Russian

Russian, together with Ukrainian and Belarusian (Belorussian), is a member of the East Slavonic group within the Slavonic branch of Indo-European. Although the three languages are now considered distinct literary languages, they are very close to one another, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility. At the time of the emergence of writing in East Slavonic, around the year 1000, there was just a single language, conventionally called Old Russian. In terms of the development of Russian as a modern literary language and of the separation of Ukrainian and Belarusian, there are two strands that must continually be borne in mind: the relation between native East Slavonic forms and forms borrowed from South Slavonic, and the relations among regional variations within East Slavonic. Although there is some controversy concerning the possible independent, native

development of writing in Russian, it is generally agreed that writing was introduced to Russia together with Christianity towards the end of the tenth century. The liturgical language that was introduced in this process was Old Church Slavonic, a South Slavonic language. At this period Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian were presumably readily mutually intelligible, yet still there were clear differences between them, namely the criterial differences between East and South Slavonic (see page 272). At this early period, much of the writing was of religious content (biblical and liturgical translations, saints’ lives) or was written by monks (for instance, historical chronicles), and in such writing the attempt was made to write Church Slavonic, avoiding local East Slavonic peculiarities. In practice, the Russian monks writing these manuscripts often erred by allowing East Slavonic forms to creep into their texts, but many of the religious texts of this time are very close to canonical Old Church Slavonic. Parallel to this writing in Church Slavonic, secular writing also developed, in particular for legal purposes (law codes, contracts, wills, treaties), later also personal messages. The language of these secular documents is much closer to the East Slavonic of the time, although inevitably, since any scribe was trained in Church Slavonic, numerous Church Slavonic forms crept into secular texts. Thus Old Russian of this early period was characterised by

low variety) Slavonic (the high variety). With the passage of time, the divergence between the two varieties became gradually

less, in particular with many Church Slavonic forms gaining acceptance into even the lowest forms of language. A break in this process was marked by the Second South Slavonic influence. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 led to the immigration of a large number of South Slavonic clerics to Russia, and one effect of their immigration was a return, in religious writing, to a more correct imitation of canonical Old Church Slavonic. While South Slavonic forms already accepted into lower styles remained, the higher styles now followed an archaic Church Slavonic language far removed from the spoken language of the period. By the eighteenth century, in particular through the modernisation and secularisation

efforts of Peter the Great, need was felt for a written language that would be closer to the educated spoken norm. The brilliant polymath M.V. Lomonosov, in his Russian Grammar (1755), set out a theory of three styles. According to this theory, there should be a high style, i.e. Church Slavonic, which would be used (in addition to religious purposes) for high poetic genres; a low style, almost purely East Slavonic (except for fully assimilated Church Slavonic features), to be used for personal correspondence and low comedy; and a middle style, to be used for lyric poetry, literary prose and scientific treatises. This middle style, which combined features of both East Slavonic and Church Slavonic, is the style which soon came to form the basis of the modern standard language. By the time of A.S. Pushkin (1799-1837), the first of the great writers of Russia’s nineteenth century, this middle style is already established as the literary language. (Some influence of French, spoken fluently by Russia’s ruling class in the nineteenth century, is now widely acknowledged, but remains to be studied in detail.) Although the language has continued to develop during the intervening two centuries, which have included the major social upheavals of the October Revolution (1917) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the modern Russian literary language is still defined chronologically as the language from Pushkin to the present day. The coexistence of East Slavonic and South Slavonic forms from the earliest Old

Russian to the present day is one of the salient characteristics of the language. It may be compared with the coexistence of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French elements in English, with the exception that East and South Slavonic are much closer to one another genetically than are English and French. In modern Russian, it is common to find doublets, i.e. derivatives of the same Common Slavonic root in both East Slavonic and Church Slavonic forms, the Church Slavonic form usually having a more abstract or learned connotation. One of the main differences between East Slavonic and South Slavonic is the treatment of Common Slavonic sequences of o/e followed by a liquid between consonants, symbolised *tort. In East Slavonic, this sequence yields torot, while in South Slavonic it yields trat. In modern Russian, alongside East Slavonic golová ‘head’, there is also South Slavonic glavá ‘chief; chapter’. (Note that in English head is of Anglo-Saxon origin, whereas chief and chapter are of Romance origin.) Another distinction between the two groups of Slavonic languages is the treatment of Common Slavonic *tj, *dj, which give East Slavonic š, ž, but South Slavonic šcˇ (more accurately: št, but pronounced šcˇ in Russian Church Slavonic), žd: contrast the East Slavonic form gorjácˇij ‘hot’ with the present participle gorjášcˇij ‘burning’, which, like all modern Russian present participles, is of Church Slavonic origin. Since Common Slavonic had, within the paradigm of the same verb, some forms with just *t and others

