TheEast Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of theSlavic languages, distinct from theWest andSouth Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughoutEastern Europe, and eastwards toSiberia and theRussian Far East.[1] In part due to the large historical influence of theRussian Empire and theSoviet Union, theRussian language is also spoken as alingua franca in many regions of theCaucasus andCentral 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.
The common consensus is thatBelarusian,Russian andUkrainian are the extant East Slavic languages.[2] Some linguists also considerRusyn a separate language,[3][4] although it is sometimes considered a dialect of Ukrainian.[5]
Modern East Slavic languages include Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian. The Rusyn language is sometimes considered the fourth living language of the group, its status as an independent language being the subject of scientific debate.[7]
The East Slavic territory exhibits a linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is thePolesian dialect, which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitionalvariety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian andSouthern Russian form acontinuous 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, theOld Novgorod dialect, has many original and archaic features.
Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania as "Chancery Slavonic"[citation needed] until the end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. It was also the native language of theCossack Hetmanate until the end of the 18th century, when the Ukrainian state completely became part of the Russian Empire in 1764.[8] TheConstitution 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, aLechiticWest Slavic language. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed toChurch Slavonic, featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, for example:
Comparison of the word "sweet"
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Russian
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"
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Russian
одиниця (odynycia)
адзінка (adzinka)
eдиница (yedinica)
In general, Ukrainian and Belarusian are also closer to other Western European languages, especially toGerman (via Polish). At the same time Russian was being heavily influenced by Church Slavonic (South Slavic language), but also by theTurkic andUralic languages.[9] For example:
Comparison of the word "to search"
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Russian
шукати (šukaty)
шукаць (šukać)
искать (iskat́)
Compare Polish "szukać" andOld Low German "sōkian" (German "suchen")
Compare Bulgarian "искам" (iskam) (with a meaning shift: "to want") and Serbo-Croatian "искати" (iskati)
What's more, all three languages do also havefalse 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".
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 theapostrophe (') for thehard sign, which has the same function as the letter Ъ in Russian.
Cyrillic alphabets comparison table
East Slavic languages
Russian
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ё
Ж
З
И
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ы
Ь
Э
Ю
Я
Belarusian
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ё
Ж
З
І
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ў
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
'
Ы
Ь
Э
Ю
Я
Ukrainian
А
Б
В
Г
Ґ
Д
Е
Є
Ж
З
И
І
Ї
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
'
Ь
Ю
Я
Rusyn
А
Б
В
Г
Ґ
Д
Е
Є
Ё
Ж
З
И
І
Ї
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ы
Ь
Ю
Я
Some letters, that are not included in the alphabet of a language, can be written asdigraphs. For example, the sound values of the letter Ё, which doesn't exist in the Ukrainian alphabet, can be written as ЙО (ЬО after consonants), while the letter Щ in Russian and Ukrainian corresponds to ШЧ in Belarusian (compare Belarusian плошча and Ukrainian площа ("area")).
There are also different rules of usage for certain letters, e.g. thesoft sign (Ь) cannot be written after the letter Ц in Russian, because the consonant /tsʲ/ does not exist in the Russian language, while in Ukrainian and especially Belarusian, on the contrary, it is relatively common (Ukrainian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Belarusian ц; Belarusian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Ukrainian ть). Moreover, the letter Щ in standard Russian is always pronounced softly (palatalization).
Standard Ukrainian, unlike all the other Slavic languages (excl.Serbo-Croatian), does not exhibitfinal 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]
Besides the differences of the alphabets, some letters represent different sounds depending on the language. For example, the letter И (romanized asI for Russian andY for Ukrainian) 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:
Vowel reduction occurs in standard Russian and Belarusian, but the Russian orthography does not reflect it, whereas the Belarusian orthography does. For example: Russianкот [kot] "tomcat",коты́ [kɐˈtɨ] "tomcats"; Belarusianкот [kot] "tomcat",каты́ [kaˈtɨ] "tomcats".
^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.
^abIn 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.
After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed fromBulgaria, which were written inOld Church Slavonic (aSouth Slavic language).[12] The Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of theBulgarians was communicated in its spoken form.[13]
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 asdiglossia, 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.[14]
^Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville G. (1 September 2003).The Slavonic Languages. Taylor & Francis. p. 45.ISBN978-0-203-21320-9. Archived fromthe original on 15 February 2017. Retrieved22 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
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