109-653: Bronislav Ludwigovich Grombchevsky ( Russian : Бронислав Людвигович Громбчевский , Polish : Bronisław Grąbczewski ; 1855–1926) was an ethnic Polish officer in the Imperial Russian Army and an explorer/spy, famed for his participation in The Great Game . Grombchevsky traveled extensively in the Far East and Central Asia during the period 1888–92. He is regarded as the Russian counterpart to
218-619: 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
327-519: 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
436-563: A fervently Buddhist city-state boasting some 400 temples in the late 9th/early 10th century—four times the number recorded by Xuanzang around 630. The kingdom was independent but was intermittently under Chinese control during the Han and Tang dynasties. After the Tang dynasty, Khotan formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. Khotan enjoyed close relations with the Buddhist centre at Dunhuang:
545-565: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Hotan Hotan (also known by other names ) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang , an autonomous region in Northwestern China . The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become an administrative area in its own right in August 1984. It
654-484: 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
763-588: 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
872-622: 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
981-526: 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
1090-888: A report from the Uyghur American Association , in June 2012, notice was said to be given that police planned to undertake a search of every residence in Gujanbagh (Gujiangbage), Hotan. Hotan is the last municipality in Xinjiang with a majority Ugyhur presence in the core of the city. The UAA viewed this as an attempt to systematically intimidate the Uyghur population in Hotan. The Sultanim Cemetery ( 37°07′02″N 79°56′04″E / 37.11722°N 79.93444°E / 37.11722; 79.93444 ) in central Hotan
1199-539: 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,
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#17327801700531308-481: 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
1417-401: 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
1526-644: Is a minor agricultural center. An important station on the southern branch of the historic Silk Road , Hotan has always depended on two strong rivers, the Karakash River and the White Jade River , to provide the water needed to survive on the southwestern edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert . The White Jade River still provides water and irrigation for the town and oasis. Hotan and its surrounding area were originally known as Godana in ancient Sanskrit cosmological texts. The Chinese transcribed
1635-610: 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
1744-488: 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
1853-624: 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
1962-436: Is located in the town of Lasqi ( 拉斯奎 ) northwest of the city proper. Passenger train service on this line is limited, with only one train per day, local service 5828/5825, linking the city with Kashgar (8~ hours) and Ürümqi (~34 hours). Regular bus services link Hotan with Kashgar. There is also an express bus to Aksu via the 430 km (270 mi) 'Hotan-Aksu Cross-Desert Highway' which was opened in 2007, travels alongside
2071-573: 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
2180-564: 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
2289-435: Is partly due to boundary changes. Hetian Kungang Airport (IATA: HTN ) serves the city. It serves regional flights to Ürümqi . Originally a military use airport, it was expanded significantly in 2002 to accommodate higher passenger volumes. It is located 12 km (7.5 mi) south of the city proper. Hotan is served by China National Highway 315 , which runs along the southern Tarim Basin from Ruoqiang to Kashgar, and
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#17327801700532398-402: 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
2507-429: Is soft, light and graceful tie-dyed silk fabric. It comes various colors, the brighter and rich colors are for small children to young ladies. The gray and dark colors are for elderly women. The oldest piece of kilim which we have any knowledge was obtained by the archaeological explorer Aurel Stein ; a fragment from an ancient settlement near Hotan, which was buried by sand drifts about the fourth century CE. The weave
2616-569: 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
2725-585: 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
2834-554: Is strategically located at the junction of the southern (and most ancient) branch of the Silk Road joining China and the West with one of the main routes from ancient India and Tibet to Central Asia and distant China. It provided a convenient meeting place where not only goods, but technologies, philosophies, and religions were transmitted from one culture to another. Tocharians lived in this region over 2000 years ago. Several of
