Russian language

Russian (русский язык/russk'ij jaz1k/) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300"\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="lawngreen" style="font-size:120%"|Russian
(русский язык)\n|-\n| valign="top"|Spoken in:\n|Russia and many adjacent countries\n|-\n| valign="top"|Region:\n|Eastern Europe and Asia\n|-\n| valign="top"|Total speakers:\n| 280 million\n|-\n| valign="top"|Ranking:\n| 4-7\n|-\n| valign="top"|Genetic
classification:\n|Indo-European
\n Satem phylum
\n  Slavic
\n   East Slavic
\n    'Russian\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="lawngreen"|Official status\n|-\n| valign="top"|Official language of:\n| valign="top"|Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, United Nations\n|-\n| valign="top"|Regulated by:\n| valign="top"| --\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="lawngreen"|Language codes\n|-\n|ISO 639-1||ru\n|-\n|ISO 639-2||rus\n|-\n|SIL||RUS\n|} Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Gaelic. Written examples are extant from the tenth century C.E. onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian shares a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of political importance in the twentieth century, it is one of the official languages of the United Nations. NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in SAMPA (without regard to the reduction of unstressed vowels). For this reason, the properly linguistic description begins with Writing System, and History is given as the concluding section, to give the reader a greater opportunity to become familiar with the elements of the contemporary language before the account of how it got to be what it is.

Table of contents

1 Classification 2 Geographic distribution 2.1 Official status 2.2 Dialects 2.3 Derived languages 3 Writing system 3.4 Alphabet 3.5 Orthography 4 Sounds 4.6 Vowels 4.7 Consonants 4.8 Stress 4.9 Phonology 4.10 Historical sound changes 5 Grammar 5.11 Nouns 5.12 Verbs 5.13 Word formation 5.14 Syntax 6 Vocabulary 6.15 The language of abuse and invective 6.16 Proverbs 7 History 7.17 Origins 7.18 The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries) 7.19 Feudal breakup, the Vladimir period, Mongol hegemony (12th-14th centuries) 7.20 The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries) 7.21 Empire (18th-19th centuries) 7.22 Soviet period and beyond (20th century) 8 Examples 8.23 Primary Chronicle 8.24 Song of Igor 8.25 Avvakum's autobiography 8.26 Alexander Pushkin 8.27 Feodor Dostoevsky 8.28 Fundamental laws of the Russian Empire 8.29 Mikhail Bulgakov 9 Related articles 10 External links

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language, in the Indo-European family. Its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. The principles of word-formation, literary style, and, to some extent, inflexions and basic vocabulary, of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. The vocabulary and literary style of Russian has been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English. \n

Geographic distribution

Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role was reserved for Russian. Following the breakup of 1991, several of the newly independent states have strongly discouraged Russian. It has clung to its role as the language of common intercourse throughout the region. In the face of nationalism and shifting political alliances throughout the CIS, this status may decline in the future. In the twentieth century, it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact, and in other countries influenced by the USSR. Russian is also spoken in Israel by 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizable Russian-speaking communities (totalling in the hundreds of thousands) also exist in North America, and, to a lesser extent, in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of emigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. The descendants of the Russian emigrés, however, have tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian: {| align=center cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 border=0\n|-\n!Source\n!Native speakers\n!Native Rank\n!Total speakers\n!Total rank\n|-\n|G. Weber, "Top Languages",
Language Monthly, 3: 12-18, 1997, ISSN 1369-9733||160,000,000||7||285,000,000||4\n|-\n|SIL Ethnologue||167,000,000||7||277,000,000||5\n|-\n|} \n

Official status

\nRussian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Dialects

\nDespite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exists in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern," with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. The northern dialects typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final /t/ and aspirate the /g/ into /h/. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dahl compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка /dial'ektolog'itSesk'ij atlas russkovo jaz1ka/), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages

\nRussenorsk is a pidgin language combining Russian and Norwegian. Russian sign language allows deaf people to communicate.

