Russian language

Russian (ру́сский язы́к, russkij jazyk, pronounced ) is a Slavic language spoken primarily in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union and former participants of the Eastern Block. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards.

It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the 5th by total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though an optional acute accent (знак ударения, znak udareniya) may be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between homographic words, for example замо́к (meaning lock) and за́мок (meaning castle), or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names).

Classification
Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family. It is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus'. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures, e.g. Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, as well as because of later interaction in the 19th–20th centuries, although Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called "Great Russian" to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called "White Russian" and Ukrainian, then called "Little Russian".

The vocabulary (mainly abstract and literary words), principles of word formations, and, to some extent, inflections and literary style of Russian have been also influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly russified form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with many different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language.

Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin, Polish, Dutch, German, French, and English, and to a lesser extent the languages to the north and the east: Uralic, Turkic, Persian, Arabic.

According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 780 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. It is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a "hard target" language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy.

Standard Russian
The standard well-known form of Russian is generally called the modern Russian literary language (современный русский литературный язык). It arose in the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter the Great, and developed from the Moscow (Middle or Central Russian) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancellery language.

Mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755 and in 1783 the Russian Academy's first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. During the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, during a period known as the "Golden Age", the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of the Russian language was stabilized and standardized, and it became the nationwide literary language; meanwhile, Russia's world-famous literature flourished.

Until the 20th century, the language's spoken form was the language of only the upper noble classes and urban population, as Russian peasants from the countryside continued to speak in their own dialects. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were finally forced out with the introduction of the compulsory education system that was established by the Soviet government, as well as the influence of the mass media (radio and television). However, despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some dialectical features—such as fricative —are still observed in colloquial speech.

Geographic distribution
During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian, although it was declared the official language only in 1990. Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national discourse throughout the region has continued.



In Latvia its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than one-third of the population is Russian-speaking (see Russians in Latvia). Similarly, in Estonia, ethnic Russians constitute 25.5% of the country's current population and 58.6% of the native Estonian population is also able to speak Russian. In all, 67.8% of Estonia's population can speak Russian. Command of Russian language, however, is rapidly decreasing among younger Estonians (primarily being replaced by the command of English). For example, if 53% of ethnic Estonians between 15–19 claim to speak some Russian, then among the 10–14 year old group, command of Russian has fallen to 19% (which is about one-third the percentage of those who claim to have command of English in the same age group).

In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Russian remains a co-official language with Kazakh and Kyrgyz, respectively. Large Russian-speaking communities still exist in northern Kazakhstan, and ethnic Russians comprise 25.6% of Kazakhstan's population.

Those who speak Russian as a mother or secondary language in Lithuania represent approximately 60% of the population of Lithuania. Also, more than half of the population of the Baltic states speak Russian either as foreign language or as mother tongue. As the Grand Duchy of Finland was part of the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1918, a number of Russian speakers have remained in Finland. There are 33,400 Russian-speaking Finns, amounting to 0.6% of the population. Five thousand (0.1%) of them are late 19th century and 20th century immigrants or their descendants, and the remaining majority are recent immigrants, who have moved there in the 1990s and later.

In the 20th century, Russian was widely and thoroughly taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. In particular, these countries include Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, former East Germany and Cuba. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, though, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular those where the people speak a Slavic language and thereby have an edge in learning Russian (namely, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria). In 2005, it was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006.

Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan (Awde and Sarwan, 2003).

The language was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 1700s. Although most colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the U.S. and Canada, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, Toronto, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Cleveland. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). Only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Russophones in North America were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews. According to the United States Census, in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States.

Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the 20th century, each with its own flavor of language. The United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Brazil, Norway, and Austria have significant Russian-speaking communities, Germany has the highest Russian-speaking population outside the former Soviet Union with approximately 3 million people. They are split into three groups, from largest to smallest: Russian-speaking ethnic Germans (Aussiedler), ethnic Russians, and Jews. Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney also have Russian speaking populations, with the most Russians living in southeast Melbourne, particularly the suburbs of Carnegie and Caulfield. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Armenians or Ukrainians, who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed, or are just looking for temporary employment.

According to the 2011 Census of Ireland, there were 21,639 people in the nation who use Russian as a home language. However, of this only 13% were Russian nationals. 20% held Irish citizenship, while 27% and 14% were holding the passports of Latvia and Lithuania respectively. Some are Russian-speakers from Latvia and Lithuania who were unable to obtain Latvian or Lithuanian citizenship. There were 20,984 Russian speakers in Cyprus according to the Census of 2011, accounting for 2.50% of the population.

Russians in China form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by mainland China.

