Portal:Russian language
Portal maintenance status: (August 2018)
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Introduction
Russian (русский язык, tr. rússkiy yazýkcode: rus promoted to code: ru ) is an East Slavic language, which is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely spoken throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991.
Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onward.
Selected general articles
Pushkin House as seen across the Malaya Neva and Exchange Bridge. The pediment is crowned with the bronze statues of Neptune, Mercury, and Ceres.
The Pushkin House (Russian: Пушкинский дом, Pushkinsky Dom) is the familiar name of the Institute of Russian Literature in St. Petersburg. It is part of a network of institutions affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. Read more...
The Russian language in Latvia is the second most commonly used language at home (37.2% in the 2011 census) and 26.9% of the population are ethnic Russians. Read more...- Vowel reduction in Russian differs in the standard language and dialects, which differ from one another. Several ways of vowel reduction (and its absence) are distinguished.
There are five vowel phonemes in Standard Russian. Vowels tend to merge when they are unstressed. The vowels /a/ and /o/ have the same unstressed allophones for a number of dialects and reduce to an unclear schwa. Unstressed /e/ may become more central and merge with /i/. Under some circumstances, /a/, /e/, /i/ and /o/ may all merge. The fifth vowel, /u/, may also be centralized but does not typically merge with any of the other vowels.
Other types of reduction are phonetic, such as that of high vowels (/i/ and /u/), which become near-close so игра́ть ('to play') is pronounced [ɪˈɡratʲ], and мужчи́на ('man') is pronounced [mʊˈɕːinə]. Read more... - Surzhyk (Ukrainian: су́ржик, translit. surzhyk, IPA: [ˈsurʒɪk]) refers to a range of mixed (macaronic) sociolects of Ukrainian and Russian languages used in certain regions of Ukraine and adjacent lands. There is no unifying set of characteristics; the term is used for "norm-breaking, non-obedience to or non-awareness of the rules of the Ukrainian and Russian standard languages". Read more...
- The first known mention of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine refer to a small ethnic sub-group of Russians known as the Goriuns who resided in Putyvl region (what is modern northern Ukraine). These mentions date back to the times of Grand Duchy of Lithuania or perhaps even earlier.
The Russian language in Ukraine has primarily come to exist in that country through two channels: the migration of ethnic Russians into what later became Ukraine and through the adoption of the Russian language as a language of communication by Ukrainians. Read more... - Balachka (Russian: балачка, IPA: [bɐˈlat͡ɕkə]; Ukrainian: балачка) is a term used to label the dialects spoken by Cossacks living in Russia. Originally the term was applied to the dialects of Ukrainian spoken in the region around the Kuban River, however the usage of this term has recently broadened to include the Cossack dialects spoken on the Don, Terek, Ural and even those further out into Asiatic Russia and Central Asia.
The term originated from the Ukrainian term "balakaty'", which colloquially means "to talk", "to chat", and was originally used in the Russian language as a derogatory term to describe the language used by the Kuban Cossacks which differed considerably from literary Russian.
For the Don Cossacks this was due to their historical proximity to Ukraine (Little Russia), and for the Kuban Cossacks due to their descendency from the Ukrainian speaking Black Sea Cossacks. The Kuban Cossacks group have two separate dialects, one is the Black-Sea Cossack group spoken in the Taman peninsula which is similar to literary Ukrainian, the second is the Mountainous regions of the Forecaucasus, where due to historical interactions with the Circassians population a different accent and vocabulary developed. Read more... - The Russian language is among the top fifteen most spoken languages in the United States. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many Russians have migrated to the United States and brought the language with them. Most Russian speakers in the United States today are Russian Jews. According to the 2010 United States Census the number of Russian speakers was 854,955, which made Russian the 12th most spoken language in the country. Read more...
- The list of Russian language topics stores articles on grammar and other language-related topics that discuss (or should discuss) peculiarities of the Russian language (as well as of other languages) or provide examples from Russian language for these topics.
The list complements the and does not overlap with it.