Writing system

Alphabet

Main article: Russian alphabet Russian is written using a modern version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with SAMPA values for each letter's typical sound: {| align=center cellpadding=4 style="font-size:large; text-align:center;"\n|-\n|А
/a/||Б
/b/||В
/v/||Г
/g/||Д
/d/||Е
/je/||Ё
/jo/||Ж
/Z/||З
/z/||И
/i/||Й
/j/\n|-\n|К
/k/||Л
/l/||М
/m/||Н
/n/||О
/o/||П
/p/||Р
/r/||С
/s/||Т
/t/||У
/u/||Ф
/f/\n|-\n|Х
/x/||Ц
/ts/||Ч
/tS'/||Ш
/S/||Щ
/S'/||Ъ
//||Ы
/1/||Ь
/'/||Э
/E/||Ю
/ju/||Я
/ja/\n|}

Orthography

Main article: Russian orthography Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance between phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted.\n \nThe punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

Sounds

Vowels

\nThe pronunciation of Russian vowels greatly depends on the dialect. Standard speech pronounces vowels clearly only under stress. In the unstressed (weak) position, vowels are reduced to a neutral vowel, more or less a schwa /@/. This reduction is weakest in the syllable immediately before the one stressed. Russian orthography does not reflect vowel reduction. The modern standard language has five or six non-allophonic vowels: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n|а — я||/a/ — /ja/ or /'a/\n|-\n|э — е||/e/ — /je/ or /'e/\n|-\n|ы — и||/1/ or /i/ — /'i/ or /i/ (see below)\n|-\n|o — ё||/o/ — /jo/ or /'o/\n|-\n|у — ю||/u/ — /ju/ or /'u/\n|} The second letter in each row denotes the iotated (when initial) or palatalizing sound (see consonants below). Opinions diverge on whether the ы and и (/1/ and /i/) are allophonic. The two sounds tend to merge when unstressed. The stressed /1/ is more tense than the stressed /i/, and the position of the tongue differs. The tongue is neutrally flat for /1/, and slightly raised (without tension) for /i/.

Consonants

Hard and soft consonants Russian consonants are of two types: hard (твёрдый /tv'ord1j/) and soft (мягкий /m'axk'ij/). The hard pronunciation is the basic one, and is achieved in general by keeping the tongue as low as possible. For the soft pronunciation or palatalization, the mouth is slightly more open in a horizontal slit, and the tongue is drawn slightly back, almost as though to pronounce an /i:/ that is not there. Consonants with both hard and soft varieties The consonants б /b/, в /v/, г /g/, д /d/, ж /Z/, з /z/, к /k/, л /l/, м /m/, н /n/, п /p/, р /p/, с /s/, т/t/, ф /f/, х /x/ have both a hard and a soft pronunciation. Except for ж /Z/, they are made soft:\n* if followed by a soft sign ь;\n* always before the vowels я /'a/ or /ja/, ё /'o/ or /jo/, и /'i/, ю /'u/ or /ju/, which are then pronounced as standard uniotated а /a/, о /o/, и /i/, у /u/ (the initial и /i/ has not been iotated since the nineteenth century);\n* almost always before the vowel е /'e/ or /je/, which is then pronounced as э /e/ or /E/. In words borrowed from other languages, it is often the case that е does not soften the preceding consonant at first, but does so after the foreign word has been fully adopted into Russian. For example, Fr/E chauffeur > R шофер; early twentieth century pronunciation /Soffe´r/, modern pronunciation шофёр, /Sof'o´r/. The consonant ж is soft if doubled in writing to жж (as in жжёшь /Z'oS/ "you (sg) burn"). If is not doubled, nor made soft by consonant assimilation (see below), it is soft in the single word жюри /Z'uri´/ "jury". In feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms, a soft sign ь is written by historical tradition after the ж /Z/ at the end of the word, but there is no softening: рожь /roZ/ "rye". Consonants that are always either hard or soft The consonant ш /S/ is always hard. In writing, the soft sign ь historically follows ш for feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms at the end of the word. The consonants щ /S'/ and ч /tS'/ are always soft. In writing, the soft sign ь historically follows them for feminine nouns and in some inflexional forms at the end of the word. Supplementary notes The hard х /kh/ is a guttural similar to the German [ch] in ach. The soft хь /C/ is a soft sibilant similar to the German soft [ch] in ich. The hard л /l/, т /t/, and д /d/ are dental, with the tongue kept much lower than for the English /l/, /t/, /d/. The soft ль /l'/, ть /t'/, and дь /d'/ are much closer to the English /l/, /t/, /d/ than the hard Russian /l/, /t/, /d/. Both the hard р /r/ and the soft рь /r'/ are trilled. The hard ж /Z/ is similar to the English [s] in pleasure, but is harder (the tongue is lower). The soft жж /Z'/ is close to the English [s] in pleasure. The hard ш/S/ is similar to the English [sh] in ship, but is considerably harder. The soft щ /S'/ is close to the English [sh] in ship, but is somewhat softer. \nAssimilation of consonants In continuous speech, the pronunciation of consonants shows systematic transformations not reflected in the Russian orthography:\n* Voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts lose their voicing at the end of a word: строганов /stroganof/.\n* Voiceless consonants with voiced counterparts become voiced before voiced consonants: футбол /fudbol/ "soccer/football".\n* Similarly, voiced consonants with voiceless counterparts become voiceless before voiceless consonants:водка /votka/ "vodka".\n* Consonants assimiliate at morphemic boundaries. For example, с /s/ + ч /tS'/ > [*щ] /S'/: счастье /S'ast'je/ "happiness, fortune".\n* Certain clusters of consonants assimilate in individual cases even if not at morphemic boundaries. For example, sometimes з /z/ + ж /Z/ > [*жж] /Z'/: езжу /jeZ'u/ "I go, ride, travel". The historic transformation of /g/ into /v/ in the genitive case (and also the accusative for animate entities) of masculine singular adjectives and pronouns is not reflected in the modern Russian orthography: его /jevo/ his, him; белого /b'elovo/ "(of the) white"; синего /s'in'evo/ "(of the) blue".

