East Slavic languages
| East Slavic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Eastern Europe |
| Linguistic classification: |
Indo-European
|
| Proto-language: | Old East Slavic |
| Subdivisions: |
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| ISO 639-5: | |
| Glottolog: | east1426 |
Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language
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The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. The existing East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian;Rusyn is considered to be either a separate language or a dialect of Ukrainian.
The East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor, the language of the medieval Kievan Rus' (9th to 13th centuries). All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications.
The East Slavic territory shows a definite linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on the one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, making it virtually impossible to draw a line between the two languages. Central or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original and archaic features. As well, existing several centuries within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Belarusian and Ukrainian share many common elements, lexical and grammatical above all. Ruthenian, the mixed Belarusian-Ukrainian literary language with Church Slavonic substratum and Polish adstratum, was together with Middle Polish an official language in Belarus and Ukraine until the end of the 18th century.
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Wikipedia