The "—" marks articles where the information about Russian language is inadequate or missing. Read more... - The Moscow dialect or Moscow accent (Russian: Московское произношение, tr. Moskovskoye proiznoshenye, IPA: [mɐˈskofskəjə prəɪznɐˈʂenʲɪɪ]), sometimes Central Russian, is the spoken Russian language variety used in Moscow. Influenced by both Northern and Southern Russian dialects, the Moscow dialect is the basis of the Russian literary language. Read more...
- Russian grammar employs an Indo-European inflexional structure, with considerable adaptation.
Russian has a highly inflexional morphology, particularly in nominals (nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals). Russian literary syntax is a combination of a Church Slavonic heritage, a variety of loaned and adopted constructs, and a standardized vernacular foundation.
The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one, with some additional characteristic forms. Russian dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms discarded by the literary language. Read more...
Members of a Russophone association supporting the 2006 decision of the Kharkiv City Council to make the Russian language official at local level.
The Russian language is the most common first language in the Donbass and Crimea regions of Ukraine, and the predominant language in large cities in the East and South of the country. The usage and status of the language (currently Ukrainian is the only state language of Ukraine) is an object of political disputes within Ukrainian society. Nevertheless, Russian is a widely used language in Ukraine in pop culture and informal and business communications. Read more...- Russian cursive is a printed variant of the Russian cursive (when it is reproduced in ABC books and other places) and is typically referred to as (ру́сский) рукопи́сный шрифт, "(Russian) handwritten font". It is the handwritten form of the modern Russian Cyrillic script, used instead of the block letters seen in printed material. In addition, Russian italics for lowercase letters are often based on Russian cursive (such as lowercase т, which resembles Latin m). Most handwritten Russian, especially in personal letters and schoolwork, uses the cursive alphabet. In Russian schools most children are taught from first grade how to write with this script. Read more...
- Trasianka (Belarusian: трасянка, IPA: [traˈsʲanka]) refers to a mixed form of speech in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures alternate in rapid succession. There is a similar phenomenon in Ukraine, an Ukrainian–Russian language mixture, called surzhyk. Read more...
- Russian formalism was a school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir Propp, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Boris Tomashevsky, Grigory Gukovsky who revolutionised literary criticism between 1914 and the 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, and on structuralism as a whole. The movement's members had a relevant influence on modern literary criticism, as it developed in the structuralist and post-structuralist periods. Under Stalin it became a pejorative term for elitist art.
Russian formalism was a diverse movement, producing no unified doctrine, and no consensus amongst its proponents on a central aim to their endeavours. In fact, "Russian Formalism" describes two distinct movements: the OPOJAZ (Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Yazyka, Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Linguistic Circle. Therefore, it is more precise to refer to the "Russian Formalists", rather than to use the more encompassing and abstract term of "Formalism".
The term "formalism" was first used by the adversaries of the movement, and as such it conveys a meaning explicitly rejected by the Formalists themselves. In the words of one of the foremost Formalists, Boris Eichenbaum: "It is difficult to recall who coined this name, but it was not a very felicitous coinage. It might have been convenient as a simplified battle cry but it fails, as an objective term, to delimit the activities of the "Society for the Study of Poetic Language." Read more... - ====Overview====
Russian has a somewhat complex hierarchy of animacy in which syntactically animate nouns may include both animate and inanimate objects (like mushrooms and dances). Overall, the border between animate and inanimate places humans and animals in the former and plants, etc., in the latter, thus basing itself more so on sentience than life.
Animacy functions as a subgender through which noun cases intersect in a phenomenon called syncretism, which here can be either nominative-accusative or genitive-accusative. Inanimate nouns have accusative forms that take on the same forms as their nominative, with animate nouns marked by having their genitive forms resemble the nominative.
For example, syncretism conditioned by referential animacy results in forms like the following:- NOM stol ‘table’ -> ACC stol, like nom (exhibiting nom-acc syncretism);
- NOM kot ‘cat’ -> ACC kota, like gen (exhibiting gen-acc syncretism).
Russification (Russian: Русификация, Russifikatsija) or Russianization is a form of cultural assimilation process during which non-Russian communities, voluntarily or not, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one.
In a historical sense, the term refers to both official and unofficial policies of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia, aimed at Russian domination.