Stress

\nStress, rather than pitch or length, lexically determines Russian accentuation. The stress may fall on any syllable, and may shift within an inflexional paradigm: дóма /dóma/, of the house; домá /domá/, houses.

Phonology

\nThe Moscow standard features:\n* A moderate amount of modulation in pitch, though pitch is not a lexical differentiator.\n* Slight drawling of stressed vowels and slurred leveling of the unstressed vowels to an /a/ ("akanye" аканье), a schwa /@/, or a iotated schwa /j@/ or /'@/. The vowels in syllables immediately before the stressed syllable are slurred less than the others.\n* an affection for sibilant consonants in some positions. In particular, the pronunciation of [ч] /tS/ approaches that of [ш] /S/ in a number of fundamental words. For example, что /tSto/ ("what") is pronounced што /Sto/, etc. The pronunciation /tSto/ is a hallmark of old St. Petersburg, but, though not yet dead, is in decline.\n* a tendency to soften consonants before [е] in borrowed words.\n* simplification of many consonant clusters: здравствуйте/zdrá:stvujt'e/ "hello", not */zdrávstvujt'e/. In contrast, the pronunciation in St. Petersburg has traditionally been more staccato, monotonic, and more faithful to the written appearance of native words and to the original pronunciation of borrowed ones. The regions show a very large number of variations. As in many other languages, mass communications have considerably levelled the regional differences.

Historical sound changes

Like all Slavic languages, Russian was originally a language of open syllables. All syllables ended in vowels (as in Japanese), and consonant clusters, in far lesser variety than today, existed only at the start of a syllable. By the time of the earliest records, Old Russian already showed characteristic divergences from Common Slavonic. Major features of this stage include:

• The loss of the nasal vowels (the yuses of ancient Cyrillic), which had themselves developed from Indo-European [-en-]/[-an-]/[-on-] before a consonant—usually dental or labial—and at word boundaries. Non-nasalized vowels took their place, possibly iotated or with palatalization of the preceding consonant: IE *’soⁿti, Lat sunt, ComSl *sõtĭ, OCS сть, R суть /sut'/ "they are". \n*A tendency for greater maintenance of intermediate ancient [-s-], [-k-], etc., than in other Slavic languages, the so-called incomplete second and third palatalizations: R ноги /nog'i/ Uk нозі /noz'i/ "legs".\n*Full-voicing (полногласие /polnoglas'ije/), or the addition of vowels on either side of /l/ and /r/ between two consonants. Church Slavonic influence has made it less felt in Russian than in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian: R воробей /vorob'ej/, OCS врабіи /vrabii/ "sparrow"; R Владимир /vlad'im'ir/, Uk Володимір /volodim'ir/ "Vladimir"/"Volodymir".

