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RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

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Originally appearing in Volume V23, Page 914 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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RUSSIAN See also:LANGUAGE . For the characteristics which this See also:special. See also:branch of the See also:Slavonic See also:family shares with the See also:rest, for a table showing the Russian See also:alphabet and the transliterations of it used in this and in other (non-linguistic) articles of the See also:Encyclopaedia, and for the points which distinguish Russian alike from the See also:Southern (See also:Balkan) and from the See also:North-Western (See also:Polish, Cech, &c.) branches of Slavonic, see , See also:SLAVS. These latter points, fully treated under corresponding sections of the See also:article SLAVS, are here summarized: I. Proto-Slavonic (Proto-Sl.) See also:half vowels 4 and i have disappeared as such: u (1), though still written at the ends of words, is See also:mute; it serves but to show that the foregoing consonant is " hard." See V. below for " hard " and " soft " (denoted by ') consonants, not the " hard." =surd, See also:tennis, "soft "=sonant, See also:media of Eng. usage. Where a vowel was indispensable to help out a See also:group of consonants, u has been replaced by o or e, but these vowels sometimes appear without such See also:justification (e.g. agoni', See also:Lat. ignis) ; I when so needed becomes e, otherwise it disappears or else leaves a trace in the `` softness " of the preceding consonant, in which See also:case it is still written: Old Slavonic (O.S.), semi, " See also:sleep "; dint, " See also:day" ; R. See also:song (e mute), denl(d'en'). II. Proto-S1. y survives in R. and Polish. The See also:sound is a " high-mixed-narrow i," pronounced with the lips as for i and the See also:tongue as for u, not unlike Eng. y in " See also:rhythm." After labials there is a distinct w sound before the vowel. After gutturals it has become i. IV. Proto-Sl. nasals: q. (Fr. on), became R. u; g (Fr. in), R.

'a, ja: O.S. pgtl, " way "; pgtl, " five," R. putt, p'ati. V. Softening (Palatalization, &c) : Proto-SI. tj, dj gave R. Proto-Sl. * svotja, " See also:

candle "; *medja, " boundary "; R. sveca, m'eza. Proto-Sl. pj, bj, vj, mj gave R. and S. Slay. pl, bl, vl, ml, e.g. R. z' eml'a; Polish, ziemia, " See also:land." Before Proto-Sl. soft vowels e, e, e, i,, I consonants were affected, the tongue being raised in anticipation of the narrow vowel, and so not making so clean a contact with the See also:palate. Then what amounted to a new j See also:developed in R., as I became practically j; e and e (orig. e) came to sound as je, e as ja at the beginning of a syllable, and all together with i began very much to soften the preceding consonant in See also:literary R.; however, this new j never See also:broke down the consonant into a palatalized sibilant or affricate, though it had this effect in See also:White Russian (Wh. R.) and Polish. The result is that almost every consonant in Russian can be pronounced " hard " or " soft," a distinction which is very difficult for a foreigner to make, as his tendency is to overdo the softness and pronounce a full j after the consonant instead of the palatal See also:element melting into it. This is encouraged by the alphabetic See also:system by which the letters e (I), 1o, x, stand for je, ju, ja at the beginning of a syllable, but after a consonant merely indicate that the consonant is soft, the vowel being the same as in g, y, a (e, u, a), e.g.

T A stands fort'-a rather than for 1 -ja. A soft consonant in its turn narrows the vowel before it, e.g. the vowel in jell, " See also:

fir," is like a in " Yale "; that in jelu, * marks a hypothetical See also:form " See also:ate," like e in " yell ": e and i (e) are now indistinguishable, except that accented e before a hard consonant has a tendency to be pronounced jo, e.g. s' elu, " of villages," is pronounced s' ol, but alit' , " sat," s' el: e =jo is sometimes denoted by e. VI. See also:Great Russian has kept g where Little Russian (Lit. R.) and Wh. R., like tech and High Sorb, now have h. The above phonetic peculiarities have marked Russian as far back as we can trace it. In the earliest documents it appears with an apparatus of grammatical forms practically identical with that ascribed to See also:primitive Slavonic. The See also:history of the language is not so much that of its phonetic decay as that of its morphological simplification and syntactic development. The tracing of this See also:process is rendered difficult by the fact that O.S. was the ecclesiastical and literary language until the 17th See also:century, and though in the end the O.S. texts suffer modifications, producing the Russian form of See also:Church Slavonic, it is only by See also:accident that the Russian forms appear in them. Russian is better represented in additions made by the See also:scribe, as in the See also:colophon of the Ostromfr See also:gospel (A.D. 1056/57), the See also:oldest dated O.S.

