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Polish Language

Polish language

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the Western Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. Polish was once a lingua franca in various regions of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although no longer having as great an influence outside of Poland, due in part to the dominance of the Russian language, it is still sometimes spoken or at least understood in western border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language.

Outside Influence

Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, Czech, French, German, Italian, Old Belarusian, Russian and recently it has been virtually bombarded by English, especially American English language elements). Many words have been borrowed from German as a result of heavy contact with Germans and the German language. This process has been going on since medieval times. Examples include szlachta (from German Adelsgeschlecht=nobility), rachunek (Rechnung=account), ratusz (Rathaus=town hall), burmistrz (Bürgermeister=mayor; word used only for mayors of smaller cities), handel (Handel=commerce), kac (Kater=hangover), kartofel (Kartoffel=potato; this word is dialectal: most Poles use the word 'ziemniak' for potato, but both words are understood anywhere), cukier (Zucker=sugar), kelner (Kellner=waiter) and malarz (Maler=painter; also the word 'malować' has entered Polish as the verb "to paint"). This is especially true of the regional dialects of Upper Silesia. There are also several words of French origin in the language, most likely dating from the Napoleon era, such as ekran (écran=screen), rekin (requin=shark), meble (meuble=furniture), fotel (fauteuil=armchair), plaża (plage=beach) and koszmar (cauchemar=nightmare). Some place names have also been adapted from French, such as the two Warsaw boroughs of Żoliborz (joli bord=beautiful riverside) and Mokotów (mon coteau=my cottage), as well as the suburb of Żyrardów (from the name Girard, with the Polish suffix -ów attached to form the town's name). Other words are borrowed from other Slavic languages, for example "hańba" and "brama" from Czech. When borrowing international words, Polish often changes their spelling. For example, the Latin suffix spelled '-tion' in English corresponds to '-cja'. To make the word plural, -cja becomes -cje. Examples of this include "inauguracja" (inauguration), dewastacja (devastation), konurbacja (conurbation) and konotacje (connotations). Also, the digraph 'qu' becomes 'kw' (kwadrat=quadrant; frekwencja=frequency). Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations (which affected several countries after the Second World War, with Poland being an extreme case) standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist, particularly in the south and south-west in the hilly areas bordering the Czech and Slovak Republics. In the western and northern territories, resettled in large measure by Poles from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, the older generation speaks a dialect of Polish characteristic of the former eastern provinces.

Classification

The Polish language is the most widely-spoken of the Slavic language subgroup of Lechitic languages which include Kashubian (the only surviving dialect of Pomeranian language) and the extinct Polabian language. The three languages, along with Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belong to the West branch of Slavic languages. To English ears, it sounds virtually indistinguishable from Russian, and indeed the two languages have a very similar grammar; however, Polish and Russian speakers cannot understand each other without training due to a very different vocabulary. In other words, to a speaker of one, the other sounds to them about how the first stanza of the poem Jabberwocky would sound to an English-speaker.

Geographic distribution

Polish is mainly spoken in Poland. In fact, Poland is one of the most homogenous European countries in terms of its mother tongue, as close to 97% of Polish citizens declare Polish as their mother tongue. After the Second World War the previously Polish territories annexed by the USSR retained a large amount of the Polish population that was unwilling or unable to migrate toward the post-1945 Poland and even today ethnic Poles in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine constitute large minorities. In Lithuania 9 percent of the population declared Polish to be their mother tongue. It is by far the most widely used minority language in the Vilniaus Apskritis (Vilnius region) (26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results), but it is also present in other apskritis. In Ukraine, Polish is most often used in the Lwów and Łuck regions. Western Belarus has an important Polish minority, especially in the Brześć and Grodno regions. There are also significant numbers of Polish speakers in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, New Zealand, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, UAE, the UK and the United States. In the U.S. the number of people of Polish descent is over 9 million, see: Polish language in the United States, but most of them do not use Polish in their everyday communications. According to the United States 2000 Census, 667,414 Americans of age 5 years and over reported Polish as language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English or 0.25% of the U.S. population.

Dialects

It has several dialects that correspond in the main to the old tribal divisions; the most significant of these (in terms of numbers of speakers) are Great Polish (spoken in the west), Little Polish (spoken in the south and southeast), Mazovian (Mazur) spoken throughout the centre and east of the country, and Silesian spoken in the southwest. Mazovian shares some features with the Kashubian language, whose remaining speakers (53.000, according to 2002 Census) live around the city of Gdańsk near the Baltic Sea, predominantly to the west of the city. There are also several, now mostly extinct, regional dialects of Polish, including the Warsaw dialect. Small numbers of people in Poland also speak Belarusian, Ukrainian, and German as well as several varieties of Romany.

