Minority language:[2]
Ukraine
The Belarusian language, or the Belarusan[3][4] (Беларуская мова, BGN/PCGN: byelaruskaya mova, Scientific: belaruskaja mova, łac.: biełaruskaja mova) is the language of the Belarusian people and is spoken in Belarus and abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland.[5] Prior to Belarus gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992, the language was called "Byelorussian" or "Belorussian" (in accordance with the ethnicity and country names: Byelorussians, Byelorussia, the latter being a transliteration from the Russian language). It belongs to the group of the East Slavic languages, and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. Its predecessor was the Old Belarusian language.
According to the 1999 Belarus Census, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 people (36.7% of the population)[6] as of 1999.[7] Upon the second Belarus census question related to language, about 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources put down the "population of the language" as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries.[8][9]
The Belarusian language is the official language of Belarus, along with Russian.[10]
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.
The Belarusian alphabet is a form 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.
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.
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.
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.
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