32 Facts About Russian language

1.

Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states.

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2.

Russian language is written using the Russian language alphabet of the Cyrillic script; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds.

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3.

Vocabulary, principles of word formations, and, to some extent, inflections and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly Russified form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church.

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4.

Current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language.

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5.

Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi-Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese.

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6.

Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics.

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7.

In Belarus, Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus.

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8.

School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, but as of 2019 promises have been given that such schools will remain open in the near future.

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9.

In Lithuania, Russian has no official or any legal status, but the use of the language has some presence in certain areas.

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10.

In Moldova, Russian is considered to be the language of inter-ethnic communication under a Soviet-era law.

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11.

In China, Russian language has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian language communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

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12.

In Georgia, Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

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13.

In Kazakhstan, Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration.

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14.

In Kyrgyzstan, Russian is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan.

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15.

In Tajikistan, Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under the Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation.

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16.

In Turkmenistan, Russian language lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996.

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17.

In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006.

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18.

In Vietnam, Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English.

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19.

Language was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century.

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20.

Sizable Russian language-speaking communities exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, Toronto, Calgary, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland.

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21.

Russian language is one of two official languages aboard the International Space StationNASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses.

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22.

In March 2013, it was announced that Russian is the second-most used language on the Internet after English.

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23.

However, Russian is the sixth-most used language on the top 1, 000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese.

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24.

The standard Russian language is used in written and spoken form almost everywhere in the country, from Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the East, the enormous distance between notwithstanding.

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25.

All dialects are divided into two main chronological categories: the dialects of primary formation and secondary formation (other territories where Russian language was brought by migrants from primary formation territories or adopted by the local population).

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26.

Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration is being used less frequently by Russian language-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding, which fully incorporates the Russian language alphabet.

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27.

Phonological system of Russian language is inherited from Common Slavonic; it underwent considerable modification in the early historical period before being largely settled around the year 1400.

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28.

The standard Russian language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch.

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29.

However, Russian language has a constraint on syllabification such that syllables cannot span multiple morphemes.

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30.

Russian language is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of its consonants.

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31.

Russian language has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure, although considerable levelling has occurred.

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32.

Russian language has six cases: Nominative, Accusative (for direct objects), Dative (for indirect objects), Genitive (to indicate possession or relation), Instrumental (to indicate 'with' or 'by means of'), and Prepositional (used after the locative prepositions ? "in", ?? "on", ? "about", ??? "in the presence of").

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