Phonology

Orthography

The Polish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet but uses diacritics such as kreska (graphically similar to acute accent), superior dot and ogonek. Polish orthography also includes seven digraphs: Note that although the Polish orthography is mostly phonetic, some sounds may be written in more than one way:
- as either h or ch
- as either ż or rz (though rż denotes a cluster)
- as either u or ó
- some soft consonants as either ć, dź, ń, ś, ź, or ci, dzi, ni, si, zi Unlike in English, if consonants are doubled in script, it means that they are also doubled in pronunciation, for example: wanna , not ('bathtub'); motto , not .

Grammar

Polish is often said to be one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to learn; of course, this depends on one's native language. While difficult for English speakers, it is relatively easy for speakers of Russian and other Slavic languages. It has a complex gender system with five genders: neuter, feminine and three masculine genders (personal, animate and inanimate). There are 7 cases and 2 numbers. Nouns, adjectives and verbs are inflected, and both noun declension and verb conjugation are highly irregular. Every verb is either perfective or imperfective. Verbs often come in pairs, one of them imperfective and the other perfective (usually imperfective verb plus a prefix), but often there are many perfective verbs with different prefixes for single imperfective words. Tenses are: Movable suffix is usually attached to verb or to the most accented word of sentence, like question preposition. Sometimes the sentence may be emphasised with a particle -że- (-ż). So what have you done ? can be:
- Co zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili?
- Cóżeście zrobili? (It could be derived from Cóż zrobiliście? which actually sounds odd and is not used) All the above examples show inflected forms of the verb "zrobić" for the subject "you" informal plural ("wy"). However, it is of note that none of the above examples include the subject itself. The inclusion of the subject is not necessary here because Polish is a pro-drop language. This means that a subject does not need to be used with an inflected verb. Instead, the reader or listener can tell which subject is implied through the type ending on the verb. This is different for each pronoun in Polish with the exceptions of on/ona/ono (he/she/it) which all have the same verb ending as each other and oni/one (they - of a group including male humans/they - of a group of people or things not including male humans) which also have the same verb ending as each other. Because the subject can be dropped, if the subject is used with an inflected verb it places the emphasis of the sentence on the subject. Of the above three examples, a native speaker would not include the subject in the middle sentence and would be unlikely to include a subject in the last one. The below examples show how the subject could be included in such sentences, where possible:
- Co wy zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili? (a native speaker would not use a subject here)
- Co wyście zrobili? (this example places the stress strongly on "you" -- "wy"+ście)
- Co żeście zrobili? (this example includes the use of the że- particle - considered very colloquial) Past participle depends on number and gender, so 3rd person, singular past perfect tense can be:
- zrobił (he made/did)
- zrobiła (she made/did)
- zrobiło (it made/did)

Word order

From Wikibooks' Polish Language Course. Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. These sentences mean the same ("Ala (Alice) has a cat"):
- Ala ma kota
- Ala kota ma
- Kota ma Ala
- Ma Ala kota
- Kota Ala ma
- Ma kota Ala Yet only the first of these sounds natural in Polish, and others should be used for emphasis only, if at all. If a question mark is added to the end of those sentences they will all mean "does Ala have a cat?"; an optional 'czy' could be added to the begining but native speakers don't use it. The first is usually used as a reassuring question (really, Ala has a cat?). The fourth would be used as a standard question (does Ala have a cat?) If apparent from context, you can drop the subject, object or even the verb:
- Ma kota - can be used if it's obvious who is being talked about
- Ma - answer for "Czy Ala ma kota?" ("Does Ala have a cat?")
- Ala - answer for "Kto ma kota?" ("Who has a cat?")
- Kota - answer for "Co ma Ala?" ("What does Ala have?")
- Ala ma - answer for "Kto z naszych znajomych ma kota?" ("Which of our friends has a cat?") Note the marker "czy" which is used to start a yes/no question, much as the French use "est-ce que". There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object and you rarely know the object but not the subject. If the question was "Kto ma kota ?" (who has a cat ?), the answer should be "Ala" alone, without a verb. In particular, "ja" (I) and "ty" (you, singular), and also their plural equivalents "my" (we) and "wy" (you, plural), are almost always dropped.

