East Slavic languages

Last updated
East Slavic
Усходнеславянскія мовы (Belarusian)
Восточнославянские языки (Russian)
Східнослов'янські мови (Ukrainian)
Geographic
distribution		 Eurasia (Eastern Europe, Northern Asia, and the Caucasus)
Linguistic classification Indo-European
Early forms
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5 zle
Glottolog east1426

The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East. [1] In part due to the large historical influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian language is also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia. Of the three Slavic branches, East Slavic is the most spoken, with the number of native speakers larger than the Western and Southern branches combined.

Contents

The common consensus is that Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian are the existent East Slavic languages; [2] some linguists consider that there are even more East Slavic languages in total, e.g. West Polesian, or the most common claim, Rusyn. [3] [4] However, both of them are very often considered as dialects (West Polesian as a dialect of Belarusian and/or Ukrainian and Rusyn as a dialect of Ukrainian). [5]

The modern East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor spoken in Kievan Rus' from the 9th to 13th centuries, which later evolved into Ruthenian, the chancery language of the Balto-Ruthenian Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Dnieper river valley, and into medieval Russian in the Volga river valley, the language of the Russian principalities including the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications. Belarusian and Ukrainian, which are descendants of Ruthenian, have a tradition of using Latin-based alphabets—the Belarusian Łacinka and the Ukrainian Latynka alphabets, respectively (also Rusyn uses Latin in some regions, e.g. in Slovakia). The Latin alphabet is traditionally more common in Belarus, while the usage of the Cyrillic script in Russia and Ukraine could never be compared to any other alphabet. [6]

Classification

Modern East Slavic languages ​​include Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian. The Rusyn language is sometimes considered as the fourth living language of the East Slavic group, however, many experts consider it as a dialect of the Ukrainian language. [7]

Classification of the East Slavic languages
UkrainianBelarusianRussian
ca. 600s/700s to 1200s/1300s Old East Slavic
ca. 1400s to 1700s Ruthenian Old Russian
ca. since 1700s to 1800s(modern) Ukrainian (modern) Belarusian (modern) Russian

Distinctive features

Vocabulary

The East Slavic territory exhibits a linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, making it virtually impossible to draw a line between the two languages. Central or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original and archaic features.

Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as "Chancery Slavonic" until the end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. It was also the native language of the Cossack Hetmanate until the end of the 18th century, when the Ukrainian state completely became part of the Russian Empire in 1764. [8] The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk from 1710 is one of the most important written sources of the Ruthenian language. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish, a Lechitic West Slavic language. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed to Church Slavonic, featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, for example:

Comparison of the word "sweet"
UkrainianBelarusianRussian
солодкий (solodkyj)салодкі (salodki)сладкий (sladkij)

Additionally, the original East Slavic phonetic form was kept in many words in Ukrainian and Belarusian, for example:

Comparison of the word "unit"
UkrainianBelarusianRussian
одиниця (odynycia)адзінка (adzinka)eдиница (edinica)

In general, Ukrainian and Belarusian are also closer to other Western European languages, especially to German (via Polish). At the same time Russian was being heavily influenced by Church Slavonic (South Slavic language), but also by the Turkic and Uralic languages. [9] For example:

Comparison of the word "to search"
UkrainianBelarusianRussian
шукати (šukaty)шукаць (šukać)искать (iskat́)
Compare Polish "szukać" and Old Low German "sōkian" (German "suchen")Compare Bulgarian "искам" (iskam) and Serbo-Croatian "искати" (iskati)

What's more, all three languages do also have false friends, that sometimes can lead to (big) misunderstandings. [10] For example, Ukrainian орати (oraty) — "to plow" and Russian орать (orat́) — "to scream", or Ukrainian помітити (pomityty) — "to notice" and Russian пометить (pometit́) — "to mark".

