Byzantine Greece has a history that mainly coincides with that of the Byzantine Empire itself.
144-635: The Eurasian Land Bridge ( Russian : Евразийский сухопутный мост , romanized : Yevraziyskiy sukhoputniy most ), sometimes called the New Silk Road ( Новый шёлковый путь , Noviy shyolkoviy put' ), is the rail transport route for moving freight and passengers overland between Pacific seaports in the Russian Far East and China and seaports in Europe. The route, a transcontinental railroad and rail land bridge , comprises
288-674: 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
432-519: 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
576-527: A Greek lover, Antinous . At the same time, Greece and much of the rest of the Roman east came under the influence of Christianity . The apostle Paul had preached in Corinth and Athens, and Greece soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire. During the second and third centuries, Greece was divided into provinces including Achaea , Macedonia , Epirus vetus and Thracia . During
720-740: A crucial link to the outside world for landlocked Mongolia, and the shortest connection between the Trans-Siberian Railway and Beijing. This line's capacity, however, is limited by its being single-track. While the USSR had long been connected with China via the rail links in Northeastern China and Mongolia , since the 1950s plans existed to connect the two countries' rail networks at the Kazakhstan / Xinjiang border. The Soviets completed their line from Aktogay (a station on
864-462: A distance of 11,870 kilometres (7,400 mi). The exact route used to connect the two cities, whether through Mongolia or Kazakhstan, however, is unclear. An alternative way from China to Europe is via Turkey. The route from China follows Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey. Due to longer distance, insufficient service, and border crossings, this route has not regularly been used for direct transport from China to Europe. However, work
1008-505: 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) Byzantine Greece The Greek peninsula became a Roman protectorate in 146 BC, and the Aegean islands were added to this territory in 133 BC. Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88 BC, and the peninsula was crushed by the Roman general Sulla . The Roman civil wars devastated
1152-558: A hard or soft counterpart, and 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
1296-484: 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
1440-588: 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
1584-763: A long-distance freight train service between Beijing and Hamburg . Travelling a total of 10,000 kilometres (6,210 mi), the train uses the China Railways and the Trans-Mongolian line to travel from Xiangtan (in Hunan Province) to Ulaanbaatar , where it then continues north to the Trans-Siberian. After reaching the end of the Trans-Siberian at Moscow the train continues to Germany via rail links in Belarus and Poland. Total transit time
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#17327650306121728-671: A major city with perhaps 30,000 people, and was the centre of a major silk industry. Athens and Corinth probably still had around 10,000 people. Mainland Greek cities continued to export grain to the capital in order to make up for the land lost to the Seljuks. However, after Constantinople was conquered during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Greece was divided among the Crusaders. The Latin Empire held Constantinople and Thrace, while
1872-622: 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
2016-562: A number of container terminals in China and their counterparts in Europe has become fairly regular. Between some city pairs, there is one train per week. Both with respect to cost and speed, the China-Europe direct train service is in between the air and sea options. While it is estimated that the overall volume of goods moving between China and Europe by rail is not going to surpass 1–2% of the sea cargo volume, it may eat significantly into
2160-526: 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
2304-432: A result, trains cannot run from China or European countries into or out of the former USSR without changing bogies . Large facilities to carry out this procedure exist at most border crossing between the " Russian " and " standard " gauge territories (e.g., at Zabaykalsk or Erenhot ) Changing the bogies on a rail car takes hours and special, heavy equipment. In many cases (especially, containerized freight), freight
2448-446: A test of the route by shipping roof tiles to Europe via the Trans-Siberian. The tiles were transported by ship from Hamada, Shimane to Vladivostok, then by the railway to Moscow. The transit time was expected to be 30 days, in comparison with the 50 days on average it takes to ship cargo by ship from Hamada to ports in western Russia. If successful, the ministry would use the results of the test to encourage other Japanese companies to use
2592-743: Is the same gauge as Chinese railways ( standard gauge , as opposed to 1,520 mm gauge in the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union), rail links to India, Burma , Thailand , Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia , construction of a rail tunnel and highway bridge across the Bering Strait to connect the Trans-Siberian to the North American rail system, and construction of a rail tunnel between South Korea and Japan. The United Nations has proposed further expansion of
