The Belarusian language is one of the two official languages in Belarus. It is a part of the Eastern Slavonic languages, similar to Russian and Ukrainian. Exploring the language's history and culture can be exciting and insightful.
Belarussian is the official language of Belarus and is recognized as a minority language in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Zimbabwe, and parts of Ukraine.
It is descended from Old Church Slavonic, the official language of the Kievan Rus Empire in the 1100-1200s, and is written with a Cyrillic alphabet.
The language's pronunciation and grammar follow the 'hard-soft-hard' rule and have sound laws similar to Czech, Polish, and Slovakian.
Belarussian is closely related to Ruthenian and differs from Russian mainly in its lack of dative case and its use of a much-simplified declension system.
Transliteration of the language from Cyrillic to Latin is based on the Scientific transliteration system, known as 'Folitan' in Belarussian.
Standard Belarussian has been promoted by the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and other institutions since the 1990s.
The language needs to be studied outside Belarus. However, the Belarusian-American Diaspora is actively involved in its use and propagation.
Over the centuries, the language has absorbed words from different language families, such as Old Norse, German, Polish, and Russian.
Its vocabulary contains inherited words from Ancient Slavonic, given a new lease of life and acquired words from other languages.
In The 19th century, the language was codified, although there was a substantial urban-rural divide in its usage throughout the Soviet Union.
