The first Slavic language. Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary

Russian is one of the largest languages ​​in the world: in terms of the number of speakers it ranks fifth after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish. Belongs to the eastern group of Slavic languages. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is the most widespread. All Slavic languages They show great similarities among themselves, but the ones closest to the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of these languages ​​form the East Slavic subgroup, which is included in Slavic group Indo-European family.

1. Name the two most characteristic features grammatical structure of the Russian language

The first feature that creates the complexity of Russian morphology is the variability of the word, that is, the grammatical design of words with endings. The endings express the case and number of nouns, the agreement of adjectives, participles and ordinal numbers in phrases, the person and number of verbs of the present and future tense, the gender and number of verbs of the past tense.

The second feature of the Russian language is word order. Unlike other languages, the Russian language allows greater freedom in word arrangement. The subject can come either before the predicate or after the predicate. Other members of the sentence can also be rearranged. Syntactically related words can be separated by other words. Of course, this or that word order is not at all random, but it is not regulated by purely grammatical rules, as in other European languages, where it is used to distinguish, for example, such functions of words as subject and object.

1. Why do you think the Russian language is difficult for an Englishman?

The main difficulty lies in the variability of the word. Russian people, of course, do not notice this, because for us it is natural and simple to say now EARTH, then EARTH, then ZEMLE - depending on the role of the word in the sentence, on its connection with other words, but for speakers of languages ​​of a different system - this is unusual and difficult. The point, however, is not at all that there is something superfluous in the Russian language, but that those meanings that are conveyed in Russian by changing the form of a word are conveyed in other languages ​​in other ways, for example, using prepositions, or word order, or even a change in the intonation of a word.

1. Does the Russian language need foreign words?

The lexical wealth of a language is created not only by its own capabilities, but also by borrowing from other languages, since political, economic and cultural ties have always existed and continue to exist between peoples. The Russian language is no exception. In different historical periods, words from various languages ​​penetrated into the Russian language. There are very ancient borrowings. Speakers may not even be aware of this. For example, “foreign” words are: sugar (Greek), candy (Latin), August (Latin), compote (German), jacket (Swedish), lamp (German) and many other familiar words. Starting from the era of Peter the Great, for obvious reasons (“window to Europe”), borrowings from European languages ​​intensified: German, French, Polish, Italian, English. Currently - the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century - the vocabulary of the Russian person is replenished with Americanisms, that is in English words, which came from the American version English language. The flow of borrowings in different historical periods is more or less active, sometimes it becomes violent, but over time its activity is lost. At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century there were many borrowings from French. By borrowing words from any language, the Russian language adapts them to its structure, that is, foreign words are mastered. So, in particular, nouns acquire Russian endings, acquire gender, and some begin to decline.

1. Why do Russian people so often make mistakes when using numerals?

Extremely complex system represent Russian numerals. This applies not only to their changeability. The names of numbers have different structures and represent different types declination. Wed. one (inflected as an adjective), two, three, four (a special type of declension), five (inflected as a noun of 3 declensions, but not in numbers), forty, ninety and one hundred have only two forms: in all oblique cases the ending is a: forty, one hundred. However, if one hundred is part of a compound numeral, it changes differently, cf: five hundred, five hundred, about five hundred.

At the moment, for example, there is a very noticeable tendency to simplify the declension of numerals: many Russians decline complex numerals only by half: cf. with fifty-three instead of the correct one with fifty-three. The system of declension of numerals is clearly being destroyed, and this is happening before our eyes and with our participation.

6. Name one of the changes in sounds and two changes in morphology known from the history of the Russian language (optional)

The sounding speech of a Russian person in that ancient era, naturally, was not recorded by anyone (there were no appropriate technical methods), however, science knows the main processes that took place in the Russian language over the centuries, including processes that change the sound structure of the language, its phonetic system. It is known, for example, that the words forest and day until about the 12th century had not three sounds, but four, and that the first syllable of these two words had different vowel sounds. No one who speaks Russian today can reproduce them accurately, including phonetic specialists. but experts know what they roughly sounded like. This is because linguistics has developed methods for studying ancient languages.

The number of types of declension of nouns has been significantly reduced: now, as is known, there are 3 of them, but there were much more - in different periods different quantities. For example, a son and a brother leaned differently for some time. Nouns such as sky and word were declined in a special way (the features were preserved in the forms heaven, word), etc.

