lingvo.wikisort.org - Language

The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, however, by number of speakers, East Slavic languages far outnumber the West Slavic and South Slavic language families. These languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East, while being also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia.

East Slavic languages
Geographic distribution	Eurasia (Eastern Europe, Northern Asia, and the Caucasus)
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic languages
Early form	Old East Slavic
Subdivisions	Belarusian Russian Ukrainian Rusyn Old East Slavic† Ruthenian† Old Novgorodian†
ISO 639-5	zle
Glottolog	east1426
Distribution of the East Slavic languages in Eurasia:[citation needed]   Russian   Belarusian   Ukrainian   Rusyn

The common consensus is that Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian are the existent East Slavic languages;[1] Rusyn is mostly considered as a separate language too, but some classify it as a dialect of Ukrainian.[2]

The East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor, the language spoken in the medieval Kievan Rus' (9th to 13th centuries), the Rus' language which later evolved into Ruthenian, the language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (13th to 18th centuries) in the Dnieper river valley, and into Russian, the language of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (13th to 16th centuries) in the Volga river valley accordingly. 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 Ukrainian Latin alphabets, respectively (also Rusyn uses Latin in some regions).^{[citation needed]}

Classification

Differentiation

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. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish, a West Slavic language / Lechitic. Ruthenian, the mixed Belarusian-Ukrainian literary language with a Church Slavonic substratum and Polish adstratum, was, together with Middle Polish, an official language in Belarus and Ukraine until the end of the 18th century.^{[citation needed]}

Orthography

sound	Letters
	Russian	Belarusian	Ukrainian	Rusyn
/ʲe, je/	е	е	є	є
/e/	э	э	е	е
/i/	и	і	і	і
/ʲi/				ї
/ji/			ї
/ɨ/	ы	ы	-	ы
/ɪ/	-	-	и	и
/ɤ/	-	-	-	ы
/ʲo/	ё	ё	ьо	ё

Phonology

This section does not cite any sources. (November 2014)

Isoglosses	Northern Russian	Standard Russian (Moscow dialect)	Southern Russian	Standard Belarusian	Standard Ukrainian	Examples
reduction of unstressed /o/ (akanye)	no	yes[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]	always	under stress			after /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]		yes			R. 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	no		yes
Hardening of soft /rʲ/	no			yes	partially
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 case	no	yes[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)	no		yes
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 cases	no			yes		R. руке́ /ruˈkʲe/, B. руцэ́ /ruˈt͡se/, U. руці́ /ruˈt͡sʲi/ "hand" (locative or prepositional case)

Notes

History

When the common Old East Slavic language became separated from the ancient Slavic tongue common to all Slavs is difficult to ascertain, though in the 12th century the common language of Rus' is still referred to in contemporary writing as Slavic.^{[citation needed]}

Therefore, a crucial differentiation has to be made between the history of the East Slavic dialects and that of the literary languages employed by the Eastern Slavs. Although most ancient texts betray the dialect their author or scribe spoke, it is also clearly visible that they tried to write in a language different from their dialects and to avoid those mistakes that enable us nowadays to locate them.^{[citation needed]}

In both cases one has to keep in mind that the history of the East Slavic languages is of course a history of written texts. We do not know how the writers of the preserved texts would have spoken in everyday life.^{[citation needed]}

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.[3] 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.[4]

See also

• Outline of Slavic history and culture

References

Further reading

• Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville G, eds. (1993). "East Slavonic languages". The Slavonic languages. London, New York: Routledge. pp. 827–1036. ISBN 0-415-04755-2.
• Sussex, Roland; Cubberley, Paul (2006). The Slavic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-22315-7.

External links

• Media related to East Slavic languages at Wikimedia Commons

На других языках

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- [en] East Slavic languages

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[es] Lenguas eslavas orientales

Las lenguas eslavas orientales son el ruso, el ucraniano, el bielorruso y el rusino. Este subgrupo pertenece al grupo de las lenguas eslavas.

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[fr] Langues slaves orientales

Les langues slaves orientales sont un groupe de langues qui forment une subdivision des langues slaves (avec les langues slaves méridionales et les langues slaves occidentales).

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[it] Lingue slave orientali

Le lingue slave orientali sono un ramo delle lingue slave parlate in Europa orientale e in Asia, nei territori dell'ex Unione Sovietica.

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[ru] Восточнославянские языки

Восточнославя́нские языки́ — группа в составе славянской ветви индоевропейской языковой семьи. Распространены в Восточной Европе и в северной части Азии. Живыми языками этой группы являются белорусский, русский и украинский языки. Иногда в качестве четвёртого живого языка восточнославянской группы рассматривают русинский язык, который обычно считают диалектом[1][2][3] украинского. Предком всех языков восточнославянской группы считается древнерусский язык, существовавший до XIII—XIV веков[4][5] (отдельные исследователи придерживаются теории, что древнерусский язык был письменно-литературным, а формирование восточнославянских языков связано с распадом праславянского языка)[6].

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