alternations Russian, either between t and cˇ (East Slavonic forms, e.g. platít´ ‘to pay’, placˇú ‘I pay’) or between t and šcˇ (Church Slavonic forms, e.g. sokratít´ ‘to abbreviate’, sokrašcˇú ‘I shall abbreviate’). In addition to East Slavonic and Church Slavonic doublets of the above kinds, there are also some instances where the Church Slavonic form has completely supplanted the native form, e.g. sládkij ‘sweet’, cf. Old Russian solodъkъjь. At the time of the oldest Russian texts, the main dialect division was between Northern

and Southern Russian, the dividing line running approximately along the latitude of present-day Moscow. The cultural centre of the south was Kiev; the north had several centres, the most important being Novgorod. In texts from the northern area, a number of regional features occur, one of the most salient being the neutralisation of c and cˇ into a single affricate, usually c. It is probable that at this early period north and south were already divided by what is still one of the major dialect divisions in Russian, namely the pronunciation of Common Slavonic *g, the north having a plosive [g], the south a fricative [Ɣ]; the age of this feature is suggested, among other things, by the fact that modern Ukrainian and Belarusian share this feature with South Russian dialects. Unfortunately, the Cyrillic alphabet has no way of distinguishing between the plosive and the fricative sounds, so textual evidence is inconclusive. The linguistic separation of Ukrainian and Belarusian runs parallel to their political

separation. In the mid-thirteenth century, Russia fell under Tatar domination, and subsequently what are now Ukraine and Belarus fell under Lithuanian, subsequently Polish hegemony. The distinctive features of Ukrainian are most marked, with Belarusian often occupying an intermediate position between the other East Slavonic languages. During the period of political separation, innovations that began in Ukraine were in general unable to penetrate Russian, and vice versa. One of the main characteristics of Ukrainian is the development of Common Slavonic *eˇ, which in standard Russian ultimately merged with e, to i, e.g. Old Russian leˇto, Russian léto, Ukrainian líto ‘summer’. Another characteristic of Ukrainian is that consonants lose their palatalisation before reflexes of Old Russian e (Ukrainian e) and i (Ukrainian y). Belarusian has fewer unique characteristics, one being the affrication of palatalised t, d to c´, Z´, just as in Polish. Meanwhile, in Russian proper, another phonological development of major impor-

tance for the dialectal composition of the language was taking place, namely ákan´e. This refers to the pronunciation of Old Russian unstressed o as a, e.g. of vodá as [vadá]. This change probably started somewhere in the south of Russia, but spread rapidly to cover the whole of the south, some central areas, and also Belarus (but not Ukraine, further evidence of its greater separateness). Lack of ákan´e is usually referred to as ókan´e. This phonological development ties in with a crucial political development. In the struggle against the Tatars, a key role came to be played by Muscovy, the area around Moscow, leading to the independence and unification of Russia (minus Ukraine and Belarus) under Moscow by the late fifteenth century. Although Moscow seems originally to have been part of the ókan´e dialect area, the city and surrounding area succumbed to the spread of ákan´e. Moscow’s central position, coupled with the fact that it combined features of Northern dialects (in particular, the plosive pronunciation of g) and of Southern dialects (in particular, ákan´e), led to the formation of a new intermediate dialect grouping, the Central dialects, which lie at the basis of the modern standard language. The main dialect areas in Russian are thus: Northern (ókan´e, plosive g), Central (ákan´e, plosive g) and Southern (ákan´e, fricative g), with the standard language following the compromise Central dialect distribution of these features. Despite the huge

regional or remarkably small and are, as in many other countries, becoming ever smaller with the spread of education. The number of native speakers of Russian in 2006 is around 145 million, the over-

whelming majority in Russia, although there are also substantial Russian-speaking populations in some other parts of the former Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation. (In ethnically based republics and other administrative areas, this is typically alongside the local language.) It is also a co-official language of Belarus. While the situation regarding co-official use of Russian is somewhat fluid in Central Asia, with decisions having gone back and forth since the break-up of the USSR, in 2006 Russian is a co-official language of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is also widely used elsewhere in Central Asia and in Azerbaijan, Moldova and Ukraine.