The major areas of Russification are politics and culture. In politics, an element of Russification is assigning Russian nationals to leading administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business and strong influence of the Russian language on national idioms. The shifts in demographics in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered as a form of Russification as well. Read more...- Reduplication in Russian is used to intensify meaning in different ways.
Reduplication is also observable in borrowed words, such as "пинг-понг" ([pʲinˈpoŋk]; ping-pong) and "зигзаг" ([zʲɪɡˈzak]; zig-zag), but since the words were borrowed as is from other languages, they are not examples of reduplication as it works in the grammar of Russian. Read more... - Old East Slavic or Old Russian was a language used during the 10th–15th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of Kievan Rus'. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, in the area today occupied by Belarus, central and northern Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. Read more...
Page from the Spiridon Psalter in Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic, also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Macedonia, Ukraine, Slovenia, and Croatia. The language appears also in the services of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America. It was also used by the Orthodox Churches in Romanian lands until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, as well as by Roman Catholic Croats in the Early Middle Ages.
It is also co-used by Greek Catholic Churches, which are under Roman communion, in Slavic countries, for example the Croatian, Slovak and Ruthenian Greek Catholics, as well as by the Roman Catholic Church (Croatian and Czech recensions, see below).
In addition, Church Slavonic is used by some churches which consider themselves Orthodox but are not in communion with the Orthodox Church, such as the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, the Russian True Orthodox Church and others. The Russian Old Believers and the Co-Believers do also use Church Slavonic. Read more...- In Russian grammar, the system of declension is elaborate and complex. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, most numerals and other particles are declined for two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and six grammatical cases (see below); some of these parts of speech in the singular are also declined by three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). This gives many spelling combinations for most of the words, which is needed for grammatical agreement within and (often) outside the proposition. Also, there are several paradigms for each declension with numerous irregular forms.
Russian is more conservative in its declensions than many other modern Indo-European languages (English, for example, has almost no declensions remaining in the language). The complexity of its declensions resembles older languages such as Latin and Ancient Greek more than most modern languages. Read more... - Russian is the first language of more than 150,000 people in Azerbaijan, predominantly ethnic Russians, as well as of Russified Azeris, Ukrainians, Jews, and other minorities. In 1994, 38% of Azerbaijanis spoke Russian fluently as a second language. Read more...
- The Russian alphabet (Russian: русский алфавит, tr. rússkij alfavít, IPA: [ˈruskʲɪj ɐɫfɐˈvʲit]) uses letters from the Cyrillic script. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. Read more...
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic (/sləˈvɒnɪk/, /slæˈ-/), also known as Old Church Slavic or Old Slavic (/ˈslɑːvɪk,ˈslæv-/), was the first Slavic literary language (autonym словѣ́ньскъ ѩꙁꙑ́къ, slověnĭskŭ językŭ). It is also referred to as Paleo-Slavic (Paleoslavic) or Palaeo-Slavic (Palaeoslavic), not to be confused with the Proto-Slavic. It is often abbreviated to OCS.
The 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius are credited with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek ecclesiastical texts as part of the Christianization of the Slavs. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (now in Greece).
It played an important role in the history of the Slavic languages and served as a basis and model for later Church Slavonic traditions, and some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches use this later Church Slavonic as a liturgical language to this day. Read more...- In Russian, the term spelling rule is used to describe a number of rules relating to the spelling of words in the language that would appear in most cases to deviate from a strictly phonetic transcription.
All the spelling rules found in the Russian language dictate that certain consonants cannot be followed either under any circumstance or in an unstressed syllable by certain vowels. In most cases where spelling rules exist, they do not actually affect the pronunciation. This is a result of the fact that five of the eight Russian consonants for which spelling rules of one sort or another apply can only be either "hard" or "soft" and cannot be both. Only with the three velar consonants, which like most Russian consonants have both a hard and a soft form, does the spelling rule actually reflect phonetically based pronunciation.
Spelling rules are of major importance in the study of Russian morphology. They have a very considerable effect on the declension of nouns and adjectives and the conjugation of verbs because many of the endings produce consonant-vowel combinations that the spelling rules strictly forbid. In some cases where stress dictates whether or not a spelling rule is to be applied, "mixed declensions" can result. Russian grammar goes so far as to dictate that the spelling rules must take precedence over any other rule. Read more...