2943-583: Is the seat of Hotan Prefecture . With a population of 408,900 (2018 census), Hotan is situated in the Tarim Basin some 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) southwest of the regional capital, Ürümqi . It lies just north of the Kunlun Mountains , which are crossed by the Sanju , Hindutash and Ilchi passes. The town, located southeast of Yarkant County and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs ,
3052-518: 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
3161-464: 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
3270-470: 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
3379-1000: 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
Bronislav Grombchevsky - Misplaced Pages Continue
3488-413: 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
3597-600: The Kara-Khitan Khanate , after which it was ruled by the Mongols . When Marco Polo visited Khotan in the 13th century, he noted that the people were all Muslim. He wrote that: Khotan was "a province eight days’ journey in extent, which is subject to the Great Khan . The inhabitants all worship Mahomet . It has cities and towns in plenty, of which the most splendid, and the capital of the province, bears
3706-670: The Kingdom of Khotan . In the 10th century, Khotan began a struggle with the Kara-Khanid Khanate , a Turkic state. The Kara-Khanid ruler, Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan , had converted to Islam : Satuq's son, Musa, began to put pressure on Khotan in the mid-10th century, and sometime before 1006 Yusuf Qadir Khan of Kashgar besieged and took the city. This conquest of Buddhist Khotan by the Muslim Turks—about which there are many colourful legends—marked another watershed in
3815-413: The Kunlun Mountains to the south in the summer, but it is generally of poorer quality than that found in the rivers. Khotanese textiles were mentioned by Xuanzang , who visited the oasis in 644 CE. In his Biography it is stated: "It produced carpets and fine felt, and the felt-makers also spun coarse and fine silk." Ancient Chinese-Khotanese relations were so close that the oasis emerged as one of
3924-872: The Pamirs along the Gilgit River (a tributary of the Indus ). On the way back explore the Muztagh Ata Peak (7,548 m) and left tributaries of the Raskemdarya river, which becomes the Yarkand river lower down and flows into the Tarim Basin . In 1889, he returned to the Raskemdarya basin. He explored the Raskem (6,482 m) and Tohtakorum (5,419 m) ranges and the Kirchinbulak river (left tributary of
4033-650: The Republican era in China , warlords and local ethnic self-determination movements wrestled over control of Xinjiang. Abdullah Bughra , Nur Ahmad Jan Bughra , and Muhammad Amin Bughra declared themselves Emirs of Khotan during the Kumul Rebellion . Tunganistan was an independent administered region in the southern part of Xinjiang from 1934 to 1937. The territory included the oases of the southern Tarim Basin;
4142-514: The Sampul tapestry , showing the face of Caucasoid man which was made of threads of 24 shades of color. The tapestry had been cut up and fashioned into trousers worn by one of the deceased. An Anthropological study of 56 individuals showed a primarily Caucasoid population. A study in 2010 showed that an Eastern Eurasian lineage common in Siberia dominates the mitochondrial DNA of the mummies from
4251-455: The Tarim mummies were found in the region. At Sampul, east of the city of Hotan, there is an extensive series of cemeteries scattered over an area about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) wide and 23 km (14 mi) long. The excavated sites range from about 300 BCE to 100 CE. The excavated graves have produced a number of fabrics of felt , wool , silk and cotton and even a fine bit of tapestry,
4360-584: 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
4469-721: 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
Bronislav Grombchevsky - Misplaced Pages Continue
4578-756: The Uzbek , Tajik , and Persian languages, which later helped him on his expeditions in Central Asia. In 1885, as a senior officer for special assignments in military governor of Fergana , Grombchevsky led an expedition along the Chinese border in Kashgar and the border areas of the Tian Shan mountains. In 1886, he led another in the Central Tian Shan Basin and Naryn (upper reaches of
4687-587: The Xiaohe Cemetery . Their Y chromosome is distributed throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia. There is a relative abundance of information on Hotan readily available for study. The main historical sources are to be found in the Chinese histories (particularly detailed during the Han and early Tang dynasties) when China was interested in control of the Western Regions ,
4796-517: The Xiongnu in 176 BCE, the trade of Khotanese jade into China was controlled by the nomadic Yuezhi . The Chinese still refer to the Yurungkash as the White Jade River , alluding to the white jade recovered from its alluvial deposits . The light-colored jade is called "Mutton fat" jade. Most of the jade is now gone, with only a few kilos of good quality jade found yearly. Some is still mined in
