Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, transliteration: russkiy yaz'ik) is a Slavic language. It is the main language spoken in Russia. It is also spoken by many people in other parts of the former Soviet Union, such as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan and Estonia.

Russian
russkiy yazyk
русский язык
Pronunciation	[ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk] (listen)
Native to	Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other neighbouring Post-Soviet states
Native speakers	146 million (2024) 254 million (L1 plus L2 speakers) (2023)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Russian
Early form	Old East Slavic
Writing system	Cyrillic (Russian alphabet) Russian Braille
Official status
Official language in	12 states Russia (state) Belarus (state) Kazakhstan (official) Kyrgyzstan (official) Tajikistan (inter-ethnic communication) Canada: Alberta (official as in websites) Manitoba (official as in metropolitan areas) Saskatchewan (official in all the province) Moldova: Gagauzia (official) Partially recognized states: Abkhazia(official) South Ossetia(state) Unrecognised states: Transnistria (official) Former states: Soviet Union (De facto, official since 1990; defunct state) Organizations: United Nations IAEA ICAO UNESCO WHO CIS Warsaw Pact (defunct) EAEC CSTO CMEA (defunct) GUAM SCO OSCE ATS ISO
Recognised minority language in	List Romania (regional and minority) A number of municipalities in Tulcea County and Constanța County Ukraine (minority) Autonomous Republic of Crimea Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Donetsk Oblast Kharkiv Oblast Kherson Oblast Luhansk Oblast Mykolaiv Oblast Odessa Oblast Zaporizhia Oblast Israel Azerbaijan Armenia Poland Czech Republic Slovakia Latvia Moldova Uzbekistan Australia New Zealand
Regulated by	Russian Language Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ru
ISO 639-2	rus
ISO 639-3	rus
Glottolog	russ1263
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ea < 53-AAA-e (varieties: 53-AAA-eaa to 53-AAA-eat)
Countries where Russian is an official language (dark blue) or spoken as a first or second language by greater than 30% of the population (teal)

The man speaking Russian and Hebrew in recorded on Cape Town, South Africa.

Spoken Russian

Russian, like other Slavic languages, is an Indo-European language. Russian is one of the three main East Slavic languages; the others are Ukrainian and Belarusian. More people speak Russian than any other Slavic language.

Written Russian does not use the Latin alphabet that English and the West Slavic languages do - some people do however, learn to write it in Latin letters. It mostly uses the Cyrillic alphabet, whose letters, like those of Latin, came from Greek, but are different from them. The other East Slavic languages and some of the South Slavic languages use the Cyrillic alphabet as well.

Russian is an official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, along with English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese.

Standard Russian

A poem by Alexander Pushkin read in Russian

Standard Russian is also called modern literary Russian (Современный русский литературный язык). It first appeared at the beginning of the 18th century. Peter the Great was then working to make the state more modern. Standard Russian grew out of the dialect of Russian that was spoken by people in and around Moscow. In some ways, Standard Russian was also like the Russian used in government offices in earlier centuries.

Mikhail Lomonosov wrote the first book on Russian grammar in 1755. The Russian Academy of Sciences published the first full dictionary of Russian in 1783. The grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of Russian became stable and were standardized at the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century. That was called the "Golden Age" of Russian literature because it was a good period for the subject, which became very famous across the world.

All of Russia began to use Russian as the language of literature, education, and official communication. Until the 20th century, only the upper classes and people in cities spoke the literary language. Russians from the countryside continued to speak their local dialects. In the 20th century, all children were required to go to school. Many people had radios and televisions, which helped to spread Standard Russian. By the mid-20th century, Russian dialects had mostly disappeared. Standard Russian replaced them almost completely especially to talk to people from different oblasts.

Names

In Russian, a person's name has three parts: the first name, the second name and the family name.

Parents choose the first name for their child. Some common Russian names for boys are Ivan, Vladimir, Mikhail and Nikolai. Some common Russian names for girls are Anna, Anastasia, Svetlana and Yekaterina.

The second name is the patronymic (Russian: otchestvo) and comes from one's father's first name. For example, a boy whose father is Ivan would have his patronymic as Ivanovich. If a boy's father is Nikolai, his patronymic is Nikolaevich. If a girl's father is Ivan, her patronymic is Ivanovna. If her father is Nikolai, her patronymic is Nikolaevna. The patronymic of a boy ends with -ovich or -evich. The patronymic of a girl ends with -ovna or -evna.

Boys have the same family name as their fathers. Girls use their father's family name but an -a is added to the end of the name. A man whose family name is Romanov would have a son with the family name Romanov and a daughter with the family name Romanova.

If a man's name is Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov and has a son, Aleksei, and a daughter, Anastasia, the son's full name is Aleksei Nikolaevich Romanov, and the daughter's full name is Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.

There are also many people in Russia whose family names are not Russian. Some of the family names have only one form, which is the same for both sons and daughters. Some examples are Glushko (a Ukrainian name), Rubinstein (a German/Jewish name) or Shevardnadze (a Georgian name).

Grammar

Case

Like Latin, Greek, and German, Russian has a case system. In Russian, it applies to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals and participles with a set of word endings (sounds/letters attached to the ends of words) that show the grammatical roles of words in a sentence. Because the grammatical roles are shown by the endings, word order is freer in than in English. There are six cases in Russian.

The nominative case, the form listed in the dictionary, is used for the subject of the sentence. The genitive case often shows ownership. The accusative case is used for a direct object, the dative case for an indirect object. The instrumental case is used for the tool or instrument with which something is done. The prepositional case is used after certain prepositions, such as "in" and "on", but other prepositions may require the use of other cases. Each case has other uses than those listed.

Gender and number

In Russian, nouns have one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neutral. This is the same for languages like French, Spanish, etc. Masculine nouns usually end in consonants, neutral nouns usually end in -o or -e, and feminine nouns usually end in -a or -я. The plural acts like a fourth gender because gender does not change plural words.

Adjectives

In Russian, an adjective must agree with the word that it describes in gender, case and number. In the nominative case, adjectives that describe feminine words usually end in -ая or -яя. Those that describe masculine words usually end in -ый, -ий or -ой. Those that describe neuter words usually end in -ое or -ее. Those that describe plural words usually end in -ые or -ие. The endings change depending on case.

Other websites

Media related to Russian language at Wikimedia Commons