Among the cases there was a special case - “vocal”. This case form was used to address: father - father, old man - elder, etc. In the prayers in Church Slavonic it sounded: “our father”, who art in heaven..., glory to you, Lord, heavenly king.... The vocative case has been preserved in Russian fairy tales and other works of folklore: Kotik! Brother! Help me out! (Cat, rooster and fox).

The Old Russian verb was significantly different from the modern one: there was not one past tense, but four. - each with its own forms and meaning: aorist, imperfect, perfect and plusquaperfect. Three tenses have been lost, one has been preserved - the perfect, but it has changed its form beyond recognition: in the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years” we read: “because you went to sing and took all the tribute” (why are you going again? - after all, you have already taken all the tribute) - auxiliary verb (esi) disappeared, only the participle form with the suffix L remained (here “caught”, i.e. took), which became for us the only past tense form of the verb: walked, wrote, etc.

7. In what area of ​​the Russian language system are changes most noticeable and understandable: in phonetics, morphology or vocabulary. Why?

Different sides of the tongue change with to varying degrees activity: vocabulary changes most actively and most noticeably for speakers. Everyone knows the concepts of archaisms/neologisms. The meanings of words and their compatibility change. The phonetic structure and grammatical structure of the language, including Russian, are much more stable, but changes occur here too. They are not immediately noticeable, not like changes in the use of words. But specialists, historians of the Russian language, have established very important, profound changes that have occurred in the Russian language over the past 10 centuries. The changes that have taken place over the last two centuries, since the time of Pushkin, are also known; they are not so profound. For example, certain type noun husband. p changed the plural form. numbers: in the times of Zhukovsky and Pushkin they said: houses, teachers, breads with the emphasis on the first syllable. The replacement of the ending Y with a stressed A first occurred only in individual words, then more and more words began to be pronounced this way: teacher, professor, haystack, workshop, mechanic. It is characteristic that this process is still ongoing and involves more and more words, i.e. You and I, who speak Russian now, are witnesses and participants in this process.

8. What is the essential difference between changes in language and changes in writing?

As we see, there is a fundamental, fundamental difference between changes in writing (graphics) and changes in language: no king, no ruler can change the language by his own will. You cannot order speakers not to utter certain sounds or not to use certain cases. Changes in language occur under the influence of various factors and reflect internal properties language. They occur against the will of the speakers (although, naturally, they are created by the speaking community itself). We are not talking about changes in the style of letters, in the number of letters, or in spelling rules. The history of language and the history of writing are different stories. Science (the history of the Russian language) has established how the Russian language has changed over the centuries: what changes have occurred in sound system, in morphology, in syntax and in vocabulary. Development trends are also studied, new phenomena and processes are noted. New trends arise in living speech - oral and written.

9. Is it possible for a language to exist without writing? Give reasons for your answer

In principle, a language can exist without writing (although its possibilities in this case are limited). At the dawn of humanity there was at first only oral speech. There are still peoples in the world who do not have a written language, but they naturally have a language. Other proofs of the possibility of language without writing can be given. For example: young children speak a language without writing (before they go to school). So, language existed and exists primarily in oral form. But with the development of civilization, it also acquired another form - written. The written form of speech developed on the basis of oral speech and existed, first of all, as its graphic representation. In itself, it is a remarkable achievement of the human mind to establish a correspondence between an element of speech and a graphic icon.

10. In what other way, besides writing, can speech be preserved and transmitted over a distance in our time? (There is no direct answer in the textbook)

Nowadays speech can be recorded - saved on various audio and video media - disks, cassettes, etc. And later it can be transmitted on such media.

11. Is writing reform possible in principle? Give reasons for your answer

Yes, it can be changed and even reformed. Writing is not part of the language, but only corresponds to it, serves to reflect it. It is invented by society for practical purposes. With the help of a system of graphic icons, people record speech, save it and can transmit it over a distance. The letter can be changed according to the will of the people, reformed if a practical need arises. The history of mankind knows many facts about changes in types of writing, that is, methods of graphically transmitting speech. There are fundamental changes, for example, the transition from a hieroglyphic system to an alphabetic one or within an alphabetic system - the replacement of the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin alphabet or vice versa. Smaller changes in writing are also known - changes in the style of letters. Even more specific changes are the elimination of some individual letters from the practice of writing, and the like. An example of changes in writing: for the Chukchi language, writing was created only in 1931 based on the Latin alphabet, but already in 1936 the writing was translated into Russian graphics.