Russian orthography (Russian: правописа́ние, tr. pravopisaniye, IPA: [prəvəpʲɪˈsanʲɪjə]) is formally considered to encompass spelling (Russian: орфогра́фия, tr. orfografiya, IPA: [ɐrfɐˈɡrafʲɪjə]) and punctuation (Russian: пунктуа́ция, tr. punktuatsiya, IPA: [pʊnktʊˈat͡sɨjə]). Russian spelling, which is quite phonemic in practice, is a mix of the morphological and phonetic principles, with a few etymological or historic forms, and occasional grammatical differentiation. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.
The IPA transcription attempts to reflect vowel reduction when not under stress. The sounds that are presented are those of the standard language; other dialects may have noticeably different pronunciation for the vowels. Read more...
This article details the geographical distribution of Russian-speakers. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the Russian language often became a matter of controversy. Some Post-Soviet states adopted policies of de-Russification aimed at reversing former Russification trends.
After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, de-Russification occurred in newly-independent Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and in the Kars Oblast (which became part of Turkey).
The newly-formed Soviet Union initially implemented a policy of Korenizatsiya, which aimed (in part) at the reversal of the tsarist Russification of the non-Russian areas of the country. Korenizatsiya (meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "putting down roots") was the early Soviet nationalities policy promoted mostly in the 1920s but with a continuing legacy in later years. The primary policy consisted of promoting representatives of titular nations of Soviet republics and national minorities on lower levels of the administrative subdivision of the state, into local government, management, bureaucracy and nomenklatura in the corresponding national entities. Read more...- Runglish, Rusinglish, Ruglish or Russlish (Russian: русинглиш / рунглиш, rusinglish / runglish), is a Russian–English macaronic language.
The term "runglish" was popularized in 2000 as a name for one of the languages aboard the International Space Station. Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov said: "We say jokingly that we communicate in 'Runglish,' a mixture of Russian and English languages, so that when we are short of words in one language we can use the other, because all the crew members speak both languages well." NASA has since begun listing Runglish as one of the on-board languages. Although less widespread than other pidgins and creoles, such as Tok Pisin, Runglish is spoken in a number of English-Russian communities, most notably the Russian-speaking community of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York. Read more... - The first known mention of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine refer to a small ethnic sub-group of Russians known as the Goriuns who resided in Putyvl region (what is modern northern Ukraine). These mentions date back to the times of Grand Duchy of Lithuania or perhaps even earlier.
The Russian language in Ukraine has primarily come to exist in that country through two channels: the migration of ethnic Russians into what later became Ukraine and through the adoption of the Russian language as a language of communication by Ukrainians. Read more... - The Russian Morse code approximates the Morse code for the Latin alphabet. It was enacted by the Russian government in 1856.
To memorize the codes, mnemonics are used, called "melodies" (напевы). A "melody" for a morse code for a character is a phrase which is sung (hence the name): the syllables with vowels а, о, ы correspond to dashes and sung long, the other syllables and the syllable "ай" correspond to dots and sung short. The "melodies" differ among various schools.
The correspondence between the Cyrillic and Latin letters was later passed on into MTK-2 and subsequently KOI-7 and KOI-8. Read more... - Pavel Datsyuk (Cyrillic: Павел Дацюк), an NHL and international ice hockey player, wearing a sweater with Latin characters
Romanization of Russian is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin script.
As well as its primary use for citing Russian names and words in languages which use a Latin alphabet, romanization is also essential for computer users to input Russian text who either do not have a keyboard or word processor set up for inputting Cyrillic, or else are not capable of typing rapidly using a native Russian keyboard layout (JCUKEN). In the latter case, they would type using a system of transliteration fitted for their keyboard layout, such as for English QWERTY keyboards, and then use an automated tool to convert the text into Cyrillic. Read more...
Russian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Russian language. With suitable extensions, it is used for languages of neighboring countries that are written in Cyrillic in print, such as Ukrainian and Mongolian. It is based on the Latin transliteration of Cyrillic, with additional letters assigned idiosyncratically. In Russian, it is known as Шрифт Брайля Shrift Braylya 'Braille Script'. Read more...