Major phonological processes in the last thousand years have included:

• The failure of the Slavonic open-syllable requirement, achieved in part through the loss of the ultra-short vowels, the so-called fall of the yers, which alternately lengthened and dropped: OR объ мьн /obŭ mĭně/ > R обо мне /obo mn'e/ "about me"; OR сънъ /sŭnŭ/ > R сон /son/ "sleep", cognate with Lat. somnus.\n*The loss of the yers has led to a much greater variety of consonant clusters, with attendant voicing and/or devoicing in the assimilation: OR къд /kŭdě/ > R где /gd'e/ "where".\n*The development of OR /ě/ into /(j)e/, as seen above.\n*The development of /e/ into /o/ under stress: OR семенъ /semenŭ/ "seed" (gen. pl.) > R семён /s'em'on/ "seed" (gen. pl.).\n*A greater variety of (non-allophonic) palatalized consonants, and the systematic palatalization of consonants before /e/.

Grammar

Main article: Russian grammar NOTE. In the discussion below, various terms are used in the meaning they have in the standard Russian discussions of historical grammar. In particular, aorist, imperfect, etc. are considered verbal tenses rather than aspects, because ancient examples of them are attested for both perfective and imperfective verbs. Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place.

Nouns

\nNominal declension is subject to six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and locative or prepositional), in two numbers (singular and plural), and obeying absolutely grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). A vocative form is preserved for words and names of religious import, as Боже/boZE/ "God", etc. The adjectives, pronouns, and the first two cardinal numbers further vary by gender. Old Russian also had a third number, the dual, but except for its use in the nominative and accusative cases with the number two (два стула/dva stula/, "two chairs", recategorized today as a genitive singular), it has been lost.

Verbs

Verbal conjugation is subject to three persons in two numbers and two simple tenses (present/future and past), with periphrastic forms for the future and subjunctive. There are two voices, active and middle/passive, which is costructed by the addition of a reflexive enclitic -ся/сь/-s'a/-s'/ to the active form. An interesting feature is that the past tense is actually made to agree in gender with the subject, for it is the participle in an originally periphrastic perfect tense formed with the present of быть /b1t'/,"to be", which is now omitted except for archaic effect (откуда есть пошла русская земля/otkuda jest' poSla russkaja zeml'a/, "whence is come the Russian land", a slight modernization of the opening of the Primary Chronicle). Verbal inflection today is considerably simpler than in Old Russian. The ancient aorist, imperfect, and (periphrastic) pluperfect tenses have been lost, though the aorist sporadically occurs in secular literature as late as the second half of the eighteenth century, and survives as an odd form in direct narration (а он пойди да скажи/a on pojdi da skaZ1/, etc., exactly equivalent to the English colloquial "so he goes and says"), recategorized as a usage of the imperative. The loss of three of the former six tenses has been offset by the development, as in other Slavic languages, of verbal aspect. Verbs come in pairs, one with imperfective or continuous connotation, the other with perfective or completed, usually formed with a (prepositional) prefix, but occasionally using a different root. The present tense of the verb быть/b1t'/, "to be", is today normally used only in the third-person singular, and, very formally, in the third person plural. As late as the nineteenth century, the full conjugation, which today is used only for special effect, was more natural: forms occur in the Synodal Bible, in Dostoevsky and in the bylinas (былины/b1l'in1/) or oral folk-epics, which were transcribed at that time. The paradigm shows as well as anything else the Indo-European affinity of Russian: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n!English\n!Russian\n!SAMPA\n!Latin\n|-\n|"I am"||есмь||/jesm'/||sum\n|-\n|"thou art"||еси||/jesi/||es\n|-\n|"he, she, it is"||есть||/jest'/||est\n|-\n|"we are"||есмы||/jesm1/||sumus\n|-\n|"you are"||есте||/jest'e/||estis\n|-\n|"they are"||суть||/sut'/||sunt\n|}\n

Word formation

Russian has on hand a set of prefixes, prepositional and adverbial in nature, as well as diminutive, augmentative, and frequentative suffixes and infixes. All of these can be stacked one upon the other, to produce multiple derivatives of a given word. Participles and other inflexional forms may also have a special connotation. For example: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n|мысль||/m1sl'/||"thought"\n|-\n|мыслишка||/m1sl'iSka/||"a petty or cute thought"\n|-\n|мыслище||/m1sl'iS'e/||"a thought of fundamental import"\n|-\n|мысление||/m1sl'en'je/||"thought; abstract thinking, ratiocination"\n|-\n|мыслить||/m1sl'it'/||"to think (as to cogitate)"\n|-\n|смысл||/sm1sl/||"meaning"\n|-\n|осмыслить||/osm1sl/it'/|| "to comprehend; to rationalize"\n|-\n|переосмыслить||/p'er'eosm1sl'it'/||"to reassess"\n|-\n|переосмысливать||/p'er'eosm1sl'ivat'/||"to be in the process of reassessing (something)"\n|-\n|переосмысливаемый||/p'er'eosm1sl'ivajem1j/||"(something) in the process of being considered in a new light"\n|-\n|бессмыслица||/b'essm1sl'itsa/||"nonsense"\n|-\n|обессмыслить||/ob'essm1sl'it'/||"to render meaningless"\n|-\n|бессмысленный||/b'essm1sl'enn1j/||"meaningless"\n|-\n|обессмысленный||/ob'essm1sl'enn1j/||"rendered meaningless"\n|-\n|необессмысленный''||/n'eob'essm1sl'enn1j/||"not yet rendered meaningless"\n|} Russian has also proved friendly to agglutinative compounds. As an extreme case: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n|металлоломообеспечение||/m'etallolomoob'esp'etS'en'je/||"provision of scrap iron"\n|-\n|металлоломообеспеченный||/m'etallolomoob'esp'etS'enn1j/||"well supplied with scrap iron"\n|} Purists (as Ushakov in the preface to his dictionary) frown on such words. But here is the name of a street in St. Petersburg: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n|Каменноостровский проспект||/kamennoostrovsk'ij prosp'ekt/||"Stone Island Avenue"\n|} Some linguists have suggested that Russian agglutination stems from Church Slavonic. In the twentieth century, abbreviated components appeared in the compound: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n|управдом||/upravdom/=управляющий домом||/upravl'ajuS'ij domom/||"residence manager"\n|}

Syntax

The basic word order, both in conversation and the written language, is subject-verb-object. Because the relations are marked by declension, however, a certain latitude is allowed, and all the permutations can be used. Primary emphasis tends to be initial, with a slightly weaker emphasis at the end. Negation Unlike English, Latin, and various other languages, Russian allows multiple negatives, as in никто никогда никому ничего не прощает /n'ikto n'ikogda n'ikomu n'itS'evo n'e proS'ajet/ "No-one ever forgives anything to anyone" (literally, "no-one never to no-one nothing not forgives"). Coordination Common coordinating conjunctions include:\n* и /i/ "and", complemental;\n* а /a/ "and", oppositional, tending to "but";\n* но /no/ "but";\n* ибо /ibo/ "for". The distinction between и and а is important. The и implies a following complemental state that does not oppose the antecedent. The а implies a following state that acts in opposition to the antecedent, but more weakly than но "but". , 1790's]] {| cellpadding=4 align=center\n|-\n|они уехали,
и мы уезжаем||/on'i ujexal'i
i m1 ujeZ'ajem/||they have departed
and we are departing\n|-\n|они уехали,
а мы уезжаем||/on'i ujexali
a m1 ujeZ'ajem/||they have departed,
while (but) we are (still) departing\n|-\n|они уехали,
но мы приезжаем||/on'i ujexal'i
no m1 pr'ijeZ'ajem/||they have departed,
but we are arriving\n|} \nThe distinction between и and а developed after the mediaeval period; originally, и and а were closer in meaning. The unpunctuated ending of the Song of Igor illustrates the potential confusion. The final five words in modern spelling, князьям слава а дружине аминь /knaz'jam slava a druZine am'in'/ can be understood either as "Glory to the princes and to their host! Amen." or "Glory to the princes, and amen (R.I.P.) to their troops". Although majority opinion is definitely with the first imterpretation, there is no full consensus. The psychological difference between the two is quite obvious. Subordination Subordinating conjuctions, adverbs, or adverbial phrases include:\n* если /jesl'i/ "if";\n* потому что /potomu Sto/, так как /tak kak/ "because"\n* чтобы /Stob1/ "in order that"\n* после того, как /posl'e tovo kak/ "after"\n* хотя /xot'a/ "alhough" In general, there are fewer subordinate clauses than in English, because the participles (причастие /pr'itSas't'je/) and adverbial participles (деепричастие /d'ejepr'itSas't'je/)) often take the place of a relative pronoun/verb combination. For example: {| cellpadding=4 align=center\n|-\n|Вот человек,
потерявший надежду.||/vot tS'elov'ek
pot'er'avSij nad'eZdu/||Here (is) a man
who has lost (all) hope.
[lit. having lost hope]\n|-\n|Гуляя по городу, всегда
останавливаюсь у Ростральных колонн.||/gul'aja po gorodu vs'egda
ostanavl'ivajus' u rostral'n1x kolonn/||When I go for a walk in the city, I always
pause by the Rostral Columns.
[lit. Walking in the city, I...]\n|} Absolute construction Despite the inflexional nature of Russian there is no equivalent in the modern language to the English nominative absolute or the Latin ablative absolute contruction. The old language had an absolute construction, with the noun put into the dative. Like so many other archaisms, it is retained in Church Slavonic. Among the last known examples in literary Russian occurs in Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву /put'eSestv'ije iz p'et'erburga v moskvu/), 1790:\n* Едущу мне из Едрова, Анюта из мысли моей не выходила. /jeduS'u mn'e iz jedrova, an'uta iz m1sl'i mojej n'e v1xod'ila/ "As I was leaving Yedrovo village, I could not stop thinking about Aniuta."

Vocabulary

See the History section for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows: \n{| align="center" cellpadding="4" style="text-align:left"\n|-\n! Work\n! Year\n! Words\n! Notes\n|-\n|Academic dictionary, I Ed.||1789-1794||43,257||Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary\n|-\n|Academic dictionary, II Ed||1806-1822||51,388||Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian vocabulary\n|-\n|Pushkin opus||1810-1837||21,197||-\n|-\n|Academic dictionary, III Ed.||1847||114,749||Russian and Church Slavonic with Old Russian vocabulary\n|-\n|Dahl's dictionary||1880-1882||195,844||44,000entries lexically grouped; attempt to catalogue the full vernacular language, includes some properly Ukrainian and Belarusian words\n|-\n|Ushakov's dictionary||1934-1940||85,289||Current language with some archaisms\n|-\n|Academic dictionary||1950-1965||120,480||full dictionary of the "Modern language"\n|-\n|Ozhegov's dictionary||1991||61,458||More or less then-current language\n|-\n|Lopatin's dictionary||2000||c.160,000||Orthographic, current language\n|} Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain approximately 350,000 to 500,000 words.

The language of abuse and invective

Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more liberal-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань /artistitS'eskaja rugan'/) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out.\nThe ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат /tr'oxEtaZn1j mat/). It is interesting that the modern obscenities appear to have taken on their meaning in the eighteenth century, as euphemisms for words since lost. For example, the word блядь /bl'ad'/ ("whore"), is today considered extraordinarily offensive. It anciently meant "error, sin", as a concept in the high style, occurs in scripture in that sense, and may perhaps be heard during the liturgy.

Proverbs

Main article: List of Russian proverbs The spoken language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица/poslov'itsa/) and set phrases (поговоркa/pogovorka/). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth. Many have entered the literature, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source. Unlike English, in which many clichés and sayings appear to have gone from the literary to the vernacular, the tendency in Russian has been in the other direction. The received opinion is that the proverbs and set phrases show something of the fatalistic nature of the people. Here are a few of them:

• в тридевятом царстве /v trid'ev'atom tsartsv'e/ "in the twenty-seventh kingdom" = "somewhere over the rainbow" (applied by Goncharov when Putiatin's expedition entered Nagasaki harbour in 1853.)\n*со времён царя Гороха /so vrem'on tsar'a goroxa/ "since the times of Tsar Green-pea" = "since time immemorial"\n*ни к селу, ни к городу /ni k s'elu, ni k gorodu/ "neither town nor city" = "of no use or relevance whatsoever"\n*до Бога высоко, до Царя далеко /do boga v1soko, do tsar'a dal'eko/ "God is up high, the Tsar is far away"\n*курица не птица, баба не человек /kuritsa n'e ptitsa, baba n'e tS'elov'ek/ "A chicken isn't a bird, a woman is not a human being"\n*голь на выдумку хитра /gol' na v1dumku Citra/ "bareness is full of cunning" = "necessity is the mother of invention"\n*хоть кол на голове теши /xot' kol na golov'e teS1/ "even if you whittled a spike on his head..." (said of someone ultimately stubborn or recalcitrant)\n*сделал дело, гуляй смело /sd'elal delo, gul'aj sm'elo/ "task accomplished, disport bravely"

History

Main article for literature : Russian literature Main article for orthographic history : Reforms of Russian orthography NOTE. In the following sections, all examples of vocabulary are given in their modern spelling.

Origins

The question of the ethnic origins of the modern Russians is charged with politics and revanchism. The very name Russia (Россия/ross'ija/), or, in its older form, Rus (Русь/rus'/), does not have an uncontested etymology. Nevertheless, judging by the historical records, by approximately 900 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects that had emerged following the breakup of Common Slavonic in approximately the middle third of the first millennium. Whether or not this ethnic group is autochthonous is a matter of scientific debate. So too are the degrees and timelines of its mixing or coalescence with other tribes that have shared the geographical space or have come into it. But the history proper of Russia, its dominant people, and their language begins more or less at the turn of the tenth century C.E. Prior tradition, as recognized already by the Russian historian Karamzin (c. 1800), is dark, or, at least, not well preserved. There are references, in Arab and Byzantine sources, that pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia used some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaelogical finds and a corroboration by the tenth-century monk Khrabr that ancient Slavs wrote in "strokes and incisions" (черты и резы/tSert1 i r'ez1/), the exact nature of this system is not known. Recent amateur investigations in Russia have proposed that this was a syllabic system that may have survived, possibly into the twentieth century, in cryptography (тайнопись/tajnop'is'/), but scholars have reached no consensus beyond undecidability. The Book of Veles, said to have been found during the Russian civil war and to have disappeared in WWII, would, if genuine, provide about the only surviving pre-Christian Russian literary monument. Since the account of its find and eventual fate (several photographs are claimed to survive) has not been confirmed, and its language deviates from the accepted reconstruction, most professional linguists have so far dismissed the book's authenticity.

The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)

\nThe political unification of this region into the state called Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, accurred approximately a century before the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the establishment of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. It is known, however, that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic. {| align="center" cellpadding=4\n|-\n|краткий||/kratk'ij/||OCS||"brief"\n|-\n|короткий||/korotk'ij/||ESl||"short"\n|-\n|вивлиофика||/v'ivl'iof'ika/||Gr bibliotheke via OCS||"library" (archaic form)\n|-\n|правописание||/pravop'isan'je/||Gr orthographe via OCS calque правыи:
/prav1i/=orthos "correct", писати/p'isat'i/=grapho "write"||"spelling, orthography"\n|} Although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The samples of birch-bark writing excavated in Novgorod have provided crucial information about the pure tenth-century vernacular in North-West Russia, almost entirely free of church influence. \nSurviving literary monuments from this period include the Русская правда/russkaja pravda/, the legal code of Yaroslav the Wise (1072), and a corpus of hagiography and homily, which are usually included in a survey of Russian because characteristic divergences from Old Church Slavonic are already evident.

Feudal breakup, the Vladimir period, Mongol hegemony (12th-14th centuries)

\nDialectal differentiation in the language spoken by the Eastern Slavs is apparent from the earliest period, but accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' and the incorporation of its western regions into Lithuanian and Polish states after periods of local independence, and was assisted by the conquest of its eastern regions by the Mongols in the twelth century. Nonetheless, the vernacular language of the conquered remained firmly Slavic. The borrowings from the language of the distant hegemons relate mostly to commerce and the military: {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n| товар || /tovar/ || Turk.-Altaic || "commercial goods"\n|-\n| лошадь || /loSad'/ || Turk.-Altaic || "horse" \n|} The modern phonological system of Russian was established during this period after the fall of the yers (see Historical phonology). Literary monuments from this period include the epic Song of Igor (Слово о полку игореве /slovo o polku igor'ev'e/) and the earliest surviving manuscript of the Primary Chronicle (Повесть временных лет /pov'est' vrem'enn1x l'et/), the Laurentian codex (Лаврентьевский список /lavr'ent'jevskij sp'isok/) of 1377.

The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)

After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" (татарское иго /tataskoje igo/) in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. A scientific consensus exists that Russian and Ukrainian had definitely become distinct by this time at the latest (according to some linguists and historians, even earlier). The official language in Russia remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotritsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. There was borrowing of vocabulary from Polish, and, though it, from German and other Western European languages. At the same time, a number of words of native (by overall consent of the Russian etymologists) coinage or adaptation appeared, at times replacing or supplementing the inherited Indo-European/Common Slavonic vocabulary. {| align=center cellpadding=4 \n|-\n| глаз || /glaz/ || R; supplements ComSl око /oko/ = Lat oculus = E eye || "eye"\n|-\n| жупан || /Zupan/ || P župan || "a kind of cloak"\n|-\n| брак || /brak/ || G Brack || "a reject product"\n|} Much annalistic, hagiographic, and poetic material survives from the early Muscovite period. Nonetheless, a significant amount of philosophic and secular literature is known to have been destroyed after being proclaimed heretical. The material following the election of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 following the Time of Troubles is rather more complete. Modern Russian literature is considered to have begun in the seventeenth century, with the autobiography of Avvakum and a corpus of chronique scandaleuse short stories from Moscow.

Empire (18th-19th centuries)

The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. Most of the modern naval vocabulary, for example, is of Dutch origin. Latin, French, and German words entered Russian for the intellectual categories of the Age of Enlightenment. Greek words already in the language through Church Slavonic were refashioned to reflect post-Renaissance European rather than Byzantine pronunciation. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n| мачта || /matSta/ || D mast || "mast"\n|-\n| интерес || /int'eres/ || G Interesse/Fr interêt || "interest"\n|-\n| библиотека || /b'ibl'iot'eka/ || Gr bibliotheke via Fr. bibliothèque || "library" (modern form) \n|} At the same time, there began explicit attempts to fashion a modern literary language as a compromise between Church Slavonic, the native vernacular, and the style of Western Europe. The writers Lomonosov, Derzhavin, and Karamzin made notable efforts in this respect, but, as per the received notion, the final synthesis belongs Pushkin and his contemporaries in the first third of the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, the standard language assumed its modern form; literature flourished. Spurred perhaps by the so-called Slavophilism, some Westernisms (виктория /v'iktorija/ > победа /pob'eda/, "victory") fashionable during the eighteenth century now passed out of use, and formerly vernacular or dialectal strata entered the literature as the "speech of the people". Borrowings of political, scientific and technical terminology continued. By about 1900, commerce and fashion ensured the first wave of mass adoptions from English. {| align=center cellpadding=4\n|-\n| социализм || /sots'ializm/ || Intl/G Sozialismus || "socialism"\n|-\n| конституция || /konst'itutsija/ || Intl/Lat constitutio || "constitution"\n|-\n| антимония || /ant'imonija/ || Gk antinomia,
metathesis || "useless debate, argument or quarrel" \n|-\n| брекфаст || /brekfast/
(note unpalatalized /bre-/ in 19th c. || E || "breakfast" (dead fashionable slang)\n|-\n| прейскурант || /pr'ejskurant/
(the original unpalatalized pronunciation of /pre-/ is still heard) || G Preiskurant/
Fr prix-courant || "price list"\n|}

Soviet period and beyond (20th century)

\nThe political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Reformed spelling, the new political terminology, and the abandonment of the effusive formulae of politeness characteristic of the pre-Revolutionary upper classes prompted dire statements from members of the emigré intelligentsia that Russian was becoming debased. But the authoritarian nature of the regime, the system of schooling it provided from the 1930's, and not least the often unexpressed yearning among the literati for the former days ensured a fairly static maintenance of Russian into the 1980's. Indeed, while literacy became nearly universal, dialectal differentiation declined, expecially in matters of vocabulary: schooling and mass communications ensured a common denominator. Political circumstances and the undoubted accomplishments of the superpower in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, most strongly felt during the middle third of the twentieth century. {| align=center cellpadding=4 style="text-align:left"\n|-\n| большевик || /bol'Sev'ik/ || R || "Bolshevik" (lit. "person of the majority",
after the events of the 1903 Party congress)\n|-\n| Комсомол || /komsomol/ || Abbreviated agglutination:
Союз коммунистической молодёжи
/sojuz kommun'ist'itS'eskoj molod'oZ1/ || "Communist Youth League"\n|-\n| рабфак || /rabfak/ || Abbreviated agglutination:
рабочий факультет
/rabotS'ij fakul't'et/