Concise Yet Detailed History Of The Russian Language

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Written byAlina Sinitcyna

The Russian language is an Indo-European language that is spoken in a big area of North Europe. Russian language history has its origins in the 11th century, when many of the people who lived in the area that now occupy the countries of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus spoke a language called Slavic. Slavic is the mother of many languages that are now spoken in that area. One of them was Russian and it is later improved with a new vocabulary that was brought from Western Europe. Russian acquired great popularity and became the official language of the Soviet Union. Progressive advance in technology as well as in science has made Russian one of the most appreciated languages around the world.

Russian Language

Russian is a popular language that is spoken in many regions located in the northeast of Europe; in the countries of Russia, Belarus, South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Abkhazia. The history of the Russian language is the result of a progressive evolution in the language itself.

Russian gained popularity in the 20th century, when Russia’s scientific and political accomplishments were very famous all over the world. Russian is now the 7th most popular language among native speakers. There are also other languages that are less popular; they are derivatives of the Russian language and are used in rural areas of Northeastern Europe.

History of the Russian Language

Russian is very famous language around the world because of its history and also for having its own exclusive alphabet that has its origins in the Cyrillic script; an old alphabet that is used to translate the Bible to Slavic speaking people. Russian got so much popularity during its cultural development, and it is now the 4th most spoken language in the world.

The history of Russian language starts in the 14th century, with the feudal breakup that caused a big change in society. During those years, the center of the Slavic language was the religion, and Russian was a language in formation that had taken the vocabulary and the verbal constructions from other Germanic languages and later from the Turkish and the Mongolian.

Later in the 15th century, Russian started to be spoken in the city of Moscow, from which there are no references before the 10th century. It was during this period where Russian and Ukrainian were noted as two different languages.

Russia became a big empire thanks to one of its greatest emperors Peter I (he was actually known as Peter the great), who not only began a process of expansion but also began an alphabet reform, which stated the modernization of the Russian language; he turned it into one of the symbols of the Russian empire.

The 20th century brought technology and political changes to the empire. The Russian language began to be valued among foreigners. New vocabulary words had to be added to the language; especially new English words that had to be adapted to the Russian alphabet. As you can see, the Russian language has gone through a lot of changes. Other adjustments seem to appear with the upcoming years.

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Author: Alina Sinitcyna
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