12. What historical event is associated with the emergence of writing in Rus'? When did this happen?

The emergence of writing in Rus' is associated with the official adoption of Christianity in 988.

13. Why is the Slavic alphabet called “Cyrillic”?

Russian adaptation of the Greek alfabetos, composed of the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - alpha and beta - in the Slavic version az and buki. It is generally accepted that the names of the Slavic letters were invented by the creator Slavic alphabet Cyril in the 9th century. He wanted the name of the letter itself not to be a meaningless complex of sounds, but to have meaning. He called the first letter azъ - in ancient Bulgarian “I”, the second - simply “letter” (this is what this word looked like in ancient times - bouki), the third - vede (from the ancient Slavic verb veti - “to know”). If you translate the name of the first three letters of this alphabet into modern Russian, you get “I recognized the letter.” Slavic alphabet(Cyrillic) was developed by a team of missionary scientists under the leadership of the brothers Cyril and Methodius, when the adoption of Christianity by the Slavic peoples required the creation of church texts in their native language. The alphabet quickly spread in Slavic countries, and in the 10th century it penetrated from Bulgaria to Rus'.

14. Name the most famous monuments Russian writing

Monuments of ancient Russian literature about ancient Russian writing and literature: The Tale of Bygone Years, Degree Book, Daniil Zatochnik, Metropolitan Hilarion, Kirill of Turov, Life of Euphrosyne of Suzdal, etc.

15. What significance do “birch bark letters” have for the history of Russian writing?

Birch bark documents are both material (archaeological) and written sources; their location is as important a parameter for history as their content. The charters “give names” to the silent finds of archaeologists: instead of the faceless “estate of a noble Novgorodian” or “traces of a wooden canopy,” we can talk about “the estate of the priest-artist Olisey Petrovich, nicknamed Grechin” and about “traces of a canopy over the premises of the local court of the prince and mayor.” . The same name in documents found on neighboring estates, mentions of princes and others statesmen, mentions of significant sums of money, geographical names - all this says a lot about the history of buildings, their owners, about their social status, about their connections with other cities and regions.

Slavic languages ​​are related languages ​​of the Indo-European family. More than 400 million people speak Slavic languages.

Slavic languages ​​are distinguished by the similarity of word structure, use grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics (meaning), phonetics, morphonological alternations. This closeness is explained by the unity of origin of the Slavic languages ​​and their contacts with each other.
Based on the degree of proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic.
Each Slavic language has its own literary language (the processed part of the general vernacular with written standards; the language of all manifestations of culture) and its territorial dialects, which are not the same within each Slavic language.

Origin and history of Slavic languages

Slavic languages ​​are closest to the Baltic languages. Both are part of the Indo-European family of languages. From the Indo-European proto-language, the Balto-Slavic proto-language first emerged, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. But not all scientists agree with this. They explain the special closeness of these proto-languages ​​by the long-term contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
But what is clear is that from one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic) the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language was long. For a long time the Proto-Slavic language developed as a single dialect. Dialectal variants arose later.
In the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. Early Slavic states began to form in Southeast and Eastern Europe. Then the process of dividing the Proto-Slavic language into independent Slavic languages ​​began.

Slavic languages ​​have retained significant similarities with each other, but at the same time, each of them has unique features.

Eastern group of Slavic languages

Russian (250 million people)
Ukrainian (45 million people)
Belarusian (6.4 million people).
The writing of all East Slavic languages ​​is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Differences between East Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

reduction of vowels (akanye);
the presence of Church Slavonicisms in the vocabulary;
free dynamic stress.

Western group of Slavic languages

Polish (40 million people)
Slovak (5.2 million people)
Czech (9.5 million people)
The writing of all West Slavic languages ​​is based on the Latin alphabet.

Differences between West Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

In Polish - the presence of nasal vowels and two rows of sibilant consonants; fixed stress on the penultimate syllable. In Czech, the stress is fixed on the first syllable; presence of long and short vowels. The Slovak language has the same features as the Czech language.

Southern group of Slavic languages

Serbo-Croatian (21 million people)
Bulgarian (8.5 million people)
Macedonian (2 million people)
Slovenian (2.2 million people)
Written language: Bulgarian and Macedonian - Cyrillic, Serbo-Croatian - Cyrillic/Latin, Slovenian - Latin.