Conjugation

Conjugation of "iść" ("walking" in Present Continuous):
- Ja idę – I am walking
- Ty idziesz – You are walking
- On/ona/ono idzie – He/she/it is walking
- My idziemy – We are walking
- Wy idziecie – You are walking (Plural)
- Oni/one idą – They are walking ("Oni" masculine, "one" feminine or neuter)

Vocabulary

Singular:
ja - I
ty - you
on - he
ona - she
ono - it
Plural:
my - we
wy - you (Plural)
oni - they (mixed group, both men and women)
one - they (group of only women and children or things) pies - dog
krowa - cow
świnia - pig
mucha - fly
osa - wasp
pszczoła - bee
drzewo - tree
kwiat - flower
Anglia - England
Szkocja - Scotland
Walia - Wales
Irlandia - Ireland
Wielka Brytania - Great Britain
Zjednoczone Królestwo - United Kingdom
Niemcy - Germany
Japonia - Japan
Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki - The United States of America
Francja - France
Hiszpania - Spain
Wenezuela - Venezuela
Polska - Poland
Polak - Pole
polski - Polish
Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka - a little girl from Constantinople (the longest word in Polish)

Notes

1 You can hear the voice samples by clicking on the Polish example (ogg format).

See also


- Slavic languages
- Slavic peoples
- Poland
- Common phrases in Polish
- Wiktionary:Polish language
- Wikibooks:Basic Polish language course
- Swietokrzyskie Sermons

External links


- [http://slownik.web-monkeys.com/ słownik polski - polish dictionary]
- [http://www.polishgrammar.com/ 1,000 free multi-choice Polish grammar drills online]
- [http://www.polish-dictionary.com/ Basic English-Polish Dictionary]
- [http://www.polish-translations.com/PolishTranslation/ Articles about Polish Language]
- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=pol Polish language on Ethnologue]
- [http://www.fdicts.com/dictlist1.php?k1=75 All free Polish dictionaries]
- [http://sjp.pwn.pl/ PWN Polish-Polish Dictionary]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Polish-english/ Webster's Online Polish-English Dictionary]
- [http://www.dict.pl Polish-English dictionary]
- [http://www.anglik.net/polish.htm Free Polish Translation]
- [http://www.poltran.com/ Online translation Polish<->English]
- [http://golem.umcs.lublin.pl/users/ppikuta/lessons/less0.htm Polish language course]
- [http://www.langsites.com/Polish.htm Polish On-line]
- [http://seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/compgrammar_polish.pdf A Concise Polish Grammar, by Ronald F. Feldstein (110-page 600-KB pdf)]
- [http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu Univ. of Pittsburgh: Polish Language Website] Category:Languages of Poland Category:West Slavic languages ko:폴란드어 ja:ポーランド語 th:ภาษาโปแลนด์

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other languages as well. Officially recognized minority languages are often mistaken for official languages. However, a language officially recognized by a state, taught in schools, and used in official communication is not necessarily an official language. For example, Ladin and Sardinian in Italy and Mirandese in Portugal are only officially recognized minority languages, not official languages in the strict sense. Official languages are sometimes not the same as the medium of instruction and so, the two are not interchangeable. Half of the countries in the world have official languages. Some have only one official language, such as Albania, France, or Lithuania, despite the fact that in all these countries there are other native languages spoken as well. Some have more than one official language, such as Afghanistan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Eritrea, Finland, India, Paraguay, South Africa, and Switzerland. In some countries, such as Iraq, Italy, Palau, Philippines, Russia and Spain, there is an official language for the country, but other languages are co-official in some important regions. Some countries, such as Sweden, Tuvalu, and the United States have no official languages. The official languages of some former colonies, typically French or English, are not the national languages or the most widely spoken language. In contrast, Irish is the national language of the Republic of Ireland and its first official language, although it is spoken by perhaps less than a third of its people. English, which is spoken by nearly everyone, is described as the second official language by Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland. Irish is an official (treaty) language of the European Union and will become a full working language on 1 January 2007. In some countries, the issue of which language is to be used in what context is a major political issue; see List of countries where language is a political issue. The United Nations, a supra-national body, has six official (primary) working languages: Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French, and English. Category:Sociolinguistics ja:公用語 simple:Official language th:ภาษาราชการ

Lechitic languages

The Lechitic languages include three languages spoken in Central Europe, principally in Poland, and historically also in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Hither Pomerania, in the north-eastern region of modern Germany. This language group is a branch of the larger West Slavic language family. The Lechitic group includes:
- Polish - (ISO 639-1 code: pl, ISO 639-2 code: pol)
- Pomeranian
  - Kashubian - (ISO 639-2 code: csb)
  - Slovincian - extinct
- Polabian - extinct - (SIL Code: pox) The term Lechitic derives from the name of Lech, the legendary ancestor of the Lechitic peoples and founder of Poland.