4905-415: The cemetery was demolished and the western part of the land turned into a parking lot. Hotan has a temperate zone, cold desert climate ( Köppen BWk ), with a mean annual total of only 36.5 millimetres (1.44 in) of precipitation falling on 17.3 days of the year. Due to its southerly location in Xinjiang just north of the Kunlun Mountains , during winter it is one of the warmest locations in
5014-565: 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 the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which
5123-519: 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
5232-736: The Astrakhan Ataman of Astrakhan Cossack army (1905–1907). He represented the Russian "Red Cross" in Morocco during the war between Spain and France with local insurgents (1908–1909). During the revolution he lost all his property, was imprisoned in Siberia and escaped via Japan to Poland. Finally, he returned to Poland, where he worked in the State Institute of Meteorology and wrote many books about his travels in Central Asia. Grombchevsky died in Warsaw on 27 February 1926, at
5341-412: 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
5450-444: The British military-explorer Francis Younghusband . The two Great Game rivals famously met in 1889 when they were exploring the Raskam Valley for their respective governments. His name also appears in English as "Gromtchevsky" and "Gromchevsky". Grombchevsky was born on 15 January 1855, in the family mansion in Kaunatava in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Lithuania ). His father, Louis Grąbczewski, partook in
5559-409: 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,
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#17327801700535668-468: 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
5777-399: The Islamicisation and Turkicisation of the Tarim Basin , and an end to local autonomy of this southern Tarim city state. Some Khotanese Buddhist works were unearthed. The rulers of Khotan were aware of the menace they faced since they arranged for the Mogao grottoes to paint a growing number of divine figures along with themselves. Halfway in the 10th century Khotan came under attack by
5886-487: The Kerry and to Ustyuntag (6,920 m) and along the Liushi Shan (7,160 m). In 1892, he took part in the military expedition to the Pamir under a Major-General Mikhail Ionov . In 1893, Grombchevsky was promoted to colonel. For his expeditions (1888–1892), he was awarded a gold medal by the Russian Geographical Society. In 1900, Grombchevski became a major general and civil commissioner of Kwantung province in China. He then served as its governor (1903–1905) and managed
5995-422: The Khotanese royal family intermarried with Dunhuang élites, visited and patronized Dunhuang's Buddhist temple complex, and donated money to have their portraits painted on the walls of the Mogao grottos. Through the 10th century, Khotanese royal portraits were painted in association with an increasing number of deities in the caves. Besides this, a particular site, Melikawat functioned as a major Buddhist center in
6104-411: 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
6213-475: The Polish uprising of 1863 and was sent to Siberia, while his estate and property were confiscated. Therefore, his mother and other relatives moved to Warsaw, where Grombchevsky entered a Russian classical school. In 1873, Grombchevsky entered the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute but left before completing his studies to join the Life Grenadier Regiment of the Imperial Russian Guard at Kexholm . He took leave to attend infantry school in Warsaw and returned to
6322-406: The Qarakhanid ruler Musa, and in what proved to be a pivotal moment in the Turkification and Islamification of the Tarim Basin , the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered Khotan around 1006. Yūsuf Qadr Khān was a brother or cousin of the Muslim ruler of Kashgar and Balasagun , Khotan lost its independence and between 1006 and 1165, became part of the Kara-Khanid Khanate . Later it fell to
6431-466: The Qing dynasty along with the rest of Xinjiang. The town suffered severely during the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) against the Qing rule and again a few years later when Yaqub Beg of Kashgar made himself master of Kashgaria, ruling the newly founded Turkic state known at the time as Yettishar . However, Xinjiang was reconquered by the Qing dynasty by 1877 and was converted into a province in 1884. Qing imperial authority collapsed in 1912. During
6540-418: The Raskemdarya). He reached the foot of Chogori ( K2 ) and the northern ridge of Agil-Karakorum (7,693 m). By late November, he found the sources of the Tizinafu River (right tributary of the Yarkand River ). In December, he followed the Karakash (part of Hotan ) into Tibet to Karangutag (7,160 m) between the Black Jade River and White Jade River in Hotan. In the spring of 1890, he climbed along
6649-807: 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
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#17327801700536758-458: 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
6867-405: 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