Orthography

Alphabet

The alphabets of the East Slavic languages are all written in the Cyrillic script, however each of them has their own letters and pronunciations. Russian and Ukrainian have 33 letters, while Belarusian has 32. Additionally, Belarusian and Ukrainian use the apostrophe (') for the hard sign, which has the same function as the letter Ъ in Russian.

Cyrillic alphabets comparison table
East Slavic languages
RussianАБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ
BelarusianАБВГДЕЁЖЗІЙКЛМНОПРСТУЎФХЦЧШ'ЫЬЭЮЯ
UkrainianАБВГҐДЕЄЖЗИІЇЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩ'ЬЮЯ

Some letters, that are not included in the alphabet of a language, can be written as diagraphs. For example, the letter Ё, which doesn't exist in the Ukrainian alphabet, can be written as ЙО (ЬО before and after consonants), while the letter Щ is written as ШЧ in Belarusian (compare Belarusian плошча and Ukrainian площа ("area")).

There are also different rules of usage for certain letters, e.g. the soft sign (Ь) cannot be written before and after the letter Ц in Russian, because such combination straightforwardly doesn't exist in the Russian language, while in Ukrainian and especially Belarusian, on the contrary, it's a relatively common maneuver. Moreover, the Russian Щ is always pronounced softly (palatalization).

Standard Ukrainian, unlike all the other Slavic languages (excl. Serbo-Croatian), does not exhibit final devoicing. Nevertheless, this rule is not that clear when listening to colloquial Ukrainian. It's one of the typical deviations that occur in the Ukrainian spoken language. [11]

Other orthographic differentiations (false friends)

Besides the differences of the alphabets, there are also quite many false friends. For example, one of the common false friends, the letter И (romanized as I for Russian and Y for Ukrainian), which in Russian is mostly pronounced as /i/ (identical with the Ukrainian І), while in Ukrainian it's mostly pronounced as /ɪ/ (very similar to the Russian Ы). Other examples:

"False friends"
LetterPronunciation
Belarusian and Russian ЕUkrainian Є/je/,/ʲe/
Belarusian and Russian ЭUkrainian Е/e/
Belarusian and Russian ЫUkrainian И/ɨ/ (B. and R.), /ɪ/ (U.)
Belarusian and Ukrainian ІRussian И/i/,/ʲi/
Belarusian and Ukrainian Гno sound in Russian/ɦ/
Russian ГUkrainian Ґ (rarely used)/ɡ/