Differences between South Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

Serbo-Croatian has free musical stress. In the Bulgarian language there are no cases, a variety of verb forms and the absence of an infinitive (undefined form of the verb), free dynamic stress. Macedonian language - the same as in the Bulgarian language + fixed stress (no further than the third syllable from the end of the word). The Slovenian language has many dialects, the presence of a dual number, and free musical stress.

Writing of Slavic languages

The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavic for the needs of Great Moravia.

Prayer in Old Church Slavonic
Great Moravia is a Slavic state that existed in 822-907. on the Middle Danube. At its best, it included the territories of modern Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lesser Poland, part of Ukraine and the historical region of Silesia.
Great Moravia had great influence on the cultural development of the entire Slavic world.

Great Moravia

The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian dialect, but in Great Moravia it acquired many local linguistic features. Later he received further development in Bulgaria. A rich original and translated literature was created in this language (Old Church Slavonic) in Moravia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic.

The most ancient Old Church Slavonic texts date back to the 10th century. Since the 11th century. More Slavic monuments have survived.
Modern Slavic languages ​​use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. Glagolitic script is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet, the Arabic alphabet was also used (in 1463 Bosnia completely lost its independence and became part of Ottoman Empire as an administrative unit).

Slavic literary languages

Slavic literary languages ​​did not always have strict norms. Sometimes the literary language in Slavic countries was a foreign language (in Rus' - Old Church Slavonic, in the Czech Republic and Poland - Latin).
The Russian literary language had a complex evolution. It absorbed folk elements, elements of the Old Church Slavonic language, and was influenced by many European languages.
In the Czech Republic in the 18th century. German was dominant. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language.
The Slovak literary language developed on the basis of the folk language. In Serbia until the 19th century. dominated Church Slavonic language. In the 18th century the process of bringing this language closer to the folk one began. As a result of the reform carried out by Vuk Karadzic in the mid-19th century, a new literary language was created.
The Macedonian literary language was finally formed only in the middle of the 20th century.
But there are also a number of small Slavic literary languages ​​(microlanguages), which function along with national literary languages ​​in small ethnic groups. This is, for example, the Polesie microlanguage, Podlyashian in Belarus; Rusyn - in Ukraine; Wichsky - in Poland; Banat-Bulgarian microlanguage - in Bulgaria, etc.

The Slavic group of languages ​​is the closest of this family to the Baltic group, so some scientists combine these two groups into one - Balto-Slavic subfamily Indo-European languages. Total quantity There are more than 300 million native speakers of Slavic languages. The majority of speakers of Slavic languages ​​live in Russia and Ukraine.

The Slavic group of languages ​​is divided into three branches: East Slavic, West Slavic And South Slavic. The East Slavic branch of languages ​​includes: Russian language or Great Russian, Ukrainian, also known as Little Russian or Ruthenian, and Belarusian. These languages ​​are collectively spoken by about 225 million people. The West Slavic branch includes: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian, Kashubian and the extinct Polabian language. Living West Slavic languages ​​are spoken today by approximately 56 million people, mainly in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The South Slavic branch consists of Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Macedonian languages. The language also belongs to this branch church service Church Slavonic language. The first four languages ​​are spoken collectively by more than 30 million people in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

All Slavic languages, according to linguistic research, go back to one common ancestor language, usually called Proto-Slavic language, which in turn separated much earlier from Proto-Indo-European language(around 2000 BC), the ancestor of all Indo-European languages. The Proto-Slavic language was probably common to all Slavs as early as the 1st century BC, and already from the 8th century AD. Separate Slavic languages ​​begin to form.

General characteristics

Conversational Slavic languages are very similar to each other, more so than the Germanic or Romance languages ​​are to each other. However, even though they have similarities in vocabulary, grammar and phonetics, they still differ in many aspects. One of general characteristics of all Slavic languages ​​is relatively large number consonant sounds. A striking example of different usage is the variety of basic stress positions in individual Slavic languages. For example, in Czech the stress falls on the first syllable of a word, and in Polish - on the next syllable after the last, while in Russian and Bulgarian the stress can fall on any syllable.