6976-432: The Trans-Taklamakan Desert Highway, which run north to Luntai. An expressway is being built between Hotan and Karakax County (Moyu) as of 2014. Hotan is connected to the rest of China's rail network via the Kashgar–Hotan Railway , which opened to freight traffic in December 2010, and passenger service in June 2011. The railway station was constructed by a company under the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps , and
7085-403: 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
7194-466: The accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks , a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Classical Tibetan and a large number of documents in the Iranian Saka language and other languages discovered, for the most part, early this century at various sites in the Tarim Basin and from the hidden library at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang . In the Hellenistic period, there was an Indo-Greek colony in Khotan. The ancient Kingdom of Khotan
7303-426: The age of 71 years. Francis Younghusband wrote his name "Gromtchevsky" and Peter Hopkirk spelled it "Gromchevsky." 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 is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of
7412-403: 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
7521-401: The centre of the region was Khotan. Beginning with the Islamic rebellion in 1937 , Hotan and the rest of the province came under the control of warlord Sheng Shicai . Sheng was later ousted by the Kuomintang . Shortly after the Communists won the civil war in 1949, Hotan was incorporated into the People's Republic of China. In 1983/4, the urban area of Hotan was administratively split from
7630-517: The city only receives 2,587 hours of bright sunshine annually, which is on the low end for Xinjiang; monthly percent possible sunshine ranges from 50% in March to 75% in October. The city includes four subdistricts , three towns , five townships and two other areas: Others: Hotan is largely dominated by the Uyghurs, and as of 2015, 311,050 of the 348,289 residents of the county were Uyghur , 35,897 were Han Chinese and 1,342 were from other ethnic groups. In 1940, Owen Lattimore quoted
7739-460: 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
7848-415: The earliest centres of silk manufacture outside China. There are good reasons to believe that the silk-producing industry flourished in Hotan as early as the 5th century. According to one story, a Chinese princess given in marriage to a Khotan prince brought to the oasis the secret of silk-manufacture, "hiding silkworms in her hair as part of her dowry", probably in the first half of the 1st century CE. It
7957-551: The earth". However, this was likely borrowed from the Tibetan name for the region, Gosthana , which means "land of cows". It is therefore most likely that the original name of Hotan was Sanskritic in origin, a consequence of ancient Indian settlement in the region. An alternative etymology is proposed by Harold Walter Bailey , an expert in the Khotanese language . He believes the oldest indigenous name to be Hvatana . Hotan
8066-413: 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,
8175-456: 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
8284-717: 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 is the most spoken native language in Europe ,
8393-692: 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
8502-480: 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
8611-469: The intermittent Hotan River , and which takes about 5 or 6 hours. This same bus then goes on to Urumchi taking a total of about 21 hours from Hotan. As of 1885 , there was about 100,000 acres (662,334 mu ) of cultivated land in Khotan. Chinese historical sources indicate that Hotan was the main source of the nephrite jade used in ancient China . For several hundred years, until they were defeated by
8720-655: The larger Hotan County , and from then on governed as a county-level city. On July 11, 2006, the townships of Jiya and Yurungqash (Yulongkashi) in Lop County and Tusalla (Tushala) in Hotan County were transferred to Hotan City. Following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots , ethnic tensions rose in Xinjiang and in Hotan in particular. As a result, the city has seen occasional bouts of violence. In June 2011, Hotan opened its first passenger-train service to Kashgar , which
8829-478: 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 the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as
8938-592: The name as 于窴 , pronounced Gudana in Middle Chinese ( Yutian in modern Standard Chinese ); the pronunciation eventually morphed into Khotan . In the 7th century, the Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar Xuanzang attempted to remedy this lexical change. Xuanzang, who was well-versed in Sanskrit, proposed that the traditional name was in fact Kustana ( गौस्तन ) and asserted it meant "breast of
9047-472: 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
9156-515: 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
9265-461: 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,
9374-446: 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