External link


- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=92155 Lechitic language tree] Category:West Slavic languages

Western Slavic language

The West Slavic languages is a subdivision of the Slavic language group that includes Czech, Polish, Slovak, and Sorbian. Classification:
- Indo-European
  - Satem
    - Balto-Slavic
      - Slavic
      -
- West Slavic
      -
  - Czech-Slovak
      -
    - Czech
      -
    - Slovak
      -
  - Lechitic
      -
    - Polish
      -
    - Pomeranian
      -
      - Kashubian
      -
      - Slovincian
      -
    - Polabian
      -
  - Sorbian
      -
    - Upper Sorbian
      -
    - Lower Sorbian Category:Slavic languages

Greater Poland

Greater Poland (also Great Poland; Polish: Wielkopolska, German: Grosspolen, Latin: Polonia Maior) is a historical region of Poland. It is located in western-central Poland, encompassing much of the area drained by the Warta river and its tributaries, including the Noteć river.

Name of the region

Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) was the core of the early medieval Polish state, often called the cradle of Poland, and at times was called simply Poland (Latin: Polonia). The name of Greater Poland is mentioned first in the Latin form Polonia Maior in 1257, and in Polish form w Wielkej Polszcze in 1449. The name of the region can be understood as Old Poland, as opposed to New Poland (Lesser Poland, Małopolska, Polonia Minor, a region in south-eastern Poland with Kraków as its capital) and in opposition to the whole Poland as a state and country. In its wide meaning, Greater Poland consists of all of the Greater Poland Voivodship and parts of the Lubusz Voivodship, the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodship and the Łódź Voivodship.

Geography

Greater Poland consists of two major geographic regions: the lake district, full of post-glacial lakes and hills in the north, and the rather flat plain in the south.

Major cities and towns

(population 2003)
- Poznań (581,200)
- Kalisz (106,500)
- Konin, Poland (83,600)
- Piła (76,800)
- Ostrow Wielkopolski (74,500)
- Gniezno (71,600)
- Leszno (63,500)
- Srem (31,000)
- Turek (30,700)
- Krotoszyn (29,100)
- Wrzesnia (28,900)
- Swarzedz (28,200)
- Jarocin (26,000)
- Koscian (24,500)
- Wągrowiec (24,500)
- Kolo (24,300)
- Lubon (23,800)
- Sroda Wielkopolska (22,200)
- Rawicz (21,700)
- Gostyn (20,800)
- Chodzież (20,500)

References

Category:Regions of Poland

Lingua franca

:A popular U.S. magazine of academic journalism was titled Lingua Franca. A lingua franca is any language widely used beyond its native speakers, primarily for international commerce but extending to other cultural exchanges, such as diplomacy. The origin of the term lingua franca is Latin (literally "Frankish language"), derived from the medieval Arab and Muslim use of "Franks" (ancient Germanic people) as a generic term for Europeans during the period of the Crusades. Originally "lingua franca" referred to a mix of mostly Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic. This mixed language (pidgin, creole language) was used for communication throughout the medieval and early modern Middle East as a diplomatic language; the generic description "lingua franca" has since become common for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another. In an important sense, the terms "lingua franca" and "diplomatic language" remain distinct; the former refers largely to spoken languages which find common use, while the latter is typically limited to common written systems which do not directly find use among the common public. A prime example is Akkadian, which (as shown in the Amarna letters,~1350 B.C.) was used for correspondence between Egypt and its Canaanite vassals, and neighboring kingdoms, as far away as Babylon. Akkadian, being one of the first "diplomatic languages", contained Sumerograms, from Sumer, the sumerogram being many hundreds of years older, from the beginning of written language. This diplomatic-level communication would, over time, serve language (hence cultural) transculturation, eventually developing the Greek and Roman writing systems, that we currently use today.

