Origin and History of Russian Language-Cambridge Institute Mumbai

The Russian language served as a medium for some of History’s best-written prose and poems. Spoken by more than 258 million people, Russian is the official language of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Being acquainted with the Russian language would help you integrate better and gain a wider understanding of Russian History.

Origin and History of the Russian language

Belonging to the Indo-European language family, Russian is an East Slavic language, a subgroup of the Slavic language family.

The formation of the Russian language as a separate language began in the early 12th century, marked by the disintegration of Kyvian Rus’. This process was completed in the 13th century when Russian became a different language altogether. Church Slavonic heavily influenced the Russian language.

 

Reformation

The Russian language we know or see today is the output of several reforms and stages of evolution. The Bulgarian and Byzantine scholars presented reforms to shut out the duplicity of old Church Slavonic.

Tsar Peter the Great was responsible for eliminating the influence of Church Slavonic from the Russian language through his reforms. The Russian aristocrats preferred to converse in French, whereas the commoners spoke Russian until the Napoleonic war.

Imprints of the Russian History in its language

If you observe the Russian lexicon, you can mark the imprints of Russian History. Russian contains several Slavonic words shared by other Slavonic languages, which indicates the unchanged aspects of Slavic communities. Russian also borrowed words of German, Scandinavian and Greek origin, reflecting their relationship in the past.

Learning a new language can be fun and exciting if learned correctly. Contact or visit the Cambridge Institute in Mumbai, which offers courses in foreign languages, including Russian. They have excellent faculty members who are friendly and helpful.