2736-605: Is 15 days, as compared with the 30 days average it would take for the freight to make the same journey by ship. The first train of 50 containers, carrying a mixed load of clothes, ceramics and electronics (for the Fujitsu company), travelled on tracks operated by six different railways. Hartmut Mehdorn , chairman of Deutsche Bahn (DB), stated in March 2008 that regularly scheduled, weekly China-Germany freight services should be in operation by 2010. In April 2009, however, DB postponed
2880-539: 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,
3024-469: Is China–Kazakhstan–Azerbaijan–Georgia–Turkey. The former countries of the Russian Empire and USSR, including Finland (which was once part of Russia), as well as Mongolia, use a track gauge of 1,520 mm ( 4 ft 11 + 27 ⁄ 32 in ). The international standard gauge used in most of Europe and China is 1,435 mm ( 4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in ). As
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#17327650306123168-481: 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
3312-401: 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
3456-610: 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
3600-673: 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 the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and
3744-488: 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
3888-624: 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
4032-532: Is comparatively little used (the management mentions 6 million tons of freight per year, not indicating the year), the management expects the line to be fully used in the foreseeable future for oil and copper ore export, and has plans to double-track it. While the Trans-Siberian has always been used by the Tsarist , Soviet and modern Russian government to project political power into their territories in Asia, in
4176-541: Is expected to reach 25.5 million tons by 2010. Besides cargo (principally, Russian oil exported to China), this crossing sees a direct weekly passenger train, Moscow–Beijing, as well as some local passenger trains. The eastern border point of the former Chinese Eastern Railway, at Suifenhe / Grodekovo , sees significant use as well, with over 8 million tons of freight crossing the border there in 2007, and regular cross-border passenger service. A third, little-known and less used, rail connection between Russia and China
4320-573: 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
4464-564: 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
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4608-402: 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
4752-569: 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
4896-585: 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
5040-624: 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 , 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
5184-518: 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
5328-416: Is transshipped from one train to another instead of changing the bogies. As of 2016, this is the usual procedure with China-Europe container trains at places such as Khorgos ; it is reported that containers can be moved from one train to another in as little as 47 minutes. In the case of liquids, frozen goods and hazardous materials, however, the bogies are usually changed. Russian language Russian
5472-587: Is underway to improve the viability of this route, such as the Marmaray project to connect Europe and Asia via a tunnel under the Bosphorus . After the completion of the project, a continuous run of trains will be possible between Asia and Europe, which is now done by rail ferry service. But the Marmaray tunnel may give a limited service to freight trains due to dense usage by public transport. On 7 November 2019
5616-403: The polis , as an institution, appears to have remained prosperous until at least the sixth century. Contemporary texts such as Hierocles' Synecdemus affirm that in late Antiquity , Greece was highly urbanised and contained approximately 80 cities. This view of extreme prosperity is widely accepted today, and it is assumed between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, Greece may have been one of
5760-470: 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
5904-603: The Amur (Heilong) River , connecting Tongjiang in China's Heilongjiang province with Nizhneleninskoye in Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast . On 4 November 2010, the project director, Wang Jin, told Xinhua News Agency that construction on the bridge would begin in January 2011. The Trans-Mongolian line , connecting Ulan-Ude on the Trans-Siberian with China's Erenhot via the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar , both serves as
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6048-1000: 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
6192-413: 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
6336-597: The Han and Tang dynasties, Parthia , Rouran , Sogdiana , Göktürks , Xiongnu , Yuezhi and the Mongol Empire . Beginning in the 5th century AD, new land routes between Asia and Europe developed further to the north. Many of these routes passed through Yugra and extended to the Baltic region . The Khazars , Volga Bulgaria , and the Rus' Khaganate were active in trading along the northern trade routes. Traffic along
6480-563: The Islamic Republic of Iran Railways . The link potentially enables rail freight from China to reach ports on the Persian Gulf and via other train lines, to reach into the Caucasus and Turkey . In 2016, direct container train service was inaugurated on this route, between Yiwu ( Zhejiang Province) and Teheran ; the trip takes 14 days. The central Asian route did not extend all the way into Europe until October 2013 when