According to figures published in 2006 in the journal «Demoskop Weekly» research deputy director of Research Center for Sociological Research of the Ministry of Education and Science (Russia) Aref'eva A. L., the Russian language is gradually losing its position in the world in general, and in Russia in particular. In 2012, A. L. Aref'ev published a new study «Russian language at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries», where he confirmed his conclusion about the trend of further weakening of the Russian language in all regions of the world. In the countries of the former Soviet Union the Russian language is gradually being replaced by local languages, and the Russian language in the world is reduced due to the decrease in the number of Russian and diminution of the total Russian population.

Official status
Russian is the official language of Russia, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in the numerous ethnic autonomies within Russia, such as Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and Yakutia. It is also a co-official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and a co-official language of the unrecognized country of Transnistria and partially recognized countries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In Ukraine the Russian language lacks the status of a state language, but still enjoys an extensive protection as a regional and minority language with some official functions. The Constitution of Ukraine guarantees "free development, use and protection" of the Russian language. Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics.

94% of the school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, 20% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia and 2% in Armenia and Tajikistan receive their education only or mostly in Russian. The percentage of ethnic Russians is 80% in Russia, 10% in Belarus, 36% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia and less than 1% in both Armenia and Tajikistan.

Russian-language schooling is also available in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. However, due to recent high school reforms in Latvia (whereby the government pays a substantial sum to a school to teach in the national language), the number of subjects taught in Russian has been reduced in the country. The language has a co-official status alongside Romanian in the autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria in Moldova. In the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine, Russian is recognized as a regional language alongside Crimean Tatar. According to a poll by FOM-Ukraine, Russian is the most widely spoken language in Ukraine understood literally by everyone. However, despite its widespread usage, pro-Russian Crimean activists complain about the (mandatory) use of Ukrainian in schools, movie theaters, courts, on drug prescriptions and its use in the media and for government paperwork.

The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station - NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses - this goes back to the Apollo-Soyuz mission which first flew in 1975.

Russian as an international language
Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency, World Health Organization, International Civil Aviation Organization, UNESCO, World Intellectual Property Organization, International Telecommunication Union, World Meteorological Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Criminal Court, International Monetary Fund, International Olympic Committee, Universal Postal Union, World Bank, Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Eurasian Economic Community, Collective Security Treaty Organization, Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, International Organization for Standardization, GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development.

In March 2013 it was announced that Russian is now the second-most used language on the Internet after English. People use the Russian language on 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian is used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su. The websites of former Soviet Union nations also use high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian is the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German and Japanese.

Dialects
[[File:Dialects of Russian language-ru.png|thumb|300px| Russian dialects in 1915

Northern dialects {{legend|#587942|1. Arkhangelsk dialect}} {{legend|#3E7D6D|2. Olonets dialect}} {{legend|#45AD96|3. Novgorod dialect}} {{legend|#69A74B|4. Viatka dialect}} {{legend|#61C57A|5. Vladimir dialect}}

Central dialects {{legend|#F587C1|6. Moscow dialect}} {{legend|#D172A2|7. Tver dialect}} Southern dialects {{legend|#FF9B06|8. Orel (Don) dialect}} {{legend|#FF7D26|9. Ryazan dialect}} {{legend|#FFAA71|10. Tula dialect}} {{legend|#F2D273|11. Smolensk dialect}}

Other {{legend|#40956C|12. Northern Russian dialect with Belarusian influences}} {{legend|#ECBD00|13. Sloboda and Steppe dialects of Ukrainian}} {{legend|#FFD93E|14. Steppe dialect of Ukrainian with Russian influences}} ]] Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central (or Middle) and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. All dialects also divided in two main chronological categories: the dialects of primary formation (the territory of the Eastern Rus' or Muscovy, roughly consists of the modern Central and Northwestern Federal districts); and secondary formation (other territory). Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language.

The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye/оканье). Besides the absence of vowel reduction some dialects have high or diphthongal in the place of  and  in stressed closed syllables (like in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian  and. In morphology it has an interesting feature as a post-posed definite article -to, -ta, -te similarly existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

In the Southern Russian dialects unstressed and  following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to  (like in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced  in such positions (e.g. несли is pronounced, not ) – this is called yakanye/яканье. Consonants include a fricative, a semivowel and , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants , , final  and , respectively. In morphology it has a palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). Some of these features such as akanye/yakanye, a debuccalized or lenited, a semivowel and palatalized final  in 3rd person forms of verbs are also present in modern Belarusian and some dialects of Ukrainian (Eastern Polesian), indicating a linguistic continuum.

The city of Veliky Novgorod has historically displayed a feature called chokanye/tsokanye (чоканье/цоканье), where and  were confused. So, цапля ("heron") has been recorded as 'чапля'. Also, the second palatalization of velars did not occur there, so the so-called ě² (from the Proto-Slavic diphthong *ai) did not cause to shift to ; therefore where Standard Russian has цепь ("chain"), the form кепь  is attested in earlier texts.

Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the 18th century. In the 19th, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the 20th century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка ), was published in three folio volumes 1986–1989, after four decades of preparatory work.

Derived languages

 * Balachka, a dialect, spoken primarily by Cossacks, in the regions of Don, Kuban and Terek, which uses Russian grammar but borrows a lot of Ukrainian vocabulary.
 * Fenya, a criminal argot of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
 * Medny Aleut language is a nearly extinct mixed language spoken on Bering Island that is characterized by its Aleut nouns and Russian verbs.
 * Padonkaffsky jargon is a slang language developed by padonki of Runet.
 * Quelia, a pseudo pidgin of German and Russian.
 * Runglish, Russian-English pidgin. This word is also used by English speakers to describe the way in which Russians attempt to speak English using Russian morphology and/or syntax.
 * Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with mostly Russian vocabulary and mostly Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegian traders in the Pomor trade in Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula.
 * Surzhyk is a variety of Ukrainian, which uses Ukrainian grammar and syntax, but borrows a lot of Russian vocabulary. It is used by a large portion of the rural population of Ukraine, especially in the eastern and central areas of the country.
 * Trasianka is a heavily russified variety of Belarusian used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.

Alphabet
Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their upper case forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound:

Older letters of the Russian alphabet include ⟨⟩, which merged to ⟨⟩ ( or ); ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩, which both merged to ⟨⟩ ; ⟨⟩, which merged to ⟨⟩ ; ⟨⟩, which merged to ⟨⟩ ; ⟨⟩, which merged to ⟨⟩ ( or ); and ⟨⟩, which later were graphically reshaped into <я> and merged phonetically to or. While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩ originally indicated the pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced,.

Transliteration
Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ("frost") is transliterated moroz, and мышь ("mouse"), mysh or myš'. Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration is being used less frequently by Russian speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding, which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs leveraging this Unicode extension are available which allow users to type Russian characters, even on western 'QWERTY' keyboards.

Computing
The Russian alphabet has many systems of character encoding. KOI8-R was designed by the Soviet government and was intended to serve as the standard encoding. This encoding was and still is widely used in UNIX-like operating systems. Nevertheless, the spread of MS-DOS and OS/2 (IBM866), traditional Macintosh (ISO/IEC 8859-5) and Microsoft Windows (CP1251) created chaos and ended by establishing different encodings as de facto standards, with Windows-1251 becoming a de facto standard in Russian Internet and e-mail communication during the period of roughly 1995-2005.

But nowadays all the obsolete 8-bit encodings are rarely used in the communication protocols and text exchange data formats, being mostly replaced with UTF-8. A number of encoding conversion applications were developed. "iconv" is an example that is supported by most versions of Linux, Macintosh and some other operating systems; but you rarely still need those converters, unless accessing texts created more than a few years ago.

In addition to the modern Russian alphabet, Unicode (and thus UTF-8) encodes the Early Cyrillic alphabet (which is very similar to the Greek alphabet), as well as all other Slavic and non-Slavic but Cyrillic-based alphabets.

Orthography
Russian spelling is reasonably phonemic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonemics, morphology, etymology, and grammar; and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. A number of rigid spelling rules introduced between the 1880s and 1910s have been responsible for the former whilst trying to eliminate the latter.

The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990s has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the 17th and 18th centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

According to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent (знак ударения) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress. For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к/за́мок (lock/castle), сто́ящий/стоя́щий (worthwhile/standing), чудно́/чу́дно (this is odd/this is marvelous), молоде́ц/мо́лодец (attaboy/fine young man), узна́ю/узнаю́ (I shall learn it/I recognize it), отреза́ть/отре́зать (to be cutting/to have cut); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names (афе́ра, гу́ру, Гарси́я, Оле́ша, Фе́рми), and to show which is the stressed word in a sentence (Ты́ съел печенье?/Ты съе́л печенье?/Ты съел пече́нье? – Was it you who ate the cookie?/Did you eat the cookie?/Was it the cookie that you ate?). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners.

Phonology
The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled around the year 1400.

The language possesses five vowels (or six, under the St. Petersburg Phonological School), which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The hard consonants are often velarized, especially before back vowels, as in Irish, although in some dialects the velarization is limited to hard ). The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat lengthened, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to near-close vowels or an unclear schwa. (See also: vowel reduction in Russian.)

The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the structure can be described as follows:

(C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Clusters of four consonants are not very common, however, especially within a morpheme. Examples: взгляд (/vzɡlʲat/, "glance"), строительств (/strɐˈitʲɪlʲstf/, "of constructions").