Grammar

Grammatically, Slavic languages, with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, have a highly developed system of noun inflections, up to seven cases(nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional and vocative). The verb in Slavic languages ​​has three simple tenses(past, present and future), but is also characterized by such a complex characteristic as species. A verb can be imperfect (shows continuity or repetition of an action) or perfect (denotes the completion of an action). Participles and gerunds are widely used (one can compare their use with the use of participles and gerunds in English). In all Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, there is no article. The languages ​​of the Slavic subfamily are more conservative and therefore closer to Proto-Indo-European language than the languages ​​of the Germanic and Romance groups, as evidenced by the preservation by the Slavic languages ​​of seven of the eight cases for nouns that were characteristic of the Proto-Indo-European language, as well as the development of the aspect of the verb.

Vocabulary composition

The vocabulary of Slavic languages ​​is predominantly of Indo-European origin. There is also an important element of the mutual influence of the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​on each other, which is reflected in the vocabulary. Loan words or translations of words go back to Iranian and German groups, and also to Greek, Latin, and Turkic languages. They influenced the vocabulary of such languages ​​as Italian and French. Slavic languages ​​also borrowed words from each other. The borrowing of foreign words tends to translate and imitate rather than simply absorb them.

Writing

Perhaps it is in the written form that the most significant differences between the Slavic languages ​​lie. Some Slavic languages ​​(in particular Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Polish) have a written language based on the Latin alphabet, since the speakers of these languages ​​belong predominantly to the Catholic faith. Other Slavic languages ​​(for example, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) use adopted variants of the Cyrillic alphabet as a result of influence Orthodox Church. The only language, Serbo-Croatian, uses two alphabets: Cyrillic for Serbian and Latin for Croatian.
The invention of the Cyrillic alphabet is traditionally attributed to Cyril, a Greek missionary who was sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to the Slavic peoples then in the 9th century AD. in the territory of present-day Slovakia. There is no doubt that Kirill created the predecessor of the Cyrillic alphabet - Glagolitic, based on the Greek alphabet, where new symbols were added to represent Slavic sounds that did not find a correspondence in the Greek language. However, the very first texts in Cyrillic dating back to the 9th century AD. not preserved. The oldest Slavic texts preserved in the ecclesiastical Old Church Slavonic language date back to the 10th and 11th centuries.

Language is always directly related to society. The history of the origin of words is closely intertwined with the life of the people who speak them.

Any nation with its mentality influences all areas of the language: the peculiarities of pronunciation of sounds, lexical richness, its grammatical structure, etc.

Language is a complete and clear reflection of society. It is connected with the history of the people, with the peculiarities of life, worldview, perception of certain phenomena, with the state structure.

In this article, we invite you to get acquainted with the East Slavic languages, learn their features and similarities, and read about their history.

Indo-Europeans and their language

Until our era came, there was only one Indo-European community in the world. All peoples, including the Slavs, lived in this community and felt great. They were united by language, faith and, of course, territory.

Soon people switched to bronze products and were able to tame the horse, which triggered a wave of migration. These movements spread one language to new territories, which developed differently everywhere, taking on all influences. Now the inhabitants of these territories have nothing in common except the common ancestor of their dialect - the Indo-European proto-language.

Division of the Slavs

The result of migration is the formation of new tribes. One of them was a pre-Slavic tribe that settled in Central and Eastern Europe.

This tribe existed for a long time: until the 6th century AD. Residents led their own way of life, engaged in trade, hunting, cattle breeding, and agriculture.

Soon the Slavs became cramped, because they were constantly expanding the land for their farms. There wasn't enough room for everyone. This led to new movements, and the Slavs split into three groups (or branches) - western, southern and eastern.

The largest community is the Eastern Slavs. They settled on the East European Plain by the 6th century AD.

Each group of Slavs began to divide in turn into several more tribes. The Eastern Slavs formed 15 principalities, each of which had its own land, capital and head - a prince.

Proto-Russian language

How did the East Slavic languages ​​appear? Let's look at history again.

After the migration of the Indo-Europeans, a Proto-Slavic tribe appeared. It is unknown exactly when this event occurred. Scientists cannot indicate the exact date, only approximately this phenomenon can be attributed to the turn of two eras.

Along with the Proto-Slavic tribe, a new language appeared. It lasted as long as the Proto-Slavic unity itself.

But the movements of the people and the beginning of class differences between people shook their integrity. The unity of the Proto-Slavs fell apart, which means the language also fell apart.

This is how the Eastern Slavs separated with their Proto-Russian dialect. It is also called Old East Slavic. By the way, this language began to emerge in the 2nd century AD, before the ties of the Proto-Slavs were broken.