9483-453: 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
9592-459: 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
9701-405: The population of Khotan to be estimated as 26,000. In 1998 the urban population was recorded at 154,352, 83% of which were Uyghurs, and 17% were Han Chinese. In 1999, 83.01% of the population was Uyghur and 16.57% of the population was Han Chinese. In the 2000 census, the population was recorded as 186,123. In the 2010 census figure, the figure had risen to 322,300. The increase in population
9810-418: 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
9919-479: 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
10028-472: 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 ,
10137-680: The regiment with the rank of Praporshchik . Unable to maintain payments of an annual fee to remain in the Guard, he joined the Army Corps in March 1876 and was transferred to the 14th Battalion on the Turkestan line, then headquarters of the Turkestan Military District. There, Grombchevsky served as orderly to General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev and participated in the general's campaigns. During this time, he learned
10246-553: The region, with average high temperatures remaining above freezing throughout the year. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −3.9 °C (25.0 °F) in January to 25.8 °C (78.4 °F) in July, and the annual mean is 13.03 °C (55.5 °F). The diurnal temperature variation is not large for a desert, averaging 11.8 °C (21.2 °F) annually. Although no month averages less than half of possible sunshine,
10355-491: 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
10464-486: The river Syr Darya ). For these expeditions, he was awarded a silver medal by the Russian Geographical Society . Grombchevsky then entered the astronomical faculty of St. Petersburg University , where he received theoretical and practical skills in surveying , geodesy , and cartography , after which he returned to Turkestan. In 1888, he led an expedition from Margilan through passages in
10573-523: The same name as that of the province…It is amply stocked with the means of life. Cotton grows here in plenty. It has vineyards, estates and orchards in plenty. The people live by trade and industry; they are not at all warlike". The Qing dynasty of China conquered the Dzungar Khanate during the final stage of the Dzungar–Qing Wars in the late 1750s. By 1760, Hotan became the territory of
10682-626: 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
10791-512: 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
10900-786: 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
11009-511: 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
11118-529: Was a historical Uyghur graveyard that also included a religious shrine. According to a 2019 interview by the Uyghur Human Rights Project , the cemetery entombed four commanders of Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, who conquered the city around 960 CE and spread Islam. Due to space limitations after over a thousand years of burials, multiple bodies had to reuse the same grave, and additionals layers were dug underneath old ones. Between 2018 and 2019,
11227-548: Was established as a special economic zone following the riots. In July of the same year, a bomb and knife attack occurred on the city's central thoroughfare. In June 2011, authorities in Hotan Prefecture sentenced Uyghur Muslim Hebibullah Ibrahim to ten years imprisonment for selling "illegal religious materials". In June 2012, Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 was hijacked en route from Hotan to Ürümqi. In
11336-405: 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
11445-421: 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
11554-456: Was from Khotan that the eggs of silkworms were smuggled to Iran , reaching Justinian I 's Constantinople in 551. Silk production is still a major industry employing more than a thousand workers and producing some 150 million metres of silk annually. Silk weaving by Uyghur women is a thriving cottage industry , some of it produced using traditional methods. Atlas is the fabric used for traditional Uyghur clothing worn by Uyghur women. It
11663-568: Was known to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi . The official Uyghur-to-Latin transliteration, and therefore English spelling, of the modern city's name is "Hotan" according to the Register of Chinese Geographic Places . The Hanyu pinyin romanization Hetian has been used on some maps and by some airports. The city's former Chinese name was written with a different character for tian ( simplified Chinese : 阗 ; traditional Chinese : 闐 ; pinyin : tián ). The oasis of Hotan
11772-567: Was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China. Its capital was located to the west of the modern city of Hotan. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Khotan, like those of early Kashgar and Yarkant , spoke Saka , one of the Eastern Iranian languages . Khotan's indigenous dynasty (all of whose royal names are Indian in origin) governed
11881-402: 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
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