Russian is by far the most common foreign language in Armenia. Although its level of competence have significantly decreased since Armenia's independence in 1991, in 2010, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have reported that about 70% of Armenia's population has the ability to speak Russian. A 1999 study showed that about 40% of the population is fluent in Russian. Russian language television stations (four as of 2003) and newspapers are widely available in Armenia. A 2012 opinion poll showed that 94% of Armenians have basic knowledge of Russian, with 24% having advanced knowledge, 59% intermediate knowledge and 11% having beginner lever knowledge of the language.
The current Republic of Armenia, was annexed by the Russian Empire in the early 19th century. Since then Russian has been of high significance in the life and history of Armenia. Basically, from 1828 to 1918 and from 1921 to 1991 all official nomenclature was done in Russian, because it was the administrative language of those periods. In the early 20th century, it was estimated that only 3-4% of Armenians could read or speak Russian.
Rapid Russification started during the Soviet period, particularly after Stalin's coming to power in the mid-1930s, when Russian became lingua franca of the Soviet Union. Until 1990 the Russian language was widely applied alongside Armenian. In 1988, nearly 100,000 Armenian students within the republic attended Russian-language schools. Russian was the main language of academic research, although Armenia's constitution has recognized Armenian as the official language. By the 1980s over 90% of Armenia's administrative paperwork was conducted in Russian. A large number of Armenian intelligentsia members sent their children to Russian-language schools, which was considered to be harmful to the future of Armenian. Read more...
Science fiction and fantasy have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 19th century. Russian fantasy developed from the centuries-old traditions of Slavic mythology and folklore. Russian science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century and rose to its golden age during the Soviet era, both in cinema and literature, with writers like the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others. Soviet filmmakers, such as Andrei Tarkovsky, also produced many science fiction and fantasy films. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, modern Russia experienced a renaissance of fantasy. Outside modern Russian borders, there are a significant number of Russophone writers and filmmakers from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who have made a notable contribution to the genres. Read more...- The Russian language in Belarus is one of the two official languages (the other being Belarusian). Being dominant in the media, education and other areas of public life, Russian is de facto the main language of the country. Read more...
- This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect (unless otherwise noted). For an overview of dialects in the Russian language, see Russian dialects. Most descriptions of Russian describe it as having five vowel phonemes, though there is some dispute over whether a sixth vowel, /ɨ/, is separate from /i/. Russian has 34 consonants, which can be divided into two sets:
- hard (твёрдый
[ˈtvʲɵrdɨj] (help·info)) or plain - soft (мягкий
[ˈmʲæxʲkʲɪj]) or palatalized
Russian also distinguishes hard consonants from soft (palatalized) consonants and from a soft consonant followed by /j/ or a hard consonant followed by /j/ (though the last is uncommon: /C Cʲ Cʲj Cj/), and preserves palatalized consonants that are followed by another consonant more often than other Slavic languages do. Like Polish, it has both hard postalveolars (/ʂ ʐ/) and soft ones (/t͡ɕ ɕː ʑː/).
Russian has vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. This feature applies in Slavic languages like Belarusian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, and is also found in English, but not in western Slavic languages, such as Polish and Czech. Read more... - hard (твёрдый
"Vegetables and fruits" tells shop sign in Haifa in Russian and Hebrew.
The Russian language in Israel is spoken natively by a large proportion of the population, reaching about 20 percent of the total population by 1989, mostly by immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s and later years. It is a major foreign language in the country and is used in many aspects of life. Russian is by far the most used non-official native language in Israel. The government and businesses often provide information in Russian, and it is semi-official in some areas with high concentration of Russian Jewish immigrants. The Russian-speaking population of Israel is the world's third-largest population of Russian native-speakers living outside the former Soviet Union territories after Germany and the United States, and the highest as a proportion of the population. As of 2013, 1,231,003 residents of the Post-Soviet states have immigrated to Israel since the fall of the Soviet Union. As of 2017, there are up to 1.5 million Russian-speaking Israelis out of total population of 8,700,000 (17.25%). Read more...- The reform of Russian orthography refers to official and unofficial changes made to the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language, and in particular those made between the 18th-20th centuries. Read more...