Languages which have served as a lingua franca

During the Roman Empire and for the following millennium the lingua franca was Greek in the east and Latin in the west. The French language also served as lingua franca later on. French was the language of diplomacy in Europe from the 17th century until its very recent replacement by English, and as a result is still the working language of international institutions and is seen on documents ranging from passports to airmail letters. French was also the language used among the educated in cosmopolitain cities in North Africa such as Cairo, Egypt around the turn of the century until WWII. German served as a lingua franca in portions of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in business, politics, science (physics), and sociology. English is the current lingua franca of Western international business and has also displaced French in diplomacy since World War II, a trend arguably advanced by the role of English-speaking countries in the outcome of the war (the de facto status of lingua franca is usually "awarded" by the masses to the language of the most influential nation(s) of the time), and certainly influenced by the massive anglophonic cultural exports from the United States (movies and music). English is also regarded by some as the global lingua franca owing to the economic hegemony of the developed Western nations in world financial and business institutions. The de facto status of English as the lingua franca in these countries has carried over globally as a result. In other regions of the world, other languages perform the function of a lingua franca: Portuguese served as lingua franca in Africa and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries. Swahili in East Africa, Russian in areas formerly associated with the Soviet Union, German in much of Eastern Europe until after World War II, "Hindustani" (or Hindi, along with English) in India, Malay or Thai in South-East Asia, Bislama in the Pacific Islands, and various Pidgin languages in other locations and times. Classical Chinese served as both a lingua franca and a diplomatic language for Far East Asia, used by China, Korea, Japan, the Ryukyus, Vietnam, Tibet, and Xinjiang in interstate communications until the late 19th century. Currently, among most Chinese speaking communities, Mandarin Chinese serves the function of providing a common spoken language between speakers of different and mutually unintelligible Chinese languages- not to mention between Chinese and ethnic non-Chinese in China. In Switzerland, which has four different official languages, English serves as a lingua franca with citizens and the relatively high (20%) foreign population. Polish was once a lingua franca in various regions of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although not that popular any more due to the Russian language influence, it is still sometimes spoken or at least understood in western border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language.

See also


- Business English
- international auxiliary language

In a specific sense

Lingua Franca meaning "Frankish language" was an early language, used in the Mediterranean area from the 14th century or earlier and still in use in the 20th century. Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When the Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crew tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of change the Lingua Franca and Portuguese wordstock was substituted by the languages of the people in contact. Polari, the gay cant slang in 1950s-1960s Britain, derives partly from Lingua Franca.

External links


- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pml Ethnologue entry for Lingua Franca]
- [http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/go.html A Glossary of Lingua Franca] Category:Sociolinguistics Category:Languages of Africa Category:Languages of Europe Category:Pidgins and creoles ja:リングワ・フランカ

Central Europe

] Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term has come back into fashion since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (which had divided Europe into East and West). The region is generally considered to contain (from North to South): Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and more rarely Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Albania, and the Republic of Macedonia. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are sometimes also included, although in the UK they are usually considered part of Western Europe (in Germany itself Germany is usually considered part of Central Europe). Historically, there are no physical landmarks that would commonly be seen as its borders. Rather, it is a concept of shared history, in opposition against the East represented by the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia, and up to World War I distinguished from the West as the area of relative political conservatism opposing the modern liberal ideas acquired by overseas trading; and ultimately from the French Revolution. Following World War I, and even more so after World War II, these modern ideas in general, and liberal democracy in particular, expanded its dominance to Austria and Germany. The concept of Central Europe fell out of usage during Cold War, shadowed by notions of Eastern and Western Europe. It may be seen in historical and cultural contexts, where it denotes areas where Germans settled and mixed with Slavs and Magyars, and where Roma and Jewish minorities made important cultural contributions. This notion has lost much of its relevance due to the Holocaust and the following ethnic division over the Oder-Neisse line with Germans transferred to the West both physically and ideologically. The term is being increasingly used again, with the recent expanses of European Union. It is sometimes joked that Central Europe is the part of the continent that is considered Eastern by Western Europeans and Western by Eastern Europeans.

Between the Alps and the Baltics

European Union According to several English-language encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica and the Columbia Encyclopedia, as well as the CIA World Factbook, the term Central Europe is taken to include: In the article on Europe, the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia counts Germany (that then reached east of the Baltic) but not Switzerland to Central Europe; Liechtenstein is not mentioned. In other articles of that encyclopedia, France and Switzerland are included. The notion of Alpine Countries extending to the Baltic Sea and the North Sea is not uncontroversial. While Germany without any doubt formerly has been considered a Central European land, both by Germans and by others, it has at least for the 19th and 20th century had an identity and self-image as located North of the Alps rather than in the Alps. This holds true even for Bavaria, the most Alpine of the German states, where most people live below the Alps.