Phonology

Isoglosses Northern
Russian 		Standard Russian
(Moscow dialect)		 Southern
Russian 		Standard BelarusianStandard UkrainianExamples
reduction
of unstressed /o/ (akanye)		noyes [n 1] no [n 2] R. голова́ /ɡɐlɐˈva/,
B. галава́ /ɣalaˈva/,
U. голова́ /ɦɔlɔˈʋa/
"head"
pretonic /ʲe/ (yakanye)/ʲe//ʲi//ʲa//e/ [n 3] R. земля́ /zʲiˈmlʲa/,
B. зямля́ /zʲaˈmlʲa/,
U. земля́ /zeˈmlʲa/
"earth"
Proto-Slavic *i/i//ɪ/ [n 4] R. лист /ˈlʲist/,
B. ліст /ˈlʲist/,
U. лист /ˈlɪst/
"leaf"
Proto-Slavic *y/ɨ/R./B. ты /ˈtɨ/,
U. ти /ˈtɪ/
"thou, you"
stressed CoC/o//i/ [n 5] [n 6] R. ночь /ˈnot͡ɕ/,
B. ноч /ˈnot͡ʂ/,
U. ніч /ˈnʲit͡ʃ/
"night"
Proto-Slavic *ě/e̝~i̯ɛ~i//e/R. се́мя /ˈsʲemʲa/,
B. се́мя /ˈsʲemʲa/,
U. сі́м'я /ˈsʲimja/
"seed"
/e/>/o/ change before nonpalatalized consonants [n 7] alwaysunder stressafter /j/, /nʲ/, /lʲ/, /ʒ/, /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/R. зелёный /zʲiˈlʲonɨj/,
B. зялёны /zʲaˈlʲonɨ/,
U. зеле́ний /zeˈlenɪj/
"green"
Proto-Slavic *c/t͡s/ [n 8] [n 9] /t͡s,t͡sʲ/
Proto-Slavic *č/t͡ɕ/ [n 10] [n 9] /t͡ʂ//t͡ʃ/R. час /ˈt͡ɕas/
"hour",
B. час /ˈt͡ʂas/,
U. час /ˈt͡ʃas/
"time (of day)"
Proto-Slavic *skj, zgj/ɕː/, [n 11] /ʑː//ʂt͡ʂ/, /ʐd͡ʐ//ʃt͡ʃ/, /ʒd͡ʒ/
soft dental stops /tʲ/, /dʲ/ [n 12] /t͡sʲ/, /d͡zʲ//tʲ/, /dʲ/R. де́сять /ˈdʲesʲitʲ/,
B. дзе́сяць /ˈd͡zʲesʲat͡sʲ/,
U. де́сять /ˈdesʲatʲ/
"ten"
Proto-Slavic *v/v,f/ [n 13] /w//v/
[v,w]		/w/
[β,w]		R. о́стров /ˈostraf/,
B. во́страў /ˈvostrau̯/,
U. о́стрів /ˈostriʋ/
"island"
/f/ (in loanwords)/f//x~xv~xw~xu̯//f/
Prothetic /v~w~u̯/no [n 14] yesR. о́стров /ˈostraf/,
B. во́страў /ˈvostrau̯/,
U. о́стрів /ˈostriʋ/
"island"
Proto-Slavic *g/ɡ//ɣ//ɦ/R. голова́ /ɡɐlɐˈva/,
B. галава́ /ɣalaˈva/,
U. голова́ /ɦɔlɔˈʋa/
"head"
Hardening of final soft labials noyesR. степь /sʲtʲepʲ/,

B. стэп /stɛp/, U. степ /stɛp/

"steppe"

Hardening of soft /rʲ/noyespartially
Proto-Slavic *CrьC, ClьC,
CrъC, CrъC		/rʲe/, /lʲe/,
/ro/, /lo/		/rɨ/, /lʲi/,
/rɨ/, /lɨ/		/rɪ/, /lɪ/,
/rɪ/, /lɪ/
Proto-Slavic *-ъj-, -ьj-/oj/, /ej//ɨj/, /ij//ɪj/
Proto-Slavic adj. end. *-ьjь/ej//ij/, [n 15] /ej//ej/ [n 16] /ij//ɪj/, /ij/
Proto-Slavic adj. end. *-ъjь/oj//ɨj/, [n 15] /oj//oj/ [n 17] /ɨj//ɪj/
Loss of the vocative casenoyes [n 18] no
3 sg. & pl. pres. ind./t//tʲ//t͡sʲ//tʲ/R. ду́мают /ˈdumajut/,
B. ду́маюць/ˈdumajut͡sʲ/,
Uk. ду́мають/ˈdumajutʲ/
"(they) think"
Dropping out
of 3 sg. pres. ind. ending (in e-stems)		noyes
3 sg. masc. past ind./v~w~u̯/ [n 19] /l//v,w/R. ду́мал /ˈdumal/,
B. ду́маў/ˈdumau̯/,
U. ду́мав/ˈdumaʋ/
"(he) thought"
2nd palatalization in oblique casesnoyesR. руке́ /ruˈkʲe/,
B. руцэ́ /ruˈt͡se/,
U. руці́ /ruˈt͡sʲi/
"hand"
(locative or prepositional case)