Consonants
Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While do have palatalized allophones, only  might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive (the only native minimal pair which argues for  to be a separate phoneme is "это ткёт" (, "it weaves")/"этот кот" (, "this cat")). Palatalization means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. In the case of, the tongue is raised enough to produce slight frication (affricate sounds). These sounds: are dental, that is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the teeth rather than against the alveolar ridge.

Grammar
Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses
 * a highly fusional morphology
 * a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
 * a polished vernacular foundation;
 * a Church Slavonic inheritance;
 * a Western European style.

The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Number of words in Russian
See History of the Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on Russian.

The total number of words in Russian is difficult to ascertain because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Alexander Pushkin (who is credited with greatly augmenting and codifying literary Russian), are as follows:

Note: The above numbers do not properly show the real quantity of words in Russian, as Russian dictionaries do not have a goal to collect all words of the language, but to establish normalized vocabulary of standard neutral style. They do not contain special technical and scientific terms, many lexical derivatives, colloquial and dialectical words, and slang.

Proverbs and sayings
The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated by the 17th century and collected and studied in the 19th and 20th, with folk tales being especially fertile sources.

History and examples
The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
 * Kievan period and feudal breakup
 * The Moscow period (15th–17th centuries)
 * Empire (18th–19th centuries)
 * Soviet period and beyond (20th century)

Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus' in about 880, from which modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus trace their origins, established Old East Slavic as a literary and commercial language. It was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the introduction of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and official language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the Old East Slavic and spoken dialects at this time, which in their turn modified the Old Church Slavonic as well.

Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100. On the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine emerged Ruthenian and in modern Russia medieval Russian. They definitely became distinct since the 13th century, i.e. following the division of that land between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland and Hungary in the west and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal republics plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of the Tatars) in the east.

The official language in Moscow and Novgorod, and later, in the growing Muscovy, was Church Slavonic, which evolved from Old Church Slavonic and remained the literary language for centuries, until the Petrine age, when its usage became limited to biblical and liturgical texts. Russian developed under a strong influence of Church Slavonic until the close of the 17th century; afterwards the influence reversed, leading to corruption of liturgical texts.

The political reforms of Peter the Great (Пётр Вели́кий, Pyótr Velíkiy) were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French daily, and German sometimes. Many Russian novels of the 19th century, e.g. Leo Tolstoy's (Лев Толсто́й) War and Peace, contain entire paragraphs and even pages in French with no translation given, with an assumption that educated readers would not need one.

The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin (Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин) in the first third of the 19th century. Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic grammar and vocabulary (so-called "высо́кий стиль" — "high style") in favor of grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of the time. Even modern readers of younger age may only experience slight difficulties understanding some words in Pushkin's texts, since relatively few words used by Pushkin have become archaic or changed meaning. In fact, many expressions used by Russian writers of the early 19th century, in particular Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov (Михаи́л Ле́рмонтов), Nikolai Gogol (Никола́й Го́голь), Aleksander Griboyedov (Алекса́ндр Грибое́дов), became proverbs or sayings which can be frequently found even in modern Russian colloquial speech.

Зи́мний ве́чер

Бу́ря мгло́ю не́бо кро́ет,

Ви́хри сне́жные крутя́;

То, как зверь, она́ заво́ет,

То запла́чет, как дитя́,

То по кро́вле обветша́лой

Вдруг соло́мой зашуми́т,

То, как пу́тник запозда́лый,

К нам в око́шко застучи́т.

The political upheavals of the early 20th century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a worldwide prestige, especially during the mid-20th century.

In Russian

 * журнал «Демоскоп Weekly» № 251 - 252 19 июня - 20 августа 2006. А. Арефьев. Тема номера. Сколько людей говорят и будут говорить по-русски?
 * журнал «Демоскоп Weekly» № 329 - 330 14 - 27 апреля 2008. К. Гаврилов. Е. Козиевская. Е. Яценко. Тема номера. Русский язык на постсоветских просторах
 * Русский язык на рубеже XX-ХХI веков — М.: Центр социального прогнозирования и маркетинга, 2012. — 482 стр.
 * Жуковская Л. П. (отв. ред.) Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. — М.: «Наука», 1987.
 * Иванов В. В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. — М.: «Просвещение», 1990.
 * Новиков Л. А. Современный русский язык: для высшей школы. -— М.: Лань, 2003.
 * Филин Ф. П. О словарном составе языка Великорусского народа. // Вопросы языкознания. — М., 1982, № 5. — С. 18—28

Russian press in the United States

 * USA Foreign Service Institute Russian basic course
 * Russian Language Institute Language regulator of the Russian language (Russian)
 * Free online Russian language video course
 * Basic Russian (with audio) Comprehensive basic Russian course
 * Russian word of the day - English-language blog about the Russian language
 * Национальный корпус русского языка (National Corpus of the Russian Language)
 * Russian-English translation forum
 * Russian-English translation forum