Culturally Central-European

Several other countries also have regions that retain a Central European character, having historically been part of the central European kingdoms and empires such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg monarchy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Imperial Germany. They include:
- Belarus (western parts)
- Croatia
- Lithuania
- Romania
- Serbia (Vojvodina)
- Ukraine (Galicia, Volhynia, Podolia)

Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain

Following World War II, large parts of Europe that were culturally and historically Western became part of the Eastern bloc, which effectively neutralized the concept of Central Europe. Following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Cold War, this distinction has again come into use, often to cover those countries that had been Warsaw Pact members but are now members of NATO and the European Union, reflecting remaining differences between countries that were socialist or capitalist. The English term Central Europe was increasingly applied only to the western-most former Warsaw Pact countries (Poland to Hungary) to specify them as culturally-akin socialist countries. This usage continued after the end of the Warsaw Pact when these countries started to undergo transition. In everyday usage, this is the most common meaning of Central Europe, not least among Central Europeans for whom it is often important to point out the difference to that "Eastern Europe" that they otherwise are grouped together with. So defined, the following countries are entirely included:
- Poland
- Czech Republic
- Slovakia
- Hungary
- Romania
- Slovenia Usually excluded are:
- the Baltic countries
- Russian Orthodox and Muslim lands
- the Balkans Although Slovenia as a part of Yugoslavia was strictly speaking not a member of the Warsaw Pact, Slovenia's 20th century history has much in common with that of the other Central European countries. East Germany, on the other hand, was from 1949–1990 a loyal member of the Warsaw Pact, but would now rather be seen as the inheritors of Protestant Prussian culture than of Catholic Central Europe.

The new members of the European Union

After the enlargement of the European Union of 1 May 2004, the term Central Europe is sometimes used in a way that means "the new members of EU"— from Estonia to Malta— perhaps in particular by writers who want to avoid the term coined by Donald Rumsfeld, New Europe, which may be perceived to carry too much American ignorance of matters European. Malta and Cyprus, as well as Estonia and Latvia, are sometimes now also included, but as these new members of the EU are clearly more differentiated from most of the western EU members economically it is arguably an inaccurate construction in its own right. It can be also questioned what there is that unites the nations of a region so constructed apart from a less advanced economy. A usage that closer adheres to the common cultural traits, and also the shared experience of post-war Stalinist rule, may be less prone to cause confusion.

Remnants of the Holy Roman Empire

The German term Mitteleuropa (or alternatively its literal translation into English, Middle Europe) is sometimes used in English to refer to an area somewhat larger than most conceptions of 'Central Europe'; it refers to territories under German(ic) cultural hegemony until World War I (encompassing Austria and Germany in their interbellum-formations but usually excluding Balticum north of East Prussia). ko:중앙유럽 ja:中央ヨーロッパ

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe as a region has several alternative definitions, whereby it can denote:
- European countries of the former "Eastern Bloc"
- the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Central Europe and Russia. This new Eastern Europe has become more commonly used to identify the region since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact
- a diverse area of land stretching from east to west as follows: ::- its eastern limit is either the Ural Mountains within Russia or from the Pacific coast of the Russian Far East ::- its western limit is the boundary between the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States (sometimes excluding Kaliningrad). Politically, however, this region covers northeastern Eurasia, since Russia is one single transcontinental geo-political entity. The following countries are considered Eastern European by the United Nations:
  - Belarus
  - Bulgaria
  - Czech Republic
  - Hungary
  - Moldova
  - Poland
  - Romania
  - Russia
  - Slovakia
  - Ukraine The boundaries of Eastern Europe can be subject to considerable overlap and fluctuation depending on the context they are used in, which makes differentiation difficult. As is also true of continents, regions are only social constructs and should not be understood as physical features defined by abstract, neutral criteria. In many sources the term "Eastern Europe" still encompasses most, or all, such European countries that until the end of the "Cold War" (around 1989) were under communist regimes or direct Soviet control, i.e., the former "Eastern Bloc". However, it is currently common to include many former "Eastern Bloc" nations in the categories of Southeastern Europe/Balkans, Central Europe and Northern Europe. Today Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia are not Eastern Europe but Central Europe, because the so called "Eastern Bloc" no longer exists and in geographical terms these countries are situated more centrally in Europe.

