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91-461: The Alexander Column was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand , built between 1830 and 1834 with Swiss-born architect Antonio Adamini , and unveiled on 30 August 1834 (St. Alexander of Constantinople 's Day). The monument is claimed to be the tallest of its kind in the world at 47.5 m (155 ft 8 in) tall and is topped with a statue of an angel holding

182-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in

273-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to

364-573: A compulsive art collector, amassing 110 Greek and Roman statues and hundreds of lesser items. Witnesses reported that "any Sunday he indulged in rearranging the statues, using 25 laborers from 9 a.m. to lunch time". When Monferrand died, the Hermitage Museum failed to buy out the collection, and it was dispersed. In 1835, Montferrand married Elise Debonniere, an actress who had arrived in St. Petersburg nine years earlier. The relationship began in

455-672: A cross, as a triumphal column it may be the highest but the Monument to the Great Fire of London is a freestanding column 62 m high. As a monolith that has been quarried, moved and erected it is the heaviest recorded. The statue of the angel was designed by the Russian sculptor Boris Orlovsky . The face of the angel bears great similarity to the face of Emperor Alexander I. The column is a single piece of red granite , 25.45 m (83 ft 6 in) long and about 3.5 m (11 ft 5 in) in diameter. The granite monolith

546-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but

637-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . 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 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between

728-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it

819-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in

910-485: A recommendation letter from Abraham-Louis Breguet . He rented a room near the house of Fyodor Wigel, the secretary of the Construction Commission, and applied to Agustín de Betancourt , the chairman of the commission (and a partner of Breguet's in the 1790s). Betancourt, impressed by Breguet's letter and Montferrand's drawings, offered Montferrand the desk of Head of Draftsmen, but Montferrand preferred

1001-563: A total of 2,090 soldiers, officers, and professionals to erect the column, raising it safely on August 30, 1832. Precisely two years later, the monument was inaugurated by Nicholas. In 1836–1837, Montferrand completed the Palace Square with fencing and gas lights. He prepared five different designs for the building terminating the eastern side of the square, but the Guards Corps building was awarded to Alexander Brullov . As

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1092-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,

1183-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under

1274-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of

1365-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this

1456-488: 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 are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to

1547-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There

1638-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also 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 , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially

1729-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which

1820-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and

1911-569: 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, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. 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, Italian, and English, and to

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2002-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. 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. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in

2093-532: Is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of

2184-773: Is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It

2275-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using

2366-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population

2457-1000: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used 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

2548-541: The Battle of Hanau . When hostilities ended, new construction in defeated France was out of the question. Montferrand worked on a few unimportant jobs, spending three years performing basic draftsmanship and seeking opportunities overseas. In 1815, he was granted an audience with Alexander I of Russia , and presented the Tsar with an album of his works. In the summer of 1816, Montferrand landed in St. Petersburg, carrying

2639-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in

2730-606: The Makaryev Fair . The fairgrounds were transferred to Nizhny Novgorod, equipped with temporary wooden trade rows. Betancourt visited the site in 1817 and proposed a six-million- rouble , four-year project to rebuild the Fair using stone. Alexander I approved it, at the expense of halting the reconstruction of the Winter Palace Montferrand, as chief architect, reported to Betancourt, who personally managed

2821-652: The Neman and Vistula rivers that were associated with the events of the Patriotic War. Flanking these figures are depictions of old Russian armour – the shield of Prince Oleg of Novgorod , the helmet of Alexander Nevsky , the breastplate of Emperor Alexander I, the chainmail of Yermak Timofeyevich and other pieces recalling heroes whose martial feats brought glory to Russia. The other three sides are decorated with bas-reliefs featuring allegorical figures of Wisdom and Abundance, Justice and Mercy, Peace and Victory,

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2912-663: The Soviet Union demanded the replacement of the statue of the angel with a statue of Joseph Stalin . A historic cast-iron railing around the column was removed during the Soviet period. The railing was restored in 2002. 59°56′21″N 30°18′57″E  /  59.93917°N 30.31583°E  / 59.93917; 30.31583 Auguste de Montferrand Auguste de Montferrand ( French: [ogyst də mɔ̃fɛʁɑ̃] ; Russian : Огюст Монферран , romanized :  Ogyust Monferran ; January 23, 1786 – July 10, 1858)

3003-584: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On

3094-641: 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. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: 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 practice goes back to

3185-554: The 1820s and lasted until his death. Montferrand adopted Henri, Elise's nephew. Montferrand died in St. Petersburg in 1858, the year St. Isaac's Cathedral was completed. His desire to be buried in the vault of that cathedral could not be executed, because he was not of the Orthodox faith. His body was returned to France and buried in Montmartre Cemetery , Paris , next to his mother. The grave, once believed to be lost,

