Home > Old Ruthenian language

1 Description

The language, although not codified was a direct descendant of the Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic (also Old Church Slavic formerly inaccurately called Old Slavic or Old Bulgarian is the first literary and liturgical Slavic language developed from the native language of the 9th century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was language mixed with many local and borrowed words. Its dialectA dialect is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of arbitrary size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turs were spoken, though not exclusively, roughly in the area today occupied by European part of RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With, UkraineUkraine Ukrayina in Ukrainian; in Russian) is a republic in eastern Europe which borders the Black Sea to the south, the Russian Federation to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west and Romania and Moldova to the west and, BelarusThe Republic of Belarus ( Belarusian: #x301 Russian: #x301 (former: #x301 ) is a landlocked nation of Eastern Europe with the capital Minsk. Name Main article: White Russia The spellings Belorussia and Byelorussia are transliterations of the name of the c, and parts of Poland and Lithuania. Between 10th and 16th centuries it was also an official language of most of the states occupying the area of historical Ruthenia: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Muscovy, Republic of Novgorod , Kievan Ruthenia and finally the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The language was formed on the substrate of the Old Church Slavonic, but with significant influence of many other languages (including local dialects of the earlier common Slavic language, Mongolian, Turkish and Polish). With time it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern Belarusian, Russian, Ruthenian and Ukrainian languages. As such it is often referred to as Old Russian, Old Ukrainian or Old Belarusan. Each of the aforementioned languages preserved much of the Old Ruthenian grammar and vocabulary. It was also heavily influenced by the Church Slavonic language.

It is impossible to consider this language standardised in the modern sense. The spoken language in Rus' consisted of a variety of dialects, and today we may speak definitely only of the languages of surviving manuscripts, which from the earliest stages ( 10th or 11th centuries) show regional divergences. However, the written sources are very scarce and provide little information for the scientists. Surviving literary works are almost entirely on the theme of Christianity, the state religion in Kievan Rus' after 988 and therefore contain a large number of borrowed words from Greek and Latin languages. The surviving purely secular writing, such as the Novgorod letters on birch-bark (called Latopis y) and inscriptions on coins or memorial markers are in general too short to provide more than hints about linguistic development and the structure of the language.