East Slavic languages

By the 7th century AD, the Old East Slavic language had reached a new level, having undergone various changes. This updated dialect is called East Slavic (Old Russian), from which the name of the whole group comes. After some time, Old Russian is divided into several independent dialects.

What languages ​​are included in the East Slavic group? There are only three of them: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. All of them are “descendants” of the East Slavic language.

Let's summarize:

Linguistics groups languages ​​into families. The largest of which is the Indo-European language family. East Slavic languages ​​are a group within this family. All dialects within the same family will be somewhat similar. Take a look at the table:

You can see the similarity of pronunciation, especially in such in simple words, how to be, mother, father, etc. These are the basic words in our speech, therefore it was them that the Indo-Europeans transferred to new lands, and it was they who retained the similarity.

Spreading

It is generally accepted that the East Slavic group of languages ​​is widespread only in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. However, this is not so: these adverbs have spread quite far.

This group of languages ​​spread to Asia due to the conquest of the Russian Empire.

Russian speech

Russian language is one of the East Slavic languages. It is officially spoken by residents Russian Federation. In countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian is one of the official languages.

Russian language is in sixth place in popularity. It is spoken by more than 250 million people worldwide. Half of them speak conversational and in writing at a high level.

Russian is at the same time the national language of the Russian Federation, international for communication between peoples within Russia and one of the most widespread in the world.

The Russian dialect consists largely of native Russian words. However, over time, the world developed, new concepts, phenomena, inventions, and household items appeared, which then appeared in Russia. Therefore, Russian speech has not avoided borrowings from other languages.

Thanks to Emperor Peter the Great, who ruled in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Russian dialect has many borrowings from Dutch, French and German languages. And in the 20th century, Russian speech began to adopt words from the English language. This happened in connection with the development of new technologies: computers, the Internet, etc. Borrowings from English still occur, more often even in colloquial speech(Google, hype, meme, etc.).

The Russian language was praised by Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, and the French philosopher Voltaire.

Ukrainian dialect

The second East Slavic language is Ukrainian. It is officially spoken by residents of Ukraine. Since the 19th century, Ukrainians began migrating to Western countries such as Canada, the USA, Australia, as well as to the South American mainland - Argentina and Brazil. Their language accordingly also spread in these territories.

Around the world, 40 million people speak Ukrainian, and in Ukraine itself, 85% of the population.

The Ukrainian language, like other East Slavic languages, was formed on the basis of Old Russian. Literary speech was developed by Ivan Petrovich Kotlyarovsky and Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko.

Belarusian language

The third East Slavic language is Belarusian. It is spoken by 7 million people - residents of Belarus, where two official languages- Belarusian and Russian. In 2009, only 53% of the population of this country indicated Belarusian as their native language. The language is now in a vulnerable state. This means that it is spoken mainly only at home.

In the Polish city of Hajnowka and some Polish communes (minimum administrative units), such as Orlya, Chizhe and Narevka, Belarusian is an auxiliary language. In other words, there it serves for communication between people speaking different languages. Like, for example, English serves for communication between people around the world.

Similarities between Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages

Let's find out what common features the East Slavic languages ​​have. Russian and Ukrainian have only three similarities. But Ukrainian and Belarusian are twelve.

One of the significant common features of the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages ​​is that they have a vocative case. It also existed in the Russian dialect, but already in the 11th century it began to die out.

Russian and Ukrainian languages ​​have soft consonants D and T, and this unites them. Belarusian does not have them. For example: day (Rus), day (Ukr), but zen (bel); shadow (Rus), ten (Ukr), but value (white).

Also in the Russian and Ukrainian languages ​​there is a soft R, but in Belarusian it is pronounced only hard. For example: row (rus) - row (ukr) - rad (white); pockmarked (Russian) - pockmarked (Ukrian) - slaves (white).

Russian and Ukrainian adjectives in the nominative case at the end of the word retain the hard sound Y, but in Belarusian this sound is lost. For example: great (rus) - great (ukr) - vyalik (white); kind (Russian) - kind (Ukr) - kind (white).

Conclusion

East Slavic languages ​​- Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. The most common is Russian. Part of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of these languages ​​is the Proto-Russian language.