MS. In a certain number of legal documents dating from the See also:

lath century onwards Russian forms definitely predominate, but the subject-See also:matter is too limited to offer much material. Borrowings.—The effect of the Church language upon Russian has been very strong, comparable to that of Latin upon See also:French or See also:English: O.S. forms of words and suffixes, betrayed by their phonetic peculiarities though pronounced more or less a la russe, have in some cases ousted the native forms, in other cases the two exist See also:side by side; the Slay. form generally has the more dignified or metaphorical, the Russian the simpler and more See also:direct sense: even some of the grammatical terminations (e.g. pres. See also:part. See also:act.; certain forms of the adj., &c.) are Slavonic; but speakers are quite unconscious of using any-thing that is not Russian (see S. Bulic, Church Slavonic Elements in See also:Modern Russian, St P., 1893), and not till the 18th century did even grammarians understand the difference. Less important elements have been the Tatar which gave names for many See also:Oriental things such as weapons, jewels, stuffs, garments and some terms concerned with See also:government, and the Polish, which during the 17th century supplied many terms needed to See also:express See also:European things and ideas. In the 18th century such importations were made from Latin and all the Western European See also:languages, in See also:Peter's See also:time mostly from See also:German' and Dutch (for nautical terms, English supplied some), in See also:Catherine's rather from French, which had become the language of the See also:aristocracy. During the first See also:quarter of the 19th century modern Russian found itself and discarded superfluous Slavonic and European borrowings alike. Since then fresh See also:loan-words have mostly belonged to the See also:international quasi-See also:Greek terminology, though like German R. sometimes prefers analogous compounds made from its own roots. Literary Russian as spoken by educated See also:people throughout the See also:empire is the See also:Moscow See also:dialect (see below) modified by these influences. It is still a highly inflected language, comparable in that respect rather to Latin and Greek than to the languages of western See also:Europe, though during historic time it has lost many of the grammatical forms whose full development we can study in O.S., and whose presence we can assert in the scanty remains of Old R. This process has relieved it of the dual number, See also:save for certain survivals; in the nouns, of the vocative case (save for certain ecclesiastical forms), and manyof the distinctions between the declensions, especially in the plural, the oblique cases of the See also:simple, and the more cumbrous forms of the See also:compound, See also:adjective; in the verbs, of the supine, the imperfect, the See also:aorist and the conditional (now reduced to a particle) ; but this simplification leaves it with six cases, Nom., Acc., Gen., Dat., Instrumental and Locative, three genders, three substantival declensions, -a, -o, -i, and traces of -u and consonantal stems, a special pronominal declension with many tricky forms, an adjective which takes its See also:place between them, and a system of numerals in which a See also:compromise between See also:grammar and See also:logic has produced a See also:kind of See also:maze. The forms of the verb are easier, as only the See also:present indic. has three persons, the imperat. has but the and, and the past is a participle, which, having discarded the copula, distinguishes only gender and number.

The See also:

infinitive and four participles offer no special difficulty, but the gerundives or verbal adverbs, from the old masc. nom. sing., are troublesome. The curious mechanism by which these few verbal forms are by means of the aspects made to express most of our tenses and other shades of meaning of which even English is incapable, is briefly explained under SLAVS. On the whole the syntax is simple, the .periods which See also:imitation of Latin and German once brought into See also:fashion having given place to the shorter sentences of French and English See also:models. Such a language, though less difficult than it is generally supposed, is learned much better if some preliminary study is devoted to the See also:accidence, before the student launches out into conversation, as otherwise the See also:habit may be acquired of disregarding the terminations and speaking very incorrectly. Dialects.—Russian dialects fall into two See also:main divisions—Great (Velikorusskij), including White (Belorusskij) Russian, and Little Russian (Malorusskij). The latter is spoken in a See also:belt reaching from See also:Galicia and the See also:Northern Carpathians (see RUTHENIANS) through See also:Podolia and See also:Volhynia and the governments of See also:Kiev, See also:Chernigov, See also:Poltava, See also:Kharkov and the southern part of See also:Voronezh to the See also:Don and the See also:Kuban upon which the Dnepr See also:Cossacks were settled. To the See also:south of this belt in " New See also:Russia" the See also:population is much mixed, but Little Russians on the whole predominate. In all there must be about 30,000,000 Little Russians. The Great Russian See also:division includes all other Russian speakers—the main See also:body to the N. and E. of the Little Russians, the settlers in See also:Siberia, the See also:Caucasus and along the southern See also:coast, the educated classes, officials and many towns-men throughout the empire, probably not less than 70,000,000 speakers exclusive of White Russians. On the whole it is very conservative, and therefore, in spite of its vast extent, is wonder-fully See also:uniform. It falls into two main dialect See also:groups—the northern or o group and the southern or a group. The See also:line between them runs roughly E.S.E. from See also:Pskov to the Oka and then eastwards to the Urals.

