city dwellers. Still it is my impression that there's a continuum. As for Belarusan, I used to listen to radio in that language (the standard I'd imagine) and it was mostly intelligible. Those are just my limited personal observations.Does someone have a copy of Chambers and Trudgill, or something? --User:I@k5 17:04, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC) :::: I see. Well, there is very little doubt that Ukrainian and Belarusan are mutually intelligible to a high degree. I can testify that based on my own personal experience. Once we were going by bus from Bulgaria to Belarus via Ukraine and we stopped to buy some apples and pears, and I talked in Belarusan with the old Ukrainian lady, and at the end she said: "Boy, you speak Ukrainian with a very funny accent". And then I had exactly the same thing happening to me when I visited Lviv and I was talking to a waitress in Belarusan, and at the end she said: "You speak a strange dialect of Ukrainian". ;) As for the Russian - Ukrainian, and Russian - Belarusan, more often than not I heard stories that people don't really get much at all. And again my own experience proves that. When I am in a company of Russian speakers, and someone calls me up on a mobile, and I start speaking in Belarusan, after I hang up most of the time Russians say something like: "Wow, I didn't get anything." Again, just personal experience. And I also noted that Polish speakers and Belarusan speakers in Western Belarus can understand each other pretty well, there is a relatively high degree of mutual understanding. I don't know how it helps though in this discussion about "continuum". For example, Czech and Slovak are almost 100% mutually intelligible, yet they are considered different languages, not dialects. Also, I don't quite get why you mention Chambers and Trudgill. I heard it's a great ''theoretical'' text on dialectology, but I didn't know whether there was any practical information regarding East Slavic languages in that book. -- User:Rydel 17:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::::: Chambers and Trudgill is supposed to have a map of European dialects which may be of some help. ::::: Dear Rydel, I think it's just because you talked to certain Russians, probably from Moscow or St.Petersburg. Please take in consideration that Russian Federation is a large country, and Russian language has many dialects. There is a dialect continuum, i.e. some dialects of Russian language have much more differences than some dialects of Russian and Ukrainian languages. Decision whether to call them dialects or separate languages is political. Ditto with Ukrainian vs Belorussian. You confirmed that they are very close languages (linguistically), nonetheless, we consider them as different languages (politically) User:Drbug[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Drbug&action=edit§ion=new ] User:Drbug 07:41, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Revision time!!! == I have revised most of the article, basically writing it anew, although I tried to preserve everything that had not been poisoned by inter-Slavonic recriminations. User:A. Shetsen, June 28, 2004 My work on this is now done (for now). Looking over it, I think the following areas may require more work: * phonology. Especially, standardize the transcription. A note to Wiki developers: is there any way properly to generate IPA of the fly based on a custom input markup language, rather than SAMPA or something else? For Russian standardized transcription is difficult, because Slavic specialists in the West often appear to insist on a custom, vaguely Czech-based, transcription system. * dialectology. Since my interest is almost entirely from the point of view of the literary language and its history, it would be nice if someone who knows enough about the maze of Russian dialects could fill in this section. * history. I've deliberately left a lot unsaid here, including: **''historical grammar'' **''writing system'' (this too is not as straighforward as often supposed: черты и резы? глаголица? тайнопись? типография и орфография?) **''LITERATURE''. My main interest, actually, but since another article exists and does a good job providing a summary (a real critic could quibble with everything, but that's hardly the point), I'm not sure at this point how the two articles should relate to each other. More input would be highly appreciated. *pictures. Only scans of documents: books, posters, manuscripts, etc., properly illustrate the language, as opposed to its bearers or the place they inhabit. Of course, copyright violation is thus extremely difficult. At any rate, I've provided none for now. User:A. Shetsen 04:07, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)= NB Since writing the above, I've tried to convert all the transcriptions to SAMPA and added a few notes on the writing system, split between the "Notes on the alphabet" and "History". I've also provided a few notes about pre-eighteenth century literature under "History", but in such a way that this article's should remain on the language. User:A. Shetsen 07:33, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC) One last kick at the can on the Russian/Ukrainian thing. Nothing whatever has convinced me that the national, as opposed to dialectal, distinction existed until the Muscovite period. In times of the Russian Empire there appear to have been more than a few ''хохлы'' (no disrespect intended!) who functioned well among the ''москали'' (no disrespect intended!): Gogol comes to mind. I would never quarrel with a modern Ukrainian's emotional attachment to the term ''Русь'', and I would hope that the same Ukrainian would not contest the equivalent Russian's feelings. User:A. Shetsen 07:42, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==Peer review== :''Requested comments at Wikipedia:Peer Review'' Just some random comments on what seems to be an informative article! A couple of comments from a non-linguist layperson. 1) The "Alphabet and Phonology" section is quite long and technical, but the rest of the article is quite accessible to a general reader. For this reason could I recommend moving the "Alphabet and Phonology" section either to a page of its own (perhaps, Alphabet and Phonology of the Russian language) and summarising here, or maybe just move it to the end of the article? 2) Layout-wise, in the "Alphabet and Phonology" section, the pictures don't sit too well to the left of the table; perhaps they could be interspersed later in the section? 3) Could a map be made for the "Geographic distribution" section? 4) For some of the technical sections, it might help if the technical terms were linked to the relevant article, e.g. linking the dative case, and so on. User:Matt Crypto 03:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC) : Pictures and maps. I do have TWO maps planned: geographic distribution and dialects.