- The building of the Russian Language Institute in Volkhonka Street, Moscow
The V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian: Институт русского языка имени В. В. Виноградова РАН) is the language regulator of the Russian language. It is based in Moscow and it is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was founded in 1944 and is named after Viktor Vinogradov . Its activities include assessment of speech innovations in comparison to speech norms and codification of the language in Russian literature. Their output from these endeavors has included dictionaries, monographs, computer collections and databases, as well as a large historical Russian music library. They also provide a reference service of the Russian language. The Institute publishes thirteen academic journals. In addition, the Institute published 22 scholarly books in 2013 and 27 in 2012, with many more in previous years. Read more...
Selected images
A page from Azbuka (Alphabet book), the first Russian printed textbook. Printed by Ivan Fyodorov in 1574. This page features the Cyrillic script.
The Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest East Slavic book known, one of many medieval illuminated manuscripts preserved in the Russian National Library.
- }Other12. Northern Russian dialect with Belarusian influences13. Sloboda and Steppe dialects of Ukrainian14. Steppe dialect of Ukrainian with Russian influences
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter П.
Selected derived languages
- Trasianka (Belarusian: трасянка, IPA: [traˈsʲanka]) refers to a mixed form of speech in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures alternate in rapid succession. There is a similar phenomenon in Ukraine, an Ukrainian–Russian language mixture, called surzhyk. Read more...
- Russenorsk (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈrʉsːəˌnɔʂk]; Russian: Руссено́рск, [rʊsʲɪˈnorsk]; English: Russo-Norwegian) is an extinct dual-source pidgin language formerly used in the Arctic, which combined elements of Russian and Norwegian, and which was created by Russian traders and Norwegian fishermen from northern Norway and the Russian Kola Peninsula. It was used extensively in Northern Norway for about 150 years in the Pomor trade. Russenorsk is important as a test case for theories concerning pidgin languages since it was used far away from most of the other documented pidgins of the world.
As is common in the development of pidgins and trade languages, the interaction of fishermen and traders with no common language necessitated the creation of some minimal form of communication. Like all pidgins, Russenorsk had a rudimentary grammar and a restricted vocabulary, mostly composed of words essential to Arctic fishing and trade (fish, weather, etc.) and did not particularly deal with unrelated issues (music, politics, etc.). Read more...
Padonkaffsky jargon (Russian: язык падонкафф, yazyk padonkaff) or Olbanian (олбанский, olbanskiy) is a cant language developed by a subculture of Runet called padonki (Russian: падонки). It started as an Internet slang language originally used in the Russian Internet community. It is comparable to the English-based Leet. Padonkaffsky jargon became so popular that the former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev jokingly suggested that Olbanian be taught in schools. Read more...- The German-Russian pidgin is a macaronic language of mixed German and Russian that appears to have arisen in the early 1990s. It is sometimes known as Deutschrussisch in German or Nemrus in Russian. Some speakers of the mixed language refer to it as Quelia. It is spoken by some russophone immigrants in Germany from the former Soviet Union. Read more...
- Fenya (Russian: феня, IPA: [ˈfʲenʲə]) or fenka (Russian: фенька, IPA: [ˈfʲenʲkə]) is a Russian cant language used among criminals. Originally it was a cryptolanguage of ofenyas or ofenes, old Russian peddlers, and had a number of names, or it might come from the Russian word фен or fen which is the west wind. There are no convincing explanations about the origins of the words "ofenya" and "fenya". In modern Russian language it is also referred to as blatnoy language (Russian: блатной язык), where "blatnoy" is a slang expression for "criminal". It is also widely used in "thieves' songs". Read more...
- Runglish, Rusinglish, Ruglish or Russlish (Russian: русинглиш / рунглиш, rusinglish / runglish), is a Russian–English macaronic language.
The term "runglish" was popularized in 2000 as a name for one of the languages aboard the International Space Station. Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov said: "We say jokingly that we communicate in 'Runglish,' a mixture of Russian and English languages, so that when we are short of words in one language we can use the other, because all the crew members speak both languages well." NASA has since begun listing Runglish as one of the on-board languages. Although less widespread than other pidgins and creoles, such as Tok Pisin, Runglish is spoken in a number of English-Russian communities, most notably the Russian-speaking community of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York. Read more...
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