The northern group is the more conservative and pronounces very nearly according to the spelling, unaccented o remaining o, but o is in See also:

general rather like u, while e before hard consonants is See also:apt to be jo and before soft consonants i. The southern part of this group, comprising most of the governments of See also:Vladimir and See also:Yaroslavl with adjoining parts of See also:Tver and See also:Kostroma, are alone See also:free from a further peculiarity, a tendency to mix up c and which can be traced in the See also:ancient documents of See also:Novgorod and has spread with the Novgorod colonists across the whole of N. Russia to the Urals and Siberia. These distant dialects have adopted many words from the Ugro-Finnish natives. The southern or a group of dialects pronounces unaccented o, a and even i as a or ja; with this goes a tendency to pronounce g as h, and to mix up u and v. The Moscow dialect, which is the See also:foundation of the literary language, and White Russian, are both best classed with the a dialect. The Moscow dialect really covers a very small See also:area, not even the whole of the government of Moscow, but See also:political causes have made it the language of the governing classes and hence of literature. It is a border dialect, having the southern See also:pronunciation of' unaccented o as a, but in the jo for accented e before a hard consonant it is akin to the North and it has also kept the northern pronunciation of g instead of the southern h. So too unaccented e sounds like i or ji. White Russian, in the governments of See also:Vitebsk, Mohilev and See also:Minsk, and adjoining parts of Pskov, See also:Smolensk, Chernigov and See also:Vilna (some zo,000,000 speakers), appears at first so different from Great Russian that it was See also:long classed as a See also:separate division. It was the See also:official language of the Lithuanian principality afterwards merged in See also:Poland and hence was under strong Polish See also:influence. Little R. was under somewhat similar influence, so that the two dialects have approximated in some respects; but originally White Russian was not much nearer Lit.

R. than was any other south Gt. R. dialect. In its main characteristic Wh. R. approximates to Polish, but this likeness goes deeper than the See also:

surface Polonisms above referred to, as it falls into its natural place in the See also:classification of Slavonic languages by the phenomena of " softening." Accordingly t and d, when soft or before soft v, become c and di, e.g. R.t'ilo, " body," d'elo, " See also:deed," m'edv'edf, " See also:bear," Wh. R. telo, dielo, m'adzv'edz', Polish ciao, dzielo, niediwiedi. Other special points which distinguish Wh. R. from the other a dialects are a tendency to confuse u and v and to pronounce either of them as a w, the same sound also taking the place of hard 1 closing a syllable; r is always hard; f, a sound essentially non-Slavonic, appears as ch or chv, e.g. chrancuz, R. francuz, " a Frenchman," Chv'odar, R. F'odor, " See also:Theodore." In accidence we may See also:note the preservation of the vocative; of the sibilants before case terminations where R. has restored gutturals by See also:analogy, e.g. locatives nazi, rote, See also:sash, R. nogg, mkt, soche, from nogd, " See also:foot," rukd, " See also:hand," sochd, " plough "; and of the 3rd sing. pres. ind. in t for or without any t. V'adz'ee or v'adz' a for R. ved'otii, " leads." On the boundary between Wh. R. and the Novgorod dialect the former has the latter's confusion of c and i. The best See also:account of Wh.

R. is E. Karskij, See also:

Sketch of the Sounds and Forms of Wh. R. Speech (Moscow, 1886); there is a See also:dictionary by Nosovic (St P., 1875). Bersonov, Wh. R. Songs (Moscow, 1871), and P. V. Schein in a whole See also:series of publications give See also:good specimens of the dialect. The Little Russian dialect claims to be a literary language; it has established this claim in Galicia (see RUTHENIANS), but its use as such is much restricted in Russia. The Little Russians differ from the Great Russians not only in language but in See also:physical type, customs, domestic See also:architecture and folk-See also:lore; but though Russophobes have tried to prove that this is due to the Finnish element in the Great Russians, it cannot be substantiated, and the Little Russians, especially the descendants of the Cossacks, have no small Tatar element in them. For the last three centuries they have been under strong Polish influence, and this has had great effect upon the vocabulary but not much on See also:phonetics or See also:morphology.