6624-674: The Olympic Games , despite the rules against non-Greek participation. He was, of course, honored with a victory in every contest, and in 67 he proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks at the Isthmian Games in Corinth , just as Flamininus had over 200 years previously. Hadrian was also particularly fond of the Greeks; before he became emperor he served as eponymous archon of Athens. He also built his namesake arch there, and had
6768-723: The Ottoman Empire . Greece was raided in Macedonia in 479 and 482 by the Ostrogoths under their king, Theodoric the Great (493–526). The Bulgars also raided Thrace and the rest of northern Greece in 540 and on repeated other occasions. These continuing Bulgar invasions required the Byzantine Empire to build a defensive wall, called the " Anastasian Wall ," that extended for some thirty (30) miles, or more, from
6912-644: The Peloponnese , Thrace , Macedonia , Hellas , Nicopolis , Dyrrhachium , Cephalonia , Thessalonica and Strymon , the Cyclades and the Aegean Sea . They were protected from raids and invasions by the new themes created out of Bulgar territory. Greece became more prosperous in the 10th century and towns and cities began to grow again. Athens and Corinth probably grew to about 10,000 people, while Thessalonica may have had as many as 100,000 people. There
7056-633: The Trans-Siberian Railway , which runs through Russia and is sometimes called the Northern East-West Corridor , and the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge, running through China and Kazakhstan . As of November 2007, about one percent of the $ 600 billion in goods shipped from Asia to Europe each year were delivered by inland transport routes. Completed in 1916,
7200-646: The Turksib in eastern Kazakhstan) to their border station Druzhba (now Dostyk ), but the construction on the Chinese side stopped because of the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. In 1985 construction commenced on the Northern Xinjiang Railway to link the Chinese and Russian rail networks via Kazakhstan. The section between Ürümqi and Alashankou was completed on 16 September 1990, linking
7344-476: 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
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#17327650306127488-507: 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
7632-431: The Visigoths invaded in the late 4th century . Arcadius' Chamberlain Eutropius allowed Alaric to enter Greece, and he looted Corinth , and the Peloponnese . Stilicho eventually drove him out around 397 and Alaric was made magister militum in Illyricum . Eventually, Alaric and the Goths migrated to Italy, sacked Rome in 410, and built the Visigothic Empire in Iberia and southern France, which lasted until 711 with
7776-461: The 1960s it was opened by the USSR as an international trade route connecting the Western Pacific with Europe. Freight shipments on the Trans-Siberian, however, experienced increasing problems over time with dilapidated rail infrastructures, theft, damaged freight, late trains, inflated freight fees, uncertain scheduling for return of containers and geopolitical tension. As a result, use of the railway for international trade had declined to almost zero by
7920-546: The 1990s. According to Hofstra University , as of 2001 there was renewed interest in using the Trans-Siberian as a route across Asia to Europe. Also, the Trans-Siberian links directly to railways which ultimately connect, via Finland and Sweden, to the year-round ice-free port of Narvik in Norway. At Narvik, freight can be transshipped to ships to cross the Atlantic to North America. Rail links from Russia also connect to Rotterdam , but may encounter greater congestion along this route with resulting delays. The trade route between
8064-405: 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
8208-511: The 580s. However, there is no archaeological evidence indicating Slavic penetration of imperial Byzantine territories before the end of the 6th century. Overall, traces of Slavic culture in Greece are very rare. The city of Thessaloniki remained unconquered even after being attacked by the Slavs around 615. The Slavs were eventually defeated, gathered by the Byzantines and placed into segregated communities known as Sclaviniae . In 610, Heraclius became Emperor. During his reign, Greek became
8352-449: The Aegean islands, Thessaly, Epirus, and most of Achaea, including the Crusader fortress of Mystras , which became the seat of a Byzantine despotate. However, Athens and the northern Peloponnese remained in Crusader hands. Charles of Anjou and later his son claimed the throne of the defunct Latin Empire, and threatened Epirus, but were never able to make any progress there. By the reign of Andronicus III Palaeologus , beginning in 1328,
8496-556: The Aegean were still technically under the ecclesiastic authority of the Pope , but Leo also quarreled with the Papacy and gave these territories to the Patriarch of Constantinople . As emperor, Leo III, introduced more administrative and legal reforms than had been promulgated since the time of Justinian. Meanwhile, the Arabs began their first serious raids in the Aegean. Bithynia was eventually re-populated by Greek-speaking population from mainland Greece and Cyprus . Nicephorus I also began to reconquer Slavic and Bulgar-held areas in
8640-423: The Beijiang line, are the Longhai Railway and the Lanzhou–Xinjiang Railway . Together, the railways create an uninterrupted rail link between the port city of Lianyungang in Jiangsu province and Kazakhstan. In 1995 the Chinese and Kazakhstan governments signed an agreement which allows the latter to use Lianyungang as its primary seaport for exports and imports, and the former intends for Lianyungang to serve as
8784-412: 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