Just as a tree grows from a root, its trunk gradually becomes stronger, rises to the sky and branches, the Slavic languages ​​“grew” from the Proto-Slavic language (see Proto-Slavic language), the roots of which go deep to the Indo-European language (see Indo-European family of languages). This allegorical picture, as is known, served as the basis for the theory of the “family tree”, which, in relation to the Slavic family of languages, can be accepted in general outline and even historically justified.

The Slavic language “tree” has three main branches: 1) East Slavic languages, 2) West Slavic languages, 3) South Slavic languages. These main branch groups branch in turn into smaller ones - for example, the East Slavic branch has three main branches - the languages ​​Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, and the branch of the Russian language in turn has two main branches - Northern Russian and Southern Russian adverbs (see Adverbs of the Russian language ). If you pay attention to the further branches of at least the South Russian dialect, you will see how it distinguishes the branch-zones of Smolensk, Upper Dnieper, Upper Desna, Kursk-Oryol, Ryazan, Bryansk-Zhizdra, Tula, Yelets and Oskol dialects. On them, If you paint a picture of the allegorical “family tree” further, there are also branches with numerous leaves - dialects of individual villages and settlements. You could also describe the Polish or Slovenian branches, explain which of them has more branches, which has fewer, but the principle the descriptions would remain the same.

Naturally, such a “tree” did not grow immediately, that it did not immediately branch out and grow so much, that the trunk and its main branches are older than the smaller branches and twigs. And it did not always grow comfortably, and some branches withered away, some were chopped off. But more on that later. For now, let us note that the “branched” principle of classification of Slavic languages ​​and dialects presented by us refers to natural Slavic languages ​​and dialects, to the Slavic linguistic element outside its written form, without a normative written form. And if the various branches of the living Slavic linguistic “tree” - languages ​​and dialects - did not appear immediately, then written, bookish, standardized, and largely artificial forms formed on their basis and in parallel with them did not immediately appear. language systems- literary languages ​​(see Literary language).

In the modern Slavic world, there are 12 national literary languages: three East Slavic - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, five West Slavic - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper Lusatian-Serbian and Lower Lusatian-Serbian and four South Slavic - Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian.

In addition to these languages, polyvalent languages, that is, speaking (like all modern national literary languages) both in the function of written, artistic, business speech, and in the function of oral, everyday, colloquial and stage speech, the Slavs also have “small” literary, almost always brightly dialectally colored languages. These languages, with limited use, usually function alongside national literary languages ​​and serve either relatively small ethnic groups, or even individual literary genres. There are such languages ​​in Western Europe: in Spain, Italy, France and in German-speaking countries. The Slavs know the Rusyn language (in Yugoslavia), the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages ​​(in Yugoslavia and Austria), the Kashubian language (in Poland), the Lyash language (in Czechoslovakia), etc.

In the Middle Ages, the Polabian Slavs, who spoke the Polabian language, lived on a fairly vast territory in the Elbe River basin, called Laby in Slavic. This language is a severed branch from the Slavic language “tree” as a result of the forced Germanization of the population that spoke it. He disappeared in the 18th century. Nevertheless, separate records of Polabian words, texts, translations of prayers, etc. have reached us, from which it is possible to reconstruct not only the language, but also the life of the disappeared Polabians. And at the International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968, the famous West German Slavist R. Olesh read a report in the Polish language, thus creating not only literary written (he read from typescript) and oral forms, but also scientific linguistic terminology. This indicates that almost every Slavic dialect (dialect) can, in principle, be the basis of a literary language. However, not only Slavic, but also another family of languages, as shown by numerous examples of newly written languages ​​in our country.

In the 9th century. Through the labors of the brothers Cyril and Methodius, the first Slavic literary language was created - Old Church Slavonic. It was based on the dialect of the Thessalonica Slavs; translations from Greek of a number of church and other books were made in it, and later some original works were written. The Old Church Slavonic language first existed in the West Slavic environment - in Great Moravia (hence a number of Moravises inherent in it), and then spread among the southern Slavs, where book schools - Ohrid and Preslav - played a special role in its development. From the 10th century this language also begins to exist among the Eastern Slavs, where it was known under the name of the Slovenian language, and scientists call it the Church Slavonic or Old Slavic language. The Old Slavic language was an international, inter-Slavic book language until the 18th century. and had a great influence on the history and modern appearance of many Slavic languages, especially the Russian language. Old Church Slavonic monuments have reached us with two writing systems - Glagolitic and Cyrillic (see The emergence of writing among the Slavs).