Notes

  1. ↑ Except for the Polesian dialect of Brest
  2. ↑ Except for the Eastern Polesian dialect
  3. ↑ Consonants are hard before /e/
  4. ↑ Except for some dialects
  5. ↑ In some Ukrainian dialects C/o/C can be /y~y̯e~y̯i~u̯o/
  6. ↑ In some Ukrainian dialects PSl *ě can be /e̝~i̯ɛ/
  7. ↑ Also at the end of words (in Russian and Belarusian). In Belarusian (unlike Russian), the change is not present in stressed 2 and 3 sg. pres. ind. endings.
  8. ↑ Can be /s/ in South Russian
  9. 1 2 In some Northern Russian dialects, Proto-Slavic *c and *č have merged into one sound, variously pronounced as /t͡s,t͡sʲ,t͡ʂ,t͡ɕ/ depending on a dialect.
  10. ↑ Can be /ɕ/ in Southern Russian
  11. ↑ Can be /ɕt͡ɕ/, /ʂː/
  12. ↑ In Russian light affrication can occur: [tˢʲ] , [dᶻʲ]
  13. ↑ In some Northern Russian sub-dialects /v/ is not devoiced to /f/
  14. ↑ Except for восемь "eight" and some others
  15. 1 2 Only unstressed, Church Slavonic influence
  16. ↑ Stressed, unstressed is usually reduced to [ʲəj]
  17. ↑ Stressed, unstressed is usually reduced to [əj]
  18. ↑ In colloquial Russian, new vocative has appeared from a pure stem: мам, пап, Маш, Вань etc.
  19. ↑ In the dialect of Vologda

History

Influence of Church Slavonic

After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, which were written in Old Church Slavonic (a South Slavic language). [12] The Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form.[ citation needed ]

Throughout the Middle Ages (and in some way up to the present day) there existed a duality between the Church Slavonic language used as some kind of 'higher' register (not only) in religious texts and the popular tongue used as a 'lower' register for secular texts. It has been suggested to describe this situation as diglossia , although there do exist mixed texts where it is sometimes very hard to determine why a given author used a popular or a Church Slavonic form in a given context. Church Slavonic was a major factor in the evolution of modern Russian, where there still exists a "high stratum" of words that were imported from this language. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian language</span> East Slavic language

Russian is an East Slavic language, spoken primarily in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union. Russian has remained an official language in independent Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavic languages</span> Subfamily of Indo-European languages

The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Church Slavonic</span> Medieval Slavic literary language

Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic is the first Slavic literary language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belarusian language</span> East Slavic language

Belarusian is an East Slavic language. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, alongside Russian. Additionally, it is spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries.

The Ukrainian language is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the native language of a majority of Ukrainians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rusyn language</span> East Slavic language

Rusyn is an East Slavic language spoken by Rusyns in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, and written in the Cyrillic script. The majority of speakers live in an area known as Carpathian Ruthenia that spans from Transcarpathia, westward into eastern Slovakia and south-east Poland. There is also a sizeable Pannonian Rusyn linguistic island in Vojvodina, Serbia, as well as a Rusyn diaspora throughout the world. Per the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Rusyn is officially recognized as a protected minority language by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia.

Ruthenian is an exonymic linguonym for a closely related group of East Slavic linguistic varieties, particularly those spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in East Slavic regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Regional distribution of those varieties, both in their literary and vernacular forms, corresponded approximately to the territories of the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine. By the end of the 18th century, they gradually diverged into regional variants, which subsequently developed into the modern Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old East Slavic</span> Slavic language used in the 10th–15th centuries

Old East Slavic was a language used by the East Slavs from the 7th or 8th century to the 13th or 14th century, until it diverged into the Russian and Ruthenian languages. Ruthenian eventually evolved into the Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Church Slavonic</span> Liturgical language of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Slavic countries

Church Slavonic, also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic, New Church Slavic or just Slavonic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The language appears also in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yat</span> Cyrillic letter

Yat or jat is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet. It is usually romanized as E with a haček: Ě ě.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I (Cyrillic)</span> Letter of the Cyrillic script

I is a letter used in almost all Cyrillic alphabets with the exception of Belarusian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ge (Cyrillic)</span> Letter of the Cyrillic script

Ge, ghe, or he is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It represents the voiced velar plosive, like ⟨g⟩ in "gift", or the voiced glottal fricative, like ⟨h⟩ in "heft". It is generally romanized using the Latin letter g or h, depending on the source language.