History

As a term, the origins of "Eastern Europe" are fairly recent. For many years Europe was divided on a North-South axis, with the southern Mediterranean states having much in common, and the northern Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea bordering states also having much in common (see also Northern Europe, Nordic Countries). The term "Eastern Europe" first arose in the 19th century and was used to describe an area that was falling behind the rest of Europe economically. It was seen as a region where serfdom and reactionary autocratic governments persisted long after those things faded in the West. It was always a very vague notion, however, and many countries in the region did not fit the stereotypical view. More recently, the term "Eastern Europe" has been used to refer to all European countries that were previously under communist regimes, the so-called "Eastern Bloc". The idea of an "Iron Curtain" separating "Western Europe" and Soviet-controlled "Eastern Europe" was dominant throughout the period of Cold War which followed the Second World War. This dualism failed to account fully for some exceptions, as Yugoslavia and Albania were communist states, yet refused to be controlled by the Kremlin. In recent years, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), freeing its captive states, the term "Eastern Europe" is sometimes used to identify the region, in effect retroactively, as consisting only of these European countries that were during the decades prior to 1991 known as parts of the Soviet Union (see list below). As a cultural and ethnic difference, the rise of nationalism in the 1800s and onward coined the term Eastern Europe to by synonymous with "Slavic Europe", as opposed to Germanic (Western) Europe. This concept was re-enforced during the years leading up to World War II and was often used in a racist terminology to characterize Eastern/Slavic culture as being backwards and inferior to Western/Germanic culture, language, and customs. Eastern Europe would then refer to imaginary line which divided predominantly German lands from predominantly Slavic lands. The dividing line has thus changed over time as a result of the World Wars, as well as numerous expulsions and genocides. As the ideological division has now disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other, has reemerged. It follows the so-called Huntington line of "clashing civilizations" corresponding roughly to the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the eastern boundaries separating Norway, Finland, Estonia and Latvia from Russia, continues east of Lithuania, cuts in northwestern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then along the line now separating Slovenia and Croatia from the rest of ex-Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line coincides with the historic border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, whereas in the north it marks the then eastern boundaries of Kingdom of Sweden and Teutonic Order, and the subsequent spread of Lutheran Reformation. The peoples to the west and north of the Huntington line are Protestant or Catholic; they shared most of the common experiences of Western European history -- feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. The 1995 and 2004 enlargements arguably brought the European Union's eastern border up to the boundary between Western and Eastern Orthodox civilizations. Most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, and the various European microstates) were now EU members, while most of Europe's historically Eastern Orthodox countries (with the exception of Greece and Cyprus) were outside the EU. A view that Europe is divided strictly into the West and the East is considered pejorative by many in the nominally eastern countries, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism in Europe overall. Europeans from the formerly communist-controlled countries tend not to classify themselves as "East Europeans" but prefer to include themselves in other groups, associating themselves with Central Europe, with Northern Europe, or with Southern Europe. For example, many people in Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Czech Republic or Slovenia may feel the label stigmatizing in comparison with countries that successfully have asserted their belonging to "the West" despite their equally, or more, "eastern" location — and history as parts of Imperial Russia (Finland) or Eastern Orthodoxy (Greece).

Former Eastern Bloc

The [http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm United Nations Statistics Division] defines Eastern Europe as:
- Belarus
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Hungary
- Moldova
- Poland
- Romania
- Russia
- Slovakia
- Ukraine In addition, these countries were all formerly within the Soviet Union and are sometimes categorized as Eastern European for reasons of historical political affiliation:
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Estonia
- Georgia
- Latvia
- Lithuania Note: The forcible annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the Soviet Union in 1940 was considered illegal by the United States and most Western European democracies and the three nations were de jure not considered parts of the Soviet Union.

Southeastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula

Commonly this definition is expanded to include these other previously communist countries:
- Albania
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Republic of Macedonia
- Serbia and Montenegro Usually also includes (as Southeastern Europe),
- Croatia
- Slovenia Greece and the European part of Turkey are usually not included, as they are old NATO members, however they are geographically part of Balkan Peninsula. Balkan Peninsula however usually excludes Croatia and Slovenia which are sometimes included since they are former republics of Yugoslavia, yet one is a EU candidate in process of negotiations and the latter is an EU member since 2004. In addition, politically Balkan Peninsula nations are countries of Southeastern Europe that did not receive a candidate status from EU and are not expected to enter EU before 2012, explaining why the 4 countries mentioned earlier are not part of the region.

Central Europe

The previously communist countries of Central Europe became included in the era of the Cold War:
- the Czech Republic - part of former Czechoslovakia
- Hungary
- Poland
- Slovakia - part of former Czechoslovakia
- Slovenia - formerly within Yugoslavia and Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Croatia - formerly within Yugoslavia and Austro-Hungarian Empire Prior to the German reunification, East Germany was often counted to Eastern Europe. Croatia is in the region too (for the greater part), which explains why it is sometimes excluded from this group. Also all countries in the region entered EU in 2004, while Croatia is still a candidate country, so politically it is easier to separate it from the group at least until it enters EU (planned for 2009). For the big part, all of the countries above are the former Roman Catholic parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire(only a little part of today's Poland was in the Empire but it is clear geographically that it lays in Central Europe), which used to be considered Central Europe. This explains why Austria is so, strongly, politically tied to these 6 countries and at times itself considered the Western European country within Central Europe. (I.E. a recent case where Austria so strongly supported Croatia on its way to EU membership that the start of Turkish negotiation talks was nearly stagnated - say many critics.)