Вихри снежные крутя;
То, как зверь, она завоет,
То заплачет, как дитя,
То по кровле обветшалой
Вдруг соломой зашумит,
То, как путник запоздалый,
К нам в окошко застучит. Tempest covers sky in haze[s],
Twisting whirls [in driven] snow,
Like a beast begins to howl,
Like a child it wails [anew].
On the worn-out roof it clamours
Suddenly upon the thatch,
Then, as though a traveller tardy
Starts to knock upon our hatch. (''lit.'', window) :Well, since no one has objected, I'll just put it up in the History and Examples-section. User:Karmosin 13:33, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC) ::Excellent! That's the way we are taught to read poetry at school. Although few people do it that way, it is a representative example of pronunciation except one mispronounced consonant. In the 5th line the word "обветшалой" sounded like "ответшалой". ==IPA note== Hi. The palatalized fricatives with curly tails are no longer standard IPA. They were in previous IPA publications, but the current recommendation is that palatalization be symbolized with a [j] superscript. Perhaps you should make a note concerning this? Thats it. Peace. - User:Ish ishwar 07:33, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC) ==Pronounciation Request== If someone can tell me how to pronounce the following text (In English phonetic thinkgs, like dictionaries have) I will be eternally grateful (I know you have a IPA guide and everything but I don't get it, yet...):
Я не знаю его имя
Thanks very much if you can tell me. N.B. I do know what it means (well, I Babelfished it from English to Russian. It should mean: 'I do not know his name') :Roughly, it's "Yah Neh-Znayoo evo emya". It does infact mean "I do not know his name". I've recorded a small audio sample with my pronounciation. I'm a native Russian speaker, but since I've been talking mostly in English most of my life, I'm sure I have a bit of an accent now in Russian, so someone could probably do a better job: [http://rapidshare.de/files/1301817/Russian-IDontKnowHisName.mp3.html] Scroll down, click "Free", wait about 30 seconds, and then the download link will come up. User:Rc251 04:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you very much. I'm not that bothered about it being completely accurate, just so long as it means and sounds vaguely like it. Once again, thank you very much! --User:80.229.152.246 09:51, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Latvia== "Russian speaking" vs. "Russian" minorities in the context of classroom: Mother tongue ans ethnicity are not the same. Balarusians and Ukrainians in Lithuania, Latvia and Russia speak predominantly Russian. What is more, in Belarus in the context of classsrooms the majority of parents speak against the itroduction of Belarussian language as main language of education, sad as it is. User:Mikkalai 17:18, 22 May 2005 (UTC) :"Russian speaking" implies "main communication language" rather then "mother tongue", I'm not sure how this is reflected by the actual statistics. Also there aren't just Balarusians and Ukrainians in the the Russian-speaking minority, but also Poles, Lithuanians and others. The term alone can be considered (passive) Russification. ==Slavicist's input required== I've started a page on The verb \"to be\" in Indo-European languages, which is intended to place the irregular paradigms in a historical context. Left to my own devices I will no doubt eventually get round to filling in the info on a broad range of languages, but I really can't do Slavonic. It would be good if one of you who know this field could go over there, check everything, add a table of Slavonic paradigms and make any necessary comments underneath it. And then, if and when you are happy that it is useful to you, link it from the various Slavonic language sites. (My own area of competence, and the necessesity for starting the page in the first place, lie on the Germanic side!) --Doric Loon 21:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == Millions of speakers == Where was the number 285 million speakers obtained? This would make Russian one of the top 7 most spoken languages (it is usually reported to have more or less the same number of million speakers as Portuguese)... User:Paulo Oliveira 11:28, 23 May 2005 (UTC) == IPA symbol for ш == Is the proper IPA for <ш> really ? I'm a native speaker of Swedish (and Russian, more or less) and to me it definetly sounds like the retroflex , which is a very common assimilation of /rs/ in Swedish. I've also studied Mandarin, which also features this sound, and like the Swedish and Russian sounds, they all sound more like one another than , which is used for the English sound ususally spelled with
Russian language
Slavic languages Languages of Russia
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
R
RA | RB | RC | RD | RE | RF | RG | RH | RI | RJ | RK | RL | RM | RN | RO | RP | RS | RT | RU | RW | RX | RY | RZ |Words begining with Russian_language:
Russian-language_operas
Russian_language
Russian_language
Russian_language
Russian_language/Russian_alphabet_notes
Russian_language/Russian_alphabet_notes
Russian_language_films
Russian_Language_Institute
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