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#17327650306128928-443: The Byzantines after General Leontios lost to the Arabs in the Battle of Sebastopolis in 692, as a result of the Slavs having defected to the Arab side. These themes rebelled against the iconoclast emperor Leo III in 727 and attempted to set up their own emperor, although Leo defeated them. Leo then moved the headquarters of the Karabisianoi to Anatolia and created the Cibyrrhaeotic Theme of them. Up to this time, Greece and
9072-426: The Eurasian Land Bridge, including the Trans-Asian Railway project. Commercial traffic between Europe and Asia took place along the Silk Road from at least the 2nd millennium BC . The Silk Road was not a specific thoroughfare, but a general route used by traders to travel, much of it by land, between the two continents along the Eurasian Steppes through Central Asia. The 8,000-kilometre-long (5,000 mi) route
9216-481: The European end of the freight route, the rail terminal near Duisburg 's river port ( Ruhrort ) is a major destination. According to a 2018 report, Duisburg is either the destination, or one of the destinations, of some 80% of all direct China-Western Europe cargo trains. The New Eurasian Land Bridge, also called the New Eurasian Continental Bridge, is the name given to China's rail link with Central Asia. The route includes China's east–west railways which, in addition to
9360-409: 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,
9504-468: 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
9648-411: 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
9792-425: The Peloponnese. Also during his reign, the Fourth Crusade attempted to place Alexius IV on the throne, until it eventually invaded and sacked the capital. Greece was relatively peaceful and prosperous in the 11th and 12th centuries, compared to Anatolia which was being overrun by the Seljuks. Thessalonica had probably grown to about 150,000 people, despite being looted by the Normans in 1185. Thebes also became
9936-442: The Roman Empire much the same as it had previously, and Greek continued to be the lingua franca in the Eastern and most important part of the Empire. Roman culture was heavily influenced by classical Greek culture (see Greco-Roman ) as Horace said, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (Translation: "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror" ). The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil , and authors such as Seneca
10080-807: 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
10224-458: 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
10368-721: The Russian rail system. Two connect with the Trans-Siberian Railway (the Turksib and the Shu – Nur-Sultan – Petropavl meridional line ) while the other two (the Trans-Aral Railway , and the connection via Atyrau and Astrakhan Oblast ) go directly to European Russia. These links to the Russian rail system are sometimes called the Eurasian Railway. Kazakhstan plays an important role in the "New Silk Road" initiative, known as "One Belt, One Road" linking China and Europe through Central Asia and Russia. A new direction of
10512-941: The Silk Road was launched in January 2016 and included the Ukraine – Georgia – Azerbaijan – Kazakhstan – China route. Kazakhstan's infrastructure development program Nurly Zhol was developed in line with the New Silk Road Initiative. President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev even noted that Nurly zhol was a part of the New Silk Road Economic Belt. There are three main routes for container services from China to Europe: Eastern route from Vostochny Port (Russia), northern route from west China via Manzhouli/Zabaikalsk border stations and southern route from east China via Dostyk border station, through which totally 25k TEU has been transported on rail by 2014. In January 2008 China and Germany inaugurated
10656-458: 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
10800-569: The Trans-Siberian Railway line is capable of transporting around 100 million tons of freight annually. The line can handle up to 200,000 TEU of containerized international transit freight per year. A more northerly east–west route across Siberia, parallel to the Trans-Siberian line and known as the Baikal–Amur Mainline was mostly completed in 1989. It terminates at the Pacific ports of Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan . Although this line
10944-409: The Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Russian Pacific seaports such as Vladivostok . From the 1960s until the early 1990s the railway served as the primary land bridge between Asia and Europe, until several factors caused the use of the railway for transcontinental freight to dwindle. One factor is use of a wider rail gauge by the railways of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union than most of
11088-476: The Trans-Siberian over the sea route. In 2011, a direct container rail service began carrying car parts 11,000 kilometres (6,800 mi) from Leipzig , Germany, to inland Shenyang , China, through Siberia in 23 days, every day. In 2013 a direct container, pallet, and general cargo rail service began, 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) from Łódź , Poland, to inland Chengdu , China, through Siberia in 14 days, 3 days each week. According to Russian statistics,
11232-467: 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
11376-607: The Younger wrote using Greek styles, while famous Romans such as Scipio Africanus , Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius compiled works in the Greek language . During that period, Greek intellectuals such as Galen or Apollodorus of Damascus were continuously being brought to Rome . Within the city of Rome, Greek was spoken by Roman elites, particularly philosophers, and by lower, working classes such as sailors and merchants. The emperor Nero visited Greece in 66, and performed at
