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Russian (language)

Russian
русский язык (russkiy yazik)
Pronunciation [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]
Native to Russia, other post-Soviet states
Native speakers
150 million (2010)
260 million (L1 plus L2 speakers) (2012)
Early forms
Old East Slavic
  • Russian
Cyrillic (Russian alphabet)
Russian Braille
Official status
Official language in
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated by Russian Language Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ru
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog russ1263
Linguasphere 53-AAA-ea < 53-AAA-e
(varieties: 53-AAA-eaa to 53-AAA-eat)
Russianlanguagemap.png
States where Russian is an official language (dark blue) or a de facto working language (teal)
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Russian (ру́сский язы́к, russkiy yazik, pronounced [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]) is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine and Latvia, and to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union and former participants of the Eastern Bloc. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond.

It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the seventh by total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.


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