Belarusian language


Belarusian is an East Slavic language. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, the other being Russian. It is also spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States by the Belarusian diaspora.
Before Belarus gained independence in 1991, the language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, or alternatively as White Russian. Following independence, it became known as Belarusian, or alternatively as Belarusan.
As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. Belarusian descends from a language generally referred to as Ruthenian, which had, in turn, descended from what is referred to as Old East Slavic.
In the first Belarusian census in 1999, the Belarusian language was declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens. About 6,984,000 of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources, such as Ethnologue, put the figure at approximately million active speakers in Belarus. In Russia, the Belarusian language is declared as a "familiar language" by about 316,000 inhabitants, among them about 248,000 Belarusians, comprising about 30.7% of Belarusians living in Russia. In Ukraine, the Belarusian language is declared as a "native language" by about 55,000 Belarusians, which comprise about 19.7% of Belarusians living in Ukraine. In Poland, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 40,000 inhabitants. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is actively used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. Approximately 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52.5% can only read and speak it. Nevertheless, there are no Belarusian-language universities in Belarus.

Names

Official English-language name

  • Belarusian – derived from the name of the country "Belarus". It may also be spelled Belarusan, a form used officially from 1992 to 1995 including in the United Nations and by diaspora.

    Historical

  • Byelorussian – derived from the Russian-language name of the country "Byelorussia", used officially in the times of the USSR and, later, in the Russian Federation.
  • White Russian or White Ruthenian – literally, a word-by-word translation of the parts of the composite word Belarusian. The term "White Ruthenian" with reference to language has appeared in English-language texts since at least 1921. The oldest one, Latin term "Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto" is recorded in 1381.

    Alternative suggestions

  • Grand Lithuanian – proposed and used by Jan Stankievič since the 1960s, referencing chancery language of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 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 – 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. Promoted by Vatslaw Lastowski.

    Vernacular

  • Simple or local – used mainly in times preceding the common recognition of the existence of Belarus in general.
  • Simple Black Ruthenian – used in the beginning of the 19th century by the Russian researcher Baranovski and attributed to contemporary vernacular Belarusian.

    Classification and relationship to other languages

There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian languages.
Within East Slavic, the Belarusian language is most closely related to Ukrainian.

Dialects

Besides the standardized lect, there are two main dialects of the Belarusian language: the northeastern dialect and the southwestern dialect. In addition, there is a transitional "Middle Belarusian" dialect group and a separate "West Polesian" dialect group.
The northeastern and southwestern dialects are separated by a hypothetical line with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line.
The northeastern dialect is characterised by the "soft sounding R" and "strong akanye"; and the southwestern dialect is characterised by the "hard sounding R" and "moderate akanye".
The West Polesian dialect group is separated from the rest of the country by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Tsyelyakhany–Luninyets–Stolin.

History

The modern Belarusian language was redeveloped on the base of the vernacular spoken remnants of the Ruthenian language, surviving in the ethnic Belarusian territories in the 19th century. The end of the 18th century is the usual conventional borderline between the Ruthenian and Modern Belarusian stages of development.
By the end of the 18th century, Belarusian was still common among the minor nobility in the eastern part, in the territory of present-day Belarus, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Jan Czeczot in the 1840s had mentioned that even his generation's grandfathers preferred speaking Belarusian. According to A. N. Pypin, the Belarusian language was spoken in some areas among the minor nobility during the 19th century. In its vernacular form, it was the language of the smaller town dwellers and of the peasantry and it had been the language of oral folklore. Teaching in Belarusian was conducted mainly in schools run by the Basilian order.
The development of Belarusian in the 19th century was strongly influenced by the political conflict in the territories of the former Lithuania, between the Russian Imperial authorities, trying to consolidate their rule over the "joined provinces", and the Polish and Polonized nobility, trying to bring back its pre-Partitions rule
One of the important manifestations of this conflict was the struggle for ideological control over the educational system. The Polish and Russian languages were being introduced and re-introduced, while the general state of the people's education remained poor until the very end of the Russian Empire.
In summary, the first two decades of the 19th century had seen the unprecedented prosperity of Polish culture and language in the former Lithuanian lands, and had prepared the era of such famous Polish writers as Adam Mickiewicz and Władysław Syrokomla. The era had seen the effective completion of the Polonization of the lowest level of the nobility, the further reduction of the area of use of contemporary Belarusian, and the effective folklorization of Belarusian culture. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 19th century "there began a revival of national pride within the country … and a growth in interest from outside".
Due both to the state of the people's education and to the strong positions of Polish and Polonized nobility, it was only after the 1880s–1890s that the educated Belarusian element, still shunned because of "peasant origin", began to appear in state offices.
In 1846, ethnographer Pavel Shpilevskiy prepared a Belarusian grammar on the basis of the folk dialects of the Minsk region. However, the Russian Academy of Sciences refused to print his submission, on the basis that it had not been prepared in a sufficiently scientific manner.
From the mid-1830s ethnographic works began to appear, and tentative attempts to study the language were instigated. The Belarusian literary tradition began to re-form, based on the folk language, initiated by the works of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich.
File:Dictionary Nasovic Title Page.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|The cover of the copy of The First Belarusian Dictionary by Ivan Nasovič preserved at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum
At the beginning of the 1860s, both the Russian and Polish parties in Belarusian lands had begun to realise that the decisive role in the upcoming conflicts was shifting to the peasantry, overwhelmingly Belarusian. So a large amount of propaganda appeared, targeted at the peasantry and written in Belarusian; notably, the anti-Russian, anti-Tsarist, anti-Eastern Orthodox "Manifesto" and the first newspaper Mužyckaja prauda by Konstanty Kalinowski, and anti-Polish, anti-Revolutionary, pro-Orthodox booklets and poems.
The advent of the all-Russian narodniks and Belarusian national movements during the late 1870s and early 1880s renewed interest in the Belarusian language and literary tradition. During these times, Belarusian writer Francišak Bahuševič made his appeal to Belarusians: "Do not forsake our language, lest you pass away".
The First Belarusian Dictionary by Ivan Nasovič was published in 1870. In the editorial introduction to the dictionary, it is noted that:
In 1891, in the preface to the Belarusian Flute, Francišak Bahuševič wrote, "There have been many peoples, which first lost their language... and then they perished entirely. So do not abandon our Belarusian language, lest we perish!"
According to the 1897 Russian Empire census, about 5.89 million people declared themselves speakers of Belarusian.
The end of the 19th century, however, still showed that the urban language of Belarusian towns remained either Polish or Russian. The same census showed that towns with a population greater than 50,000 had fewer than a tenth Belarusian speakers. This state of affairs greatly contributed to a perception that Belarusian was a "rural" and "uneducated" language.
However, the census was a major breakthrough for the first steps of the Belarusian national self-awareness and identity, since it clearly showed to the Imperial authorities and the still-strong Polish minority that the population and the language were neither Polish nor Russian.