11520-625: The advent of the Arabs. Greece remained part of the relatively unified eastern half of the empire. Contrary to outdated visions of late antiquity , the Greek peninsula was most likely one of the most prosperous regions of the Roman and later the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. Older scenarios of poverty, depopulation, barbarian destruction and civil decay have been revised in light of recent archaeological discoveries. In fact,
11664-549: The air cargo volume. The service is typically used for valuable and somewhat time-sensitive cargo where the time advantage of rail over ship is essential, which, however, is heavy enough to make the cost saving vs. air transport noticeable. Typical cargoes include complex machinery and spare parts (in both directions), as well as high-end groceries and consumer goods (primarily toward China). While major customers ship their products by full container load, freight forwarders also make it possible to send less-than-container shipments. On
11808-538: The amount of international container shipments transiting annually through Russia over the Trans-Siberian grew by a factor of 7 between 2009 and 2014, reaching 131,000 TEU (55,000 physical containers) in 2014. Belarusian Railways reported similar statistics: in 2014, the volume of direct container traffic from China to Western Europe crossing Belarus amounted to 40,600 TEU, on 25 direct container train routes. This constituted over 20% of Belarusian Railway's entire volume of container transportation that year, 193,100 TEU. This
11952-657: The area's recovery from the Slavic invasions, its wealth was restored. Events such as the Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor and the Latin occupation of Constantinople gradually focused Byzantine imperial interest to the Greek peninsula during the late Byzantine period. The Peloponnese in particular continued to prosper economically and intellectually even during its Latin domination , the Byzantine recovery , and until its final fall to
12096-539: The areas around Thessalonica and the Peloponnese again in 997 before being forced to withdraw to Bulgaria. In 999, Samuel captured Dyrrhachium and raided northern Greece once more. Basil recaptured these areas by 1002 and had fully subjugated completely the Bulgarians in the decade before his death (see Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria ). By Basil's death in 1025, Greece was divided into themes including Crete,
12240-484: The army, and allowed Nicephorus to convert most of the Slavs to Christianity. Crete was conquered by the Arabs in 824. In the late 9th century , Leo VI faced also invasions from the Bulgarians under Simeon I , who pillaged Thrace in 896, and again in 919 during Zoe 's regency for Constantine VII . Simeon invaded northern Greece again in 922 and penetrated deep to the south seizing Thebes , just north of Athens. Crete
12384-403: 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
12528-572: The city of Selymbria (now Silivri ) to the Black Sea . The Huns and Bulgars raided Greece in 559 until the Byzantine army returned from Italy, where Justinian I had been attempting to capture the heart of the Roman Empire. According to historical documents, the Slavs invaded and settled in parts of Greece beginning in 579 and Byzantium nearly lost control of the entire peninsula during
12672-572: 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
12816-700: The designated starting point for the New Eurasian Land Bridge. From Almaty in Kazakhstan, the railway extends to Tashkent and Samarkand , Uzbekistan and then to Tejen , Turkmenistan. From Tejen, another line continues to Ashgabat , the capital of Turkmenistan. After Ashgabat, the line ends at Türkmenbaşy, Turkmenistan , a port on the Caspian Sea . Since 2013, the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route has been operating, which goes through
12960-493: The early 9th century. He resettled Greek-speaking families from Asia Minor to the Greek peninsula and the Balkans, and expanded the theme of Hellas to the north to include parts of Thessaly and Macedonia, and to the south to include the regained territory of the Peloponnese. Thessalonica, previously organized as an archontate surrounded by the Slavs, became a theme of its own as well. These themes contributed another 10,000 men to
13104-585: The east coast of North America and eastern Russia using the Trans-Siberian is often called the Northern East West Freight Corridor . In an effort to attract use of the Trans-Siberian to transport goods from Japan, China, and Korea to Europe, in the mid-1990s Russia lowered tariffs on freight using the railway. As a result, freight volume over the rail line doubled in 1999 and 2000. In February and March 2011, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism sponsored
13248-534: The emperors to unite with the Catholic Church , even though this would have allowed the empire to gain help from the west against the Ottomans. The Ottomans had begun their conquest of the Balkans and Greece in the late 14th century and early 15th century capturing among others Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Thessaly. In 1445, Ottoman-occupied Thessaly was recaptured by the future emperor Constantine XI , at
13392-504: The empire controlled most of Greece, especially the metropolis of Thessalonica, but very little else. Epirus was nominally Byzantine but still occasionally rebelled, until it was fully recovered in 1339. Greece was mostly used as a battleground during the civil war between John V Palaeologus and John VI Cantacuzenus in the 1340s, and at the same time the Serbs and Ottomans began attacking Greece as well. By 1356, another independent despotate
