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Russian (русский язык (help•info), transliteration: russkiy yazyk, Russian pronunciation: [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or, according to some authorities[citation needed], four) living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, often considered a dialect of Ukrainian). It is also spoken by the countries of the Russophone.
Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. Today Russian is widely used outside Russia.
It is applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge —
60–70% of all world information is published in English and Russian
languages.[3] Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian.[3] Russian is also a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc).[3] Due to the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century. Hence, the language is one of the official languages of the United Nations.
Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard
sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all
consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the
language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically[4] though, according to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent (знак ударения)
may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress (such as to
distinguish between otherwise idential words or to indicate the proper
pronunciation of uncommon words or names).
Classification
Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in eastern Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixture, e.g. Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect,
although vanished during the fifteenth or sixteenth century, is
sometimes considered to have played a significant role in formation of
the modern Russian language.
The vocabulary (mainly abstract and literary words), principles of
word formation, and, to some extent, inflections and literary style of
Russian have been also influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church.
However, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in
the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some
cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language.
Russian phonology and syntax (especially in northern dialects) have
also been influenced to some extent by the numerous Finnic languages of
the Finno-Ugric subfamily: Merya, Moksha, Muromian, the language of the Meshchera, Veps,
et cetera. These languages, some of them now extinct, used to be spoken
in the center and in the north of what is now the European part of
Russia. They came in contact with Eastern Slavic as far back as the
early Middle Ages and eventually served as substratum for the modern
Russian language. The Russian dialects spoken north, north-east and
north-west of Moscow have a considerable number of words of Finno-Ugric origin.[5][6]
Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of
Russian have also been influenced by Turkic/Caucasian/Central Asian
languages, as well as Western/Central European languages such as Polish, Latin, Dutch, German, French, and English.[7]
According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers,[8] requiring approximately 780 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. It is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community
as a "hard target" language, due to both its difficulty to master for
English speakers as well as due to its critical role in American world
policy.
Geographic distribution
Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire.[citation needed]
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.
In Latvia, notably, its
official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of
considerable debate in a country where more than one-third of the
population is Russian-speaking, consisting mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine).[citation needed] Similarly, in Estonia,
the Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants
constitute 25,6% of the country's current population and 58,6% of the
native Estonian population is also able to speak Russian.[9] In all, 67,8% of Estonia's population can speak Russian.
In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Russian remains a co-official language with Kazakh and Kyrgyz
respectively. Large Russian-speaking communities still exist in
northern Kazakhstan, and ethnic Russians comprise 25.6 % of
Kazakhstan's population.[10]
A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has represented less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. Nevertheless more than half of the population of the Baltic states
are able to hold a conversation in Russian and almost all have at least
some familiarity with the most basic spoken and written phrases.[citation needed] The Russian control of Finland
in 1809–1918, however, has left few Russian speakers in Finland. There
are 33,400 Russian speakers in Finland, amounting to 0.6% of the
population. 5000 (0.1%) of them are late 19th century and 20th century
immigrants, and the rest are recent immigrants, who have arrived in the
90's and later.
Sign above a
urinal in an
Israeli international airport. Translated into four languages spoken in Israel:
English,
Hebrew, Russian (with one spelling error), and
Arabic.
In the twentieth century, Russian was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be allies of the USSR. In particular, these countries include Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Albania and Cuba.
However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because
Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It is currently
the most widely-taught foreign language in Mongolia.[11]
Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian.
Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the U.S. and Canada such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Denver, and the Cleveland suburb of Richmond Heights.
In the former two, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million.
In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in
their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation of
immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). Only about a
quarter of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Russophones in North America were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian is the primary language spoken in the homes of over 700,000 individuals living in the United States.
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 flavor of language. Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Brazil, Norway, Austria, and Turkey have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million people.
Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment.
Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:
| Source |
Native speakers |
Native Rank |
Total speakers |
Total rank |
G. Weber, "Top Languages",
Language Monthly,
3: 12–18, 1997, ISSN 1369-9733 |
160,000,000 |
8 |
285,000,000 |
5 |
| World Almanac (1999) |
145,000,000 |
8 (2005) |
275,000,000 |
5 |
| SIL (2000 WCD) |
145,000,000 |
8 |
255,000,000 |
5–6 (tied with Arabic) |
| CIA World Factbook (2005) |
160,000,000 |
8 |
|
Official status
Russian is the official language of Russia. It is also an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine and the de facto official language of the unrecognized of Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a
second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia as well as many of
the former Soviet republics.
97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 25% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia and 2% in Armenia and Tajikistan receive their education only or mostly in Russian. Although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians is 78% in Russia, 10% in Belarus, 26% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia and less than 1% in both Armenia and Tajikistan.
Russian-language schooling is also available in Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania, but due to education reforms, a number of subjects taught in
Russian are reduced at the high school level.[citation needed] The language has a co-official status alongside Moldovan in the autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria in Moldova, and in seven Romanian communes in Tulcea and Constanţa counties. In these localities, Russian-speaking Lipovans,
who are a recognized ethnic minority, make up more than 20% of the
population. Thus, according to Romania's minority rights law,
education, signage, and access to public administration and the justice
system are provided in Russian alongside Romanian. In the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine, Russian is an officially recognized language alongside with
Classical
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