Little Russian is divided into three main groups of dialects: those of See also:

Hungary, which show an approximation to Slovak; those of Galicia, which rather recall Polish; and those of the Ukrain and other districts in Russia, which gradually shade into South Great Russian and White R., though the love of the sound a is noticeably absent. Little Russian is rather characterized by itacism; for See also:original y and original i have coincided in a sound between i and y not unlike the Eng. See also:short i, and original e, also e and even o after having been lengthened in See also:compensation for lost semi-vowels are now represented by i. Further, Little Russian has reduced the See also:common Russian softening, only keeping it before a and o and i fore and o, and hardening the consonant before e and original i. In common with Wh. R. it has It for g, a vocative case, gutturals made sibilant before i (for e) in oblique cases, 3rd sing. without the t, 1st plur. in -mo and -me instead of mu, nn for nj, ll for lj, tt for tj, w for u, v and hard 1, but all these occur more or less throughout S. Russian and only tend to a superficial resemblance. These phonetic peculiarities are not universal, but the presence of the narrowed e, e and o is sufficient to See also:mark a dialect as Little Russian. The Russian alphabet is modified for Little Russianuse as r =It and hence t = g; a is used for the e which does not soften the preceding vowel, it for the thick and i for the pure i. BtseloGRAPHY.—Dictionaries: Dict. of the R. Language, published by the Second See also:Section of the Imperial See also:Academy of Sciences (4 vols., St See also:Petersburg, 1847; new ed., 1891 ); V. I. See also:Dahl, Explanatory D, of Living Great R.

Language (Moscow, 188o), re-ed. by J. Baudouin de See also:

Courtenay (1906); I. I. Sreznevskij, Materials for a Dict. of Old R. Language (to T.) (St P., 1903) ; See also:Attempt (Opyti'i) at a Great R. Provincial Dict. (Supplement to the old Dict. of the Acad.) (St P., 1852) ; A. Alexandrow, R.-Eng. and Eng.-R. Dict. (2 vols., St P.) ; J. Pawlowsky, R.-Deutsches Worterbuch (See also:Riga, 1900). Little Russian Dictionary: Eug.

Zelechowski, Ruthenisch-Deutsches Worterbuch (See also:

Lemberg, 1886). Grammars: Th. See also:Buslaev, See also:Historical Grammar of the R. Language (Moscow, 1875) ; A. Sobolevskij, Lectures on the History of the R. Language (St P., 1891); id., Attempt at R. Dialectology, pt. i. (Gt. andJWh. R.) (St P., 1897); W. R. Morfill, R. Grammar (See also:Oxford, 1887) ; P.

Motti, R. Conversation Grammar (See also:

London, 1890) ; C R. Reiff, R. Grammar (London, 1883) ; O. Asboth, Kurve R. Grammatik See also:Leipzig, 1900) ; R. Abicht, See also:Die Hauptschwierigkeiten der R. Sprache Leipzig, 1897) ; P. See also:Boyer, M. See also:Speranski and S. Harper, Russian Reader (See also:Chicago, 1906). Little Russian Grammar: St.

Smal'-Stockyi and Fed. Gartner, Ruska Grammatyka (Lemberg, 1893) ; see also See also:

Miklosich, Vergl. See also:Gram. d. Slay. Sprachen, passim (See also:Vienna, 1875-83). Many accented texts are published by R. See also:Gerhard, Leipzig. Th. Buslaev, Historical R. Chrestomathy (Moscow, 1861), gives specimens of Russo-Slavonic, Old R. and Dialects. The See also:chief See also:periodicals containing scientific papers on the R. language are the Sbornik (See also:Miscellany) and Izvestia (Bulletin) of the Second Section of the St P. Academy, and the Zapiski (Transactions) of the Philological Faculties of the Russian See also:universities.

Old Russian Texts are published mostly by the Obscestvo L'ubitelej Drevnej Pis'mennosti (See also:

Soc. of Lovers of Ancient Literature) in St Petersburg. (E. H.

End of Article: RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

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