RUSSIAN LANGUAGE FACTS:

NATIVE: ру́сский язы́к, russkij jazyk

NATIVE SPEAKERS: 150 million L1, 260 million total

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE IN: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Armenia, Estonia

WRITING SYSTEMS: Cyrillic (Russian alphabet)

REGULATED BY: Институт русского языка имени В. В. Виноградова РАН (V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

HELPFUL RESOURCES:

Glossaries and Dictionaries:

Rules of Russian orthography and punctuation. Moscow: Akademic nauk SSSR, 1962. [Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации]

Markovina, Irina. Bolsjoj anglo-russkij i russko-anglijskij meditsinskij slovar: svysje 111 000 terminov. Moskva: Zjivoj jazuk, 2015. [Russian to English Medical Dictionary]

Academic Research:

Yale University, Russian Studies

Language

Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the family of Indo-European languages. It is closely related to Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. Russian is still an important language to learn in former Soviet Republics as it served as the lingua franca for many decades. A Soviet legacy of standardization also made Russian a markedly homogenous language. Little dialectical variation is seen.

Economic Significance

History

All Indo-European languages descended of a single prehistoric language. Until the 14^th century, the predecessors of modern Russia spoke various Eastern Slavic dialects. Even after the Mongol invasions of the Rus, the local vernacular remained largely intact. Starting with Peter the Great, largescale reforms were enacted that altered the Russian alphabet. The modern Russian literary language arose during the 18^th century. Regardless, most of the gentry spoke French or German in everyday conversation. Examples of this is evident in Tolstoy’s writing. The disruptions of the early 20^th century had a profound impact on the Russian language. State mandated education standardized Russian and leveled dialects.

Dialects