Belarusian language

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Belarusan/Belarusian/(old:Belorussian)
Беларуская мова
Spoken in Belarus, Poland, in 14 other countries
Total speakers 4 to 9 million
Ranking 79
Language family Indo-European

• Balto-Slavic
  • Slavic
    • East Slavic
      • Belarusan/Belarusian/(old:Belorussian)

Writing system Cyrillic, Latin
Official status
Official language in  Belarus, several communes of the Podlaskie Voivodeship of  Poland (Gmina Orla, Gmina Narewka, Hajnówka)

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Minority language:
 Ukraine

Regulated by National Academy of Sciences of Belarus
Language codes
ISO 639-1 be
ISO 639-2 bel
ISO 639-3 bel

Belarusian-speaking world

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Belarusian language (Беларуская мова, BGN/PCGN: byelaruskaya mova, Scientific: belaruskaja mova, łac.: biełaruskaja mova) is the language of the Belarusian people. It is the official language of Belarus, along with russian, and is spoken abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Prior to Belarus gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992, the language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, transliterating the Russian name, Белорусский язык, or alternatively as White Russian or White Ruthenian. Following independence, it was also called Belarusan.

Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages, and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. Its predecessor stage is known as Old Belarusian (14th to 17th centuries), in turn descended from Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).

According to the 1999 Belarus Census, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens (36.7% of the population) as of 1999. About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources put the "population of the language" as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak and read Belarusian, while only 52.5% can read and speak it. According to the research, one out of ten Belarusians does not understand Belarusian.

Phonology

The phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes: 6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants, depending on how they are counted. Usually, the number is given as 39, which excludes the nine geminate consonants as "mere variations". Sometimes, rare consonants are also excluded, thus bringing the quoted number of consonants further down. The number 48 includes all consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may have a "phonetic" meaning in the modern Belarusian language. Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, Belarusian phonology is unique from theirs in a number of ways.

Alphabet

The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was first used for the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form was determined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. The Glagolitic script had been used, sporadically, until 11th or 12th century. In the past Belarusian has also been written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka / Лацінка) and the Belarusian Arabic alphabet.

There exist several systems of romanizing (transliterating) written Belarusian text; see Romanization of Belarusian.

Grammar

Standardized Belarusian grammar in its modern form was adopted in 1959, with minor amendments in 1985. It was developed from the initial form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich (first printed in Vilnius, 1918). Historically, there had existed several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar.

Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic. Belarusian orthography is constructed on the phonetic principle, and is mainly based on on the Belarusian folk dialects of Myensk-Vil'na region.

Dialects

Besides the literary norm, there exist two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there exist the transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group and the separate West Palyesian dialect group.

The North-Eastern and the South-Western dialects are separated by the highly conventional imaginary line Ashmyany–Minsk–Babruysk–Homyel, with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line.

The North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterised by the "soft sounding R" (мягка-эравы) and "strong akanye" (моцнае аканне), and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterised by the "hard sounding R" (цвёрда-эравы) and "moderate akanye" (умеранае аканне).

The West Palyesian dialect group is more distinct linguistically, close to Ukrainian language in many aspects, and is separated by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Telekhany–Luninyets–Stolin.

Names

There are quite a number of various names under which the Belarusian language has been known, both contemporary and historical, some of them quite dissimilar, especially when referring to the Old Belarusian period.

Official, romanised

• Belarusian (also spelled Belarusan, Belarussian, Byelarussian) – derived from the Belarusian name of the country "Belarus", officially approved for the use abroad by the Belarusian authorities (ca. 1992) and promoted since then.
• Byelorussian (also spelled Belorussian, Bielorussian ) – derived from the Russian name of the country "Byelorussia" (Russian: Белоруссия), used officially (in the Russian language) in the times of the USSR, and, later, in Russia.
• White Russian, White Ruthenian (and its equivalents in other languages) – literal, word-by-word translation of the parts of the composite word Belarusian.

Alternative

• Great Lithuanian (вялікалітоўская (мова)) – proposed and used by Yan Stankyevich since the 1960s, intended to part with the "diminishing tradition of having the name related to the Muscovite tradition of calling the Belarusian lands" and to pertain to the "great tradition of Belarusian statehood".
• Kryvian or Krivian (крывіцкая/крывічанская/крыўская (мова), Polish: język krewicki) – derived from the name of the Slavonic tribe Krivichi, one of the main tribes in the foundations of the forming of the Belarusian nation. Created and used in the 19th century by Belarusian Polish-speaking writers Jaroszewicz, Narbut, Rogalski, Jan Czeczot. Strongly promoted by Vaclau Lastouski.

Vernacular

• Simple (простая (мова)) or local (тутэйшая (мова)) – used mainly in times preceding the common recognition of the existence of the Belarusian language, and nation in general. Supposedly, the term can still be encountered up to the end of the 1930s, e.g., in Western Belarus.
• Simple Black Ruthenian (Russian: простой чернорусский) – used in the beginning of the 19th century by the Russian researcher Baranovski and attributed to contemporary vernacular Belarusian.

History

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The modern Belarusian language was redeveloped on the base of the vernacular spoken remnants of the Old Belarusian language, surviving on the ethnic Belarusian lands in the 19th century. The end 18th century (the times of the Divisions of Commonwealth) is the usual conventional borderline between the Old Belarusian language and Modern Belarusian language stages of development.

By the end 18th century, the (Old) Belarusian language still enjoyed some popularity among the smaller nobility in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Jan Czeczot in 1840s had mentioned that even his generation’s grandfathers preferred speaking (Old) Belarusian. (According to A. N. Pypin, the Belarusian language was still being spoken here and there among the smaller nobility during the 19th century.) The Belarusian, in its vernacular form, was the language of the smaller town dwellers and of the peasantry. It had been the language of the oral forms of the folklore. The teaching in Belarusian was conducted mainly in the schools run by the Basilian order.