13536-467: The enemies of the Byzantines. In the Peloponnese , more Slavic invaders brought disorder to the western part of the peninsula, while the eastern part remained firmly under Byzantine domination. Empress Irene organised a military campaign which liberated those territories and restored Byzantine rule to the region, but it was not until emperor Nicephorus I 's reign that the last trace of Slavic element
13680-413: 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,
13824-456: 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
13968-487: The first Chinese freight train through the Marmaray tunnel to Europe ran, from Xi’an using a Chinese locomotive. This demonstrated a China to Turkey transportation time reduced from a month to 12 days. The Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway also provides a route via the Caspian Sea by bypassing Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The new railway lines constructed in Kazakhstan will make it shorter. The new route, in this case,
14112-729: The first rail connection between Europe and Asia, from Moscow to Vladivostok. The line, at 9,200 kilometres (5,720 mi), is the longest rail line in the world. The Trans-Siberian connects the Russian Pacific ports of Vladivostok and Nakhodka with Moscow. Rail links at Moscow allow passengers and freight to connect to train lines running further west into Europe. By making further transfers, passengers and freight can eventually reach Western European seaports. The Trans-Siberian also connects with North Korea (e.g. via Dandong in Northeastern China, or directly at Khasan south of Vladivostok). A fully electrified and double-tracked line,
14256-692: 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
14400-480: 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
14544-662: The knights of the Second Crusade made their way through Byzantine territory, Roger II of Sicily captured Corcyra and pillaged Thebes and Corinth. In 1197, Henry VI of Germany continued his father Frederick Barbarossa 's antagonism towards the empire by threatening to invade Greece to reclaim the territory the Normans had briefly held. Alexius III was forced to pay him off, although the taxes he imposed caused frequent revolts against him, including rebellions in Greece and
14688-849: The land even further, until Augustus organized the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC. Greece was a typical eastern province of the Roman Empire . The Romans sent colonists there and contributed new buildings to its cities, especially in the Agora of Athens, where the Agrippeia of Marcus Agrippa , the Library of Titus Flavius Pantaenus, and the Tower of the Winds , among others, were built. Romans tended to be philhellenic and Greeks were generally loyal to Rome. Life in Greece continued under
14832-561: The line to Saryozek by 2013. The rail link through the Korgas Pass was completed in December 2012. Because Kazakhstan was once in the Russian Empire and then a member of the USSR, its rail system connects with and carries the same rail gauge as the Russian rail system, as well as the other Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan . From Kazakhstan, four major north–south railways connect with
14976-401: The most economically active regions in the eastern Mediterranean. Following the loss of Alexandria and Antioch to the Arabs, Thessaloniki became the Byzantine Empire's second largest city, called the "co-regent" ( symbasileuousa ), second only to Constantinople. The Greek peninsula remained one of the strongest centers of Christianity in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods. After
15120-699: The naval Karabisianoi corps in southern Greece and the Aegean islands. The Karabisanoi were later divided by Justinian II into the Theme of Hellas (centred on Corinth) and the Cibyrrhaeotic Theme . By this time, the Slavs were no longer a threat to the Byzantines since they had been either defeated numerous times or placed in the Sclaviniae . The Slavic communities in Bithynia were destroyed by
15264-472: 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
15408-551: The official language of the empire. During the early 7th century, Constans II made the first mass-expulsions of Slavs from the Greek peninsula to the Balkans and central Asia Minor. Justinian II defeated and destroyed most of the Sclaviniae, and moved as many as 100–200,000 Slavs from the Greek peninsula to Bithynia , while he enlisted some 30,000 Slavs in his army. The Slavic populations that were placed in these segregated communities were used for military campaigns against
15552-515: 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
15696-461: 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,
15840-446: 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
15984-453: 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
16128-459: 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
16272-418: 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
16416-479: 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
16560-472: 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 ,
16704-520: The rail link across the Bosphorus though the Marmaray link was opened. Iranian rail lines use 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in) gauge, requiring freight cars transiting from China into Iran to change wheel gauges twice. The train ferry across Lake Van is also a capacity restriction. Chinese state media claims that the New Eurasian Land/Continental Bridge extