   #copyright

Russian language

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   Russian
   Русский язык Russkiy yazyk
   Spoken in: Russia, former Soviet republics, Mongolia, Svalbard, and
   Israel.
   Total speakers: primary language: about 145 million
   secondary language: 110 million (1999 WA, 2000 WCD)
   Ranking: 8 (native)
   Language family: Indo-European
     Balto-Slavic
      Slavic
       East Slavic
       Russian
   Writing system: Cyrillic alphabet
   Official status
   Official language of: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, United
   Nations, Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Gagauzia.
   Regulated by: Russian Academy of Sciences
   Language codes
   ISO 639-1: ru
   ISO 639-2: rus
   ISO/FDIS 639-3: rus

               Countries of the world where Russian is spoken.


   Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA
   chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

   Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkiy yazyk, [ˈru.skʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]
   listen ) is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia and the most
   widespread of the Slavonic languages.

   Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages. Within the
   Slavic branch, Russian is one of three living members of the East
   Slavic group, the other two being Belarusian and Ukrainian.

   Written examples of East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century
   onwards. While Russian preserves much of East Slavonic
   synthetic-inflectional structure and a Common Slavonic word base,
   modern Russian exhibits a large stock of borrowed international
   vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great
   political importance in the 20th century, Russian 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 IPA.

Classification

   Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the
   point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are
   Ukrainian and Belarusian, the other two national languages in the East
   Slavic group. (Some academics also consider Rusyn an East Slavic
   language; others consider Rusyn just a dialect.) In many places in
   Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in
   certain areas traditional bilinguism resulted in language mixture, e.g.
   Surzhik in central Ukraine.

   The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some
   extent, inflections and literary style of Russian have been heavily
   influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of
   the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian
   Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in
   form to the modern Bulgarian language than to Ukrainian or Belarusian.
   However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various
   dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the
   East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly
   different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of
   the Russian language.

   Russian phonology and syntax (especially in northern dialects) have
   also been influenced to some extent by the numerous Finnic languages of
   the Finno-Ugric subfamily: Merya, Moksha, Muromian, the language of the
   Meshchera, Veps etc. These languages, some of them now extinct, used to
   be spoken right in the centre and in the north of what is now the
   European part of Russia. They came in contact with Eastern Slavic as
   far back as the early Middle Ages and eventually served as substratum
   for the modern Russian language. The Russian dialects spoken north,
   north-east and north-west of Moscow have a considerable number of words
   of Finno-Ugric origin.

   Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of
   Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German,
   and English. Modern Russian also has a considerable number of words
   adopted from Tatar and some other Turkic languages.

   According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California,
   Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning
   difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 780
   hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. It is
   also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a "hard
   target" language, due to both its difficulty to master for English
   speakers as well as due to its critical role in American foreign
   policy.

Geographic distribution

   Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, 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 and superior
   status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991,
   several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native
   languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian,
   though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse
   throughout the region has continued.

   In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the
   classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where
   more than one-third of the population is Russian-speaking, consisting
   mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of
   the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine). Similarly, in Estonia, the
   Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants constitute
   about one quarter of the country's current population.

   A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been
   assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent
   less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. Nevertheless,
   around 80% of the population of the Baltic states are able to hold a
   conversation in Russian and almost all have at least some familiarity
   with the most basic spoken and written phrases. The Russian occupation
   of Finland in 1809-1918, however, has left few Russian speakers to
   Finland. There are 33400 Russian speakers in Finland, amounting to 0.6%
   of the population. 5000 (0.1%) of them are late 19th century and 20th
   century immigrants, and the rest are recent immigrants, who have
   arrived in the 90's and later.

   In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the
   members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be
   satellites of the USSR. In particular, these countries include Poland,
   Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Albania.
   However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because
   Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and to a
   lesser extent still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos,
   Vietnam, and Mongolia due to Soviet influence. Russian is still used as
   a lingua franca in Afghanistan by a few tribes. It was also taught as
   the mandatory foreign language requisite in the People's Republic of
   China before the Sino-Soviet Split.

   Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish
   immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli
   press and websites regularly publish material in Russian.

   Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America,
   especially in large urban centers of the U.S. and Canada such as New
   York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto,
   Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, and the Cleveland suburb of Richmond
   Heights. In the former two Russian-speaking groups total over half a
   million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and
   live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation
   of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It is
   important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are
   ethnic Russians. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the
   overwhelming majority of Russophones in North America were
   Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the
   former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the
   United States 2000 Census, Russian is the primary language spoken in
   the homes of over 700,000 individuals living in the United States.

   Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These
   have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the
   twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, the
   United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Brazil and
   Turkey have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million
   people.

   Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of
   Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated
   after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment.
   But many are well-off Russian families acquiring property and getting
   an education.

   Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the
   tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border
   is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many
   of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and also
   have access to Russian websites and TV channels.

   Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:

        Source Native speakers Native Rank Total speakers Total rank
                         G. Weber, "Top Languages",
                              Language Monthly,
         3: 12-18, 1997, ISSN 1369-9733 160,000,000 8 285,000,000 5
      World Almanac (1999) 145,000,000 8          (2005) 275,000,000 5
       SIL (2000 WCD) 145,000,000 8 255,000,000 5-6 (tied with Arabic)
                   CIA World Factbook (2005) 160,000,000 8

Official status

   Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of
   Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and
   the unrecognized Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is one of
   the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian
   is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian
   as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet
   republics.

   97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in
   Kazakhstan, 25% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in
   Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia and 2% in Armenia and Tajikistan receive
   their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding
   percentage of ethnic Russians is 78% in Russia, 10% in Belarus, 26% in
   Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in
   Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia and less than 1% in both Armenia and
   Tajikistan.

   Russian-language schooling is also available in Latvia, Estonia and
   Lithuania, despite the government attempts to reduce the number of
   subjects taught in Russian.

   Russian has co-official status alongside Romanian in seven Romanian
   communes in Tulcea and Constanţa counties. In these localities,
   Russian-speaking Lipovans, who are a recognized ethnic minority, make
   up more than 20% of the population. Thus, according to Romania's
   minority rights law, education, signage and access to public
   administration and the justice system are provided in Russian,
   alongside Romanian.

Dialects

   Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a
   number of dialects exist 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. Also cf. Moscow pronunciation of "-чн-", e.g. булошная
   (buloshnaya - bakery) instead of булочная (bulochnaya).

   The northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River
   typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly (the phenomenon called
   okanye оканье). East of Moscow, particularly in Ryazan Region,
   unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a
   stressed syllabus are not reduced to [ɪ] (unlike in the Moscow dialect)
   and are instead pronounced as /a/ in such positions (e.g. несли is
   pronounced as [nʲasˈlʲi], not as [nʲisˈlʲi]) - this is called yakanye
   яканье; many southern dialects palatalize the final /t/ in 3rd person
   forms of verbs and debuccalize the /g/ into [ɦ]. However, in certain
   areas south of Moscow, e.g. in and around Tula, /g/ is pronounced as in
   the Moscow and northern dialects unless it precedes a voiceless plosive
   or a silent pause. In this position /g/ is debuccalized and devoiced to
   the fricative [x], e.g. друг [drux] (in Moscow's dialect, only Бог
   [box], лёгкий [lʲoxʲkʲij], мягкий [ˈmʲaxʲkʲɪj] and some derivatives
   follow this rule). Some of these features (e.g. the debuccalized /g/
   and palatalized final /t/ in 3rd person forms of verbs) are also
   present in modern Ukrainian, indicating either a linguistic continuum
   or strong influence one way or the other.

   The town of Velikiy Novgorod has historically displayed a feature
   called chokanye/tsokanye (чоканье/цоканье), where /ʨ/ and /ʦ/ were
   confused (this is thought to be due to influence from Finnish, which
   doesn't distinguish these sounds). So, цапля ("heron") has been
   recorded as 'чапля'. Also, the second palatalization of velars did not
   occur there, so the so-called ě² (from the Proto-Slavonic diphthong
   *ai) did not cause /k, g, x/ to shift to /ʦ, ʣ, s/; therefore where
   Standard Russian has цепь ("chain"), the form кепь kepʲ is attested in
   earlier texts.

   Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the
   eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal 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 [dʲʌʌˌlʲɛktəlʌˈgʲiʨɪskʲɪj
   ˈatləs ˈruskəvə jɪzɨˈka]), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989,
   after four decades of preparatory work.

   The standard language is based on (but not identical to) the Moscow
   dialect.

Derived languages

     * Fenya, a criminal argot of ancient origin, with Russian grammar,
       but with distinct vocabulary.
     * Surzhyk is a language with Russian and Ukrainian features, spoken
       in some rural areas of Ukraine
     * Trasianka is a language with Russian and Belorusian features used
       by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
     * Quelia, a pseudo pidgin of German and Russian.
     * Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with mostly Russian
       vocabulary and mostly Norwegian grammar, used for communication
       between Russians and Norwegian traders in the Pomor trade in
       Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula.
     * Runglish, Russian-English pidgin. This word is also used by English
       speakers to describe the way in which Russians attempt to speak
       English using Russian morphology and/or syntax.

Writing system

Alphabet

   Meletius Smotrytsky presented the Cyrillic alphabet in this 1619
   publication describing the "Slavonic" language.
   Enlarge
   Meletius Smotrytsky presented the Cyrillic alphabet in this 1619
   publication describing the "Slavonic" language.

   Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица)
   alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.

   The following table gives their upper case forms, along with IPA values
   for each letter's typical sound:

             А
             /a/ Б
                 /b/ В
                     /v/ Г
                         /g/  Д
                             /d/   Е
                                  /je/  Ё
                                       /jo/  Ж
                                            /ʐ/   З
                                                  /z/  И
                                                      /i/   Й
                                                           /j/
             К
             /k/ Л
                 /l/ М
                     /m/ Н
                         /n/  О
                             /o/   П
                                  /p/   Р
                                       /r/   С
                                            /s/   Т
                                                  /t/  У
                                                      /u/   Ф
                                                           /f/
             Х
             /x/ Ц
                 /ʦ/ Ч
                     /ʨ/ Ш
                         /ʂ/ Щ
                             /ɕː/ Ъ
                                  /-/   Ы
                                       [ɨ]  Ь
                                            /◌ʲ/ Э
                                                  /e/  Ю
                                                      /ju/  Я
                                                           /ja/

   Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur
   in this and related articles include ѣ /ie/ or /e/, і /i/, ѳ /f/, ѵ /i/
   and ѧ that merged into я. The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced
   as ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/, /ĭ/, actually [ɪ], [ɯ] or [ə̈], [ə̹].

Orthography

   Russian spelling is reasonably phonemic in practice. It is in fact a
   balance among phonemics, 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.

   The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the
   seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and
   German models.

Sounds

   The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic,
   but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period,
   before being largely settled by about 1400.

   The language possesses five vowels, which are written with different
   letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is
   palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized
   pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The hard
   consonants are often velarized, especially before back vowels, although
   in some dialects the velarization is limited to hard /l/). The standard
   language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and
   moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat lengthened,
   while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to near-close vowels or an
   unclear schwa. (See also: akanye.)

   The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial
   and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a
   formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each
   consonant the structure can be described as follows:

   (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

     Bilabial Labio-
   dental Dental &
   Alveolar Post-
   alveolar Palatal Velar
   Nasal hard /m/   /n/
   soft /mʲ/   /nʲ/
   Plosive hard /p/   /b/   /t/   /d/     /k/   /g/
   soft /pʲ/   /bʲ/   /tʲ/   /dʲ/     /kʲ/*   [gʲ]
   Affricate hard     /ʦ/
   soft         /tɕ/
   Fricative hard   /f/   /v/ /s/   /z/ /ʂ/   /ʐ/   /x/
   soft   /fʲ/   /vʲ/ /sʲ/   /zʲ/ /ɕː/*   /ʑː/*   [xʲ]
   Trill hard     /r/
   soft     /rʲ/
   Approximant hard     /l/
   soft     /lʲ/   /j/

   Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most
   of the consonants. While /k/, /g/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones
   [kʲ, gʲ, xʲ], only /kʲ/ might be considered a phoneme, though it is
   marginal and generally not considered distinctive (the only native
   minimal pair which argues for /kʲ/ to be a separate phoneme is "это
   ткёт"/"этот кот"). Palatalization means that the centre of the tongue
   is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. In the
   case of /tʲ/ and /dʲ/, the tongue is raised enough to produce slight
   frication (affricate sounds). These sounds: /t, d, ʦ, s, z, n and rʲ/
   are dental, that is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the
   teeth rather than against the alveolar ridge.