See also


- Northern Europe
- Southeastern Europe
- Enlargement of the European Union

External link


- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-2/europe.html Civic Education Trends in Post-Communist Countries of Central and Eastern Europe]
- ko:동유럽 ja:東ヨーロッパ

Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish, respectively. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the 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 Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been 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 Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.

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 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. 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, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Mongolia due to Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes. 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 US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, 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 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 was reported as language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it as #10 language 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, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece 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 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:

Official status

Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine) and the unrecognized Moldovan Republic of Transnistria. 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, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 11% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia.

Dialects

Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large 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 dialects typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other. 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 ), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages


- Fenia or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula.
- Runglish: Russian-English pidgin.

Writing system

Alphabet

Runglish 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 majuscule forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced , (conventional transcription, not IPA). For information on an informal approach on transliterating Russian into English, see the article Transliteration of Russian into English.

Orthography

Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, 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 sometimes said to be velarized, but this is only the case for /l/.) The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels (except /u/) tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. 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 stucture can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/, /ɡ/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones , only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive. It should be noted that palatalization is a phonological concept, and not all 'soft' consonants are phonetically palatalized. The velar and labial consonants are truly palatalized, which means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. The coronal stops, however, are phonetically laminal. In addition, in the case of /t/ and /d/, the tongue is raised enough to produce frication, thus making affricate-like. (There is no contrast between frication and no frication, though, as /ts/ is never palatalized.) are postalveolar with a flat tongue (laminal retroflex).

Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional 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, 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

Western European See History of 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, are as follows: 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.)

The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language) Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань ) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат ).

Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). 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

See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century) See also:
- Examples of literary language (12-20th 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. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century. 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. Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.

References

The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:

In English


- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954

In Russian


- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987. Many further references are listed in the books above.

See also

Language description


- Russian alphabet
- Russian grammar
- Russian orthography
- Russian phonetics
- History of Russian language

Related languages


- East Slavic languages
- Church Slavonic language
- Great Russian language
- Old Church Slavonic language
- Old Russian language

Other


- List of Russian language topics
- List of English words of Russian origin
- Russian literature
- Russian humour
- Russian proverbs
- Reforms of Russian orthography
- Transliteration of Russian into English
- Volapuk encoding
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- List of commonly confused homonyms in Russian
- Common phrases in different languages
- Runglish

External links


- [http://www.declan-software.com/russian Russian language learning software]
- [http://www.russianlessons.net/ Online Russian language lessons]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries]
- [http://overstuffed-closet.net/russian The Russian Language Fanlisting]
- [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language]
- [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)]
- [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links]
- [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.]
- [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language]
- [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian]
- [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)]
- [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary]
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text]
- [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian]
- [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses]
- [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category]
- [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA]
- [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish]
- [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/ Multilingual Russian slang dictionaries]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Finland Category:Languages of Russia Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Kazakhstan Category:Languages of Georgia Category:Languages of Armenia Category:Languages of Azerbaijan Category:Languages of Turkmenistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Moldova Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Kyrgyzstan Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of China Category:Languages of Mongolia Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Bulgaria Category:Russian language Category:East Slavic languages ko:러시아어 ms:Bahasa Russia ja:ロシア語 simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย

Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages, those being most notably Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics.

Main features

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. There are six noun cases: #nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative), #genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun), #dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), #accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases), #ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), #vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express location (otherwise expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, small islands, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. There are six general tenses in Latin (technically they are tense/aspect/mood complexes). The indicative mood can be used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative. The following examples are of the first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") in the indicative mood and the active voice:

Primary sequence tenses

# present (laudo, "I praise") # imperfect (laudabam, "I was praising") # future (laudabo, "I shall praise," "I will praise")

Secondary sequence tenses

# perfect (laudavi, "I praised", "I have praised") # pluperfect (laudaveram, "I had praised") # future perfect (laudavero, "I shall have praised," "I will have praised") The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the primary sequence.

Latin and Romance

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative. In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico Ancient Greek is a compulsory subject.

Latin and English

See Latin influence in English for a more complete exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, hundreds of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink). Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/teachem2/thennow/]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages.

Latin education

The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts), backed up