Russian language

Russian (pусский язык) belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European language family. It is the largest of the Slavic languages. His closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian. Russian is spoken mainly in the Russian Federation, but also by older people in other countries that were part of the Soviet Union, as well as in Eastern Europe. It is estimated that there are 137 million Russian speakers in the Russian Federation, and 166 million worldwide.

In addition, Russian is spoken in Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel and the United States. It is one of the ten most spoken languages in the world.

Before the 14th century, the ancestors of the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians spoke dialects of Old East Slavic, a language common to all three. Linguists believe that it was divided into what are now Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian at the end of the 14th century. Until the end of the 17th century, the official language of Russia was an East Slavic dialect of Old Church Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church. Peter the Great's political reforms in the 18th century included a reform of the Russian alphabet, and the westernization of the language with words borrowed from Western European languages. The result was a departure from the rules of the Church Slavic towards the spoken norms.

The 1917 Revolution and the political, social and economic changes that followed brought along a new terminology, and considerably increased the number of international words in the Russian vocabulary. The spelling reform of 1918 gave the written Russian its present form. Literacy became almost universal. The achievements in the military, scientific, technological and artistic fields, as well as in space exploration, gave modern Russian its world prestige, which supported its image as a superpower.

Who speaks Russian

Until 1917, Russian was the only official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, and although each of the republics had its own official language, Russian enjoyed a higher status. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of the newly independent states have promoted the use of their native languages, partly undermining the privileged status of Russian, although its role as the lingua franca of the region remains.

Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation and shares its official status with other languages of various ethnic autonomous regions of the Federation, such as Chuvash and Yakut (or Yakutian). Russian is also a co-official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Russian does not have official status in Ukraine, but it still serves as a regional and minority language. The Constitution of Ukraine provides guarantees for its protection and use. Education in Russian, as well as the choice of Russian as a second language, remains very popular in many of the former Soviet republics.

In the 20th century, Russian was taught in schools in communist satellite countries of the USSR, for example Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, the former East Germany and Cuba. However, today most young people in these countries know little or no Russian because it is no longer compulsory in the school system. Instead of Russian, students from Eastern European Eurocentric countries prefer to learn Western European languages such as English or German.

Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, UNESCO, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and many other international organizations.

Dialects of Russian

Linguists generally divide Russian into three main dialectal groups: North, Central (transitional) and South. There are dozens of smaller variants within each major dialect group. The following table presents two characteristics that typically distinguish northern from southern dialects. The central dialect, spoken in the Moscow area, combines the main characteristics of both dialectal groups.

The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect, although it is not exactly the same.

Translation agency for Spanish-English-Russian

Now that you know a little more about the Russian language, you might be interested to know that we offer professional translation services from both English to Russian and from Russian into English. We specialise in translation from and into Spanish.

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