Grammar

   Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic- inflectional
   structure, although considerable levelling has taken place.

   Russian grammar encompasses
     * a highly synthetic morphology
     * a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion
       of three elements:
          + a polished vernacular foundation;
          + a Church Slavonic inheritance;
          + a Western European style.

   The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one, but
   continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various
   non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or
   descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Vocabulary

   This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
   П.
   Enlarge
   This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
   П.

   See History of the Russian language 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 under Russian grammar).

   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 (who is credited with greatly augmenting and codifying literary
   Russian), are as follows:

                            Work Year Words Notes
   Academic dictionary, I Ed. 1789-1794 43,257 Russian and Church Slavonic
                      with some Old Russian vocabulary
   Academic dictionary, II Ed 1806-1822 51,388 Russian and Church Slavonic
                      with some Old Russian vocabulary
                       Pushkin opus 1810-1837 21,197 -
    Academic dictionary, III Ed. 1847 114,749 Russian and Church Slavonic
                         with Old Russian vocabulary
    Dahl's dictionary 1880-1882 195,844 44,000 entries lexically grouped;
      attempt to catalogue the full vernacular language, includes some
                   properly Ukrainian and Belarusian words
      Ushakov's dictionary 1934-1940 85,289 Current language with some
                                  archaisms
    Academic dictionary 1950-1965 120,480 full dictionary of the "Modern
                                  language"
      Ozhegov's dictionary 1950s-1960s 61,458 More or less then-current
                                  language
     Lopatin's dictionary 2000 c.160,000 Orthographic, current language

   Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many
   as 350,000 to 500,000 words.

   (As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth
   century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective
   русский, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox
   Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official
   language, be spelled руский with one s, in accordance with ancient
   tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was
   contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s
   lengthened or doubled).

Proverbs and sayings

   The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs
   (пословица [pʌˈslo.vʲɪ.ʦə]) and sayings (поговоркa [pə.gʌˈvo.rkə]).
   These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected
   and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being
   an especially fertile source.

History and examples

   The history of Russian language may be divided into the following
   periods.
     * Kievan period and feudal breakup
     * The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
     * Empire (18th-19th centuries)
     * Soviet period and beyond (20th century)

   Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 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. The political unification of this region
   into Kievan Rus', from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their
   origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and
   the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary
   language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter
   the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language
   began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic.

   Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus'
   in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth
   century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late
   fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant
   dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some
   consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct
   languages from this period at the latest. The official language
   remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth
   century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius
   Smotrytsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an
   incipient secular literature.

   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. By 1800, a significant portion of the
   gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. Many
   Russian novels of the 19th century, e.g. Lev Tolstoy's "War and Peace"
   contain entire paragraphs and even pages in French with no translation
   given, with an assumption that educated readers won't need one.

   The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the
   time of Aleksandr Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century.
   Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic grammar
   and vocabulary (so called "высокий штиль" - "high style") in favour of
   grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of the time.
   Nevertheless, modern readers, especially of younger age may experience
   slight difficulty fully understanding Pushkin's texts, since many words
   used by Pushkin became archaic or changed meaning. E.g. "Бразды
   пушистые взрывая, Летит кибитка удалая" ("dashing carriage flies
   plowing fluffy furrows [in the snow]") may be misunderstood by modern
   reader as "[Unknown object] flies and blows up fluffy reins").
     * Winter Evening —
          + Reading of excerpt of Pushkin's "Winter Evening" (Зимний
            вечер), 1825.
          +

   The 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. Political circumstances
   and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological
   matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if
   occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of
   the twentieth century.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