A yer is either of two letters in Cyrillic alphabets, ъ and ь. The Glagolitic alphabet used, as respective counterparts, the letters (Ⱏ) and (Ⱐ). They originally represented phonemically the "ultra-short" vowels in Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic, and are collectively known as the yers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yus</span> Cyrillic letter

Little yus and big yus, or jus, are letters of the Cyrillic script representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotated form, formed as ligatures with the decimal i (І). Other yus letters are blended yus (Ꙛ ꙛ), closed little yus (Ꙙ ꙙ) and iotated closed little yus (Ꙝ ꙝ).

Russian is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European family. All Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Although no written records remain, much of the culture and religion of the Proto-Indo-European people can also be reconstructed based on their daughter cultures traditionally and continuing to inhabit most of Europe and South Asia, areas to where the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from their original homeland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ukrainian alphabet</span> Alphabet that uses letters from the Cyrillic script

The Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, called Old Slavonic. In the 10th century, it became used in Kievan Rus' to write Old East Slavic, from which the Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian alphabets later evolved. The modern Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total: 21 consonants, 1 semivowel, 10 vowels and 1 palatalization sign. Sometimes the apostrophe (') is also included, which has a phonetic meaning and is a mandatory sign in writing, but is not considered as a letter and is not included in the alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard sign</span> Letter of the Cyrillic script

The letter Ъ ъ of the Cyrillic script is known as er goläm in the Bulgarian alphabet, as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets, as the debelo jer in pre-reform Serbian orthography, and as ayirish belgisi in the Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet. The letter is called back yer or back jer and yor or jor in the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic, and in Old Church Slavonic.

The term North Slavic languages is used in three main senses:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyrillic alphabets</span> Related alphabets based on Cyrillic scripts

Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world. The creator is Saint Clement of Ohrid from the Preslav literary school in the First Bulgarian Empire.

Slavic microlanguages are literary linguistic varieties that exist alongside the better-known Slavic languages of historically prominent nations. The term "literary microlanguages" was coined by Aleksandr Dulichenko in late 1970s; it subsequently became a standard term in Slavistics.

References

  1. ↑ "Официальный интернет-портал правовой информации". publication.pravo.gov.ru. Archived from the original on February 5, 2022. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  2. ↑ Sussex & Cubberley 2006, pp. 79–89.
  3. ↑ Pugh 2009, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Moser 2016, p. 124-139.
  5. ↑ "Dulichenko, Aleksandr The language of Carpathian Rus': Genetic Aspects" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-06-25. Retrieved 2009-12-12.
  6. ↑ Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville G. (1 September 2003). The Slavonic Languages. Taylor & Francis. p. 45. ISBN   978-0-203-21320-9. Archived from the original on 15 February 2017. Retrieved 22 November 2017. ...following Vuk's reform of Cyrillic in the early nineteenth century, Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s performed the same operation on Latinica, using the Czech system and producing a one-to-one symbol correlation between Cyrillic and Latinica as applied to the Serbian and Croatian parallel systems
  7. ↑ Подробнее см. Rusyn language и Русинский язык.
  8. ↑ "Указ об учреждении губерний и о росписании к ним городов". constitution.garant.ru. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  9. ↑ "Turkic words in Russian". Languages Of The World. 2011-02-14. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  10. ↑ "Database of False Friends in Slavic Languages". Danish Portal for East European Studies. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  11. ↑ "Фонетика й вимова - Олександр Пономарів". ponomariv-kultura-slova.wikidot.com. Retrieved 2022-11-11.
  12. ↑ Sussex & Cubberley 2006, pp. 63–65.
  13. ↑ Sussex & Cubberley 2006, pp. 477–478.

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.