3276-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as

3367-471: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home

3458-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,

3549-590: 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 ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this

3640-526: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of

3731-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated

Alexander Column - Misplaced Pages Continue

3822-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from

3913-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian

4004-626: The State and Academy bureaucracies. The cathedral opened on May 30, 1858—the 186th anniversary of Peter the Great 's birth. Montferrand designed the monument to the late Alexander I as a column, crowned with a cross; later, he changed the cross to an angel. The cost was estimated at 1.2 million roubles. The 600-metric-ton (94,000 st) column had to be carved out of Finnish rocks in Virolahti , more than 100 nautical miles (190 km) from St. Petersburg, and transported by barge. Critics predicted that

4095-467: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of

4186-549: The base is needed and it is fixed in position by its own weight alone. The pedestal of the Alexander Column is decorated with symbols of military glory, sculpted by Giovanni Battista Scotti . On the side of the pedestal facing the Winter Palace is a bas-relief depicting winged figures holding up a plaque bearing the words "To Alexander I from a grateful Russia" . The composition includes figures representing

4277-455: The bases by Vasily Stasov . The Monument to Nicholas I was Montferrand's last work, commissioned by Alexander II in May 1856. The foundation and base was started with leftovers from the St. Isaac's site. The contract for the equestrian statue was awarded to Peter Clodt . Clodt completed the model in the summer of 1857. The first bronze cast was lost when the mold cracked; a second statue

4368-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter

4459-409: The chief architect of St. Petersburg's largest construction site, Montferrand supervised many other architectural jobs for the State, notably repairs of Kazan Cathedral . The cathedral was built in 1801–1811 by Andrey Voronikhin with temporary fittings. By 1827, the plaster sculptures were falling apart, and a leaking roof threatened to destroy frescoes and floors. Nicholas assigned Montferrand to fix

4550-537: The column would fall apart upon separation from the rock, but Montferrand's experience with the columns of St. Isaac's persuaded Nicholas I , who approved the project in December 1829. Montferrand selected the quarry contractor in March 1830, in a bidding war that reduced the column price from 420 thousand to 150 thousand roubles. Carving took a year and a half, and in September 1831 the column safely separated from

4641-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . 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. The Russian language

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4732-526: The distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate

4823-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,

4914-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or

5005-643: The former Académie d'architecture , joining class of Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine . Soon, he was summoned to Napoleon 's Army , and served a brief tour of duty in Italy . Montferrand married Julia Mornais in 1812. The next year, he was again drafted into the Army when Allied troops were approaching Dresden . Montferrand served with distinction in Thuringia , and was awarded the Légion d'honneur for valor in

5096-692: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, 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 and Central Asians. According to

5187-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and

5278-445: The last holding a shield bearing the dates 1812, 1813 and 1814. These compositions are enhanced by depictions of Ancient Roman military symbols and Russian armour. The sketches for the bas-reliefs were produced by Auguste de Montferrand . He coordinated the scale of their compositions with the monumental forms of the monument. The panels were designed to the planned size by the artist Giovanni Battista Scotti. The models were produced by

5369-734: The lower rank of senior draftsman. On December 21, 1816, he officially joined the Russian service. Montferrand's name is associated with St. Petersburg. However, working with Betancourt, he also designed buildings in Moscow , Odessa , and Nizhny Novgorod . His first major project, the Odessa Lycaeum , did not materialize due to financing problems. His designs for the Moscow Manege (1825) and Moscow fountains (1823) were also abandoned; these projects were completed by Joseph Bové and Ivan Vitali . In 1816, an accidental fire destroyed

5460-563: The middle conical dome carried the lightweight interior and exterior frames. This reduced dome weight from an estimated 7,440 metric tons (1,172,000 st) to 2,680 metric tons (422,000 st); a further 600 metric tons (94,000 st) was saved in the construction process. The dome, completed in 1841, cost two million roubles less than originally estimated. Decorating the cathedral's interior took another 16 years. Montferrand managed artists such as Karl Briullov and his brothers, Peter Clodt , and Ivan Vitali , all under close inspection by

5551-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. 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. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of

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5642-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to

5733-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. 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 such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,

5824-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held

5915-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or

6006-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian

6097-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in

6188-412: The project. Montferrand started with the two-story main administration building. This traditional, neoclassical design was marked by custom column capitals with a caduceus motif. The fair itself consisted of eight two-story corner blocks and 48 standard trade row buildings. The fairground terminated in a row of four "Chinese" pavilions, each with pagoda roofs; the neoclassical Saviour's Cathedral, and

6279-479: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . 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

6370-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,

6461-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed

6552-458: The rock. By April 1832, the carvers completed shaping it and started blasting the path from the quarry to the loading bay. The barge loading nearly ended in a catastrophe. The column broke through the ramp and threatened to roll over the barge; a team of 300 workers managed to set it back in place. At the same time, crews in St. Petersburg prepared the foundation and scaffolding; the cost estimate doubled to 2.36 million roubles. Montferrand summoned

6643-472: The roof, replace floors, and install permanent, durable sculptures and finishes. Montferrand also supervised new fresco paintings ( The Four Evangelists ). He lost the bid to design the new iconostasis to young Konstantin Thon . Montferrand, as the cathedral's architect, landscaped the adjacent square and designed the monuments to Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly . The statues were made by Boris Orlovsky , and

6734-544: The same time, bricklayers completed the main walls and vaulted ceilings. Montferrand was nearly killed in November 1837, when the crews were lifting 64-ton dome columns to their full 168-foot (51 m) height. Montferrand fell from the scaffolds, but nearby workers managed to catch him. The design of St. Isaac's domes was novel. Prior to St. Isaac's, steel-frame exterior domes were coupled to masonry internal domes. Montferrand proposed an all-metal triple-dome system, where

6825-471: The sculptors Piotr Svintsov and Ivan Lepee , the ornamental embellishments by sculptor Yevgeny Balin . The casting of the bronze was done at Charles Baird 's works in Saint Petersburg . A commemorative silver rouble designed by N. Gube was struck in 1834 and it is rumoured that a chest of these coins was placed in the foundations. In 1952, according to some recent reports, the authorities of

6916-567: The six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and

7007-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In

7098-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to

7189-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic  * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature

7280-511: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to

7371-704: Was a French classicist architect who worked primarily in Russia . His two best known works are the Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexander Column in Saint Petersburg . Montferrand was born in the parish of Chaillot , France (now the 16th arrondissement of Paris ). He was styled at birth Henri Louis Auguste Leger Ricard de Montferrand; the aristocratic de was probably his parents' invention. Decades later, Montferrand admitted in his will that, although his father owned Montferrand estate (his family

7462-554: Was cast in February 1859—after Montferrand's death. Monferrand divorced his first wife soon after settling in St. Petersburg. The divorce, and his extravagant lifestyle, led to considerable debt; in 1831, he refinanced his debt with a loan from the Tsar's Cabinet. In 1834, he was awarded a lifelong pension and a 100,000-rouble lump sum, enabling him to settle his accounts and build his own house. As his finances improved, Montferrand became

7553-532: Was encircled with a wide "Betancourt's Canal"—a precaution against fire. Despite shortages in manpower and material, the Fair opened in July 1822. Rectification work proceeded to 1825 and consumed a further 3.5 million roubles. The Fair operated until 1930; most of its buildings were torn down during the Soviet era, but the Saviour's Cathedral survives. The previous St. Isaac's, laid down by Antonio Rinaldi in 1768,

7644-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian 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. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian

7735-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of

7826-471: Was from the town of Montferrand ), the title is disputable "and if there is any doubt, I can accept other names, first of all Ricard, after my father". Montferrand's father, Benois Ricard, was a horse trainer who died when Montferrand was a child; his grandfather, Leger Ricard, was a bridge engineer. Montferrand's mother, Marie Francoise Louise Fistioni, remarried to Antoine de Commarieux, who is credited with educating Montferrand. In 1806, Montferrand joined

7917-604: Was identified in 1986 in Chemin des Gardes row. It bears the name Louise Fistioni (Montferrand's mother) and "AM", Montferrand's initials. [REDACTED] Media related to Auguste de Montferrand at Wikimedia Commons Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and

8008-436: Was obtained from Virolahti , Finland and in 1832 transported by sea to Saint Petersburg, on a barge specially designed for this purpose, where it underwent further working. Without the aid of modern cranes and engineering machines, the column, weighing 600  tonnes (661 tons ) on 30 August 1832 was erected by 3,000 men under the guidance of William Handyside in less than 2 hours. It is set so neatly that no attachment to

8099-425: Was partially completed in 1802 by Vincenzo Brenna . In 1816, Alexander I assigned Betancourt to find the architect who could rebuild the cathedral; Betancourt pointed at Montferrand. Four original concepts, using as much of the old structure as possible, failed; the fifth was approved in February 1818. Rivalry between court architects temporarily halted the project between 1821 and 1825. Montferrand's first decision

8190-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. 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

8281-473: Was to use a slab foundation , rather than a perimeter of piles . The foundation work took five years. It took more than a decade to obtain the 48 granite columns for the main portico . Columns were roughly cut in Fredrikshamn , delivered by barge, and finished on site one by one, using a gigantic lathe of Montferrand's own design. The columns were raised in 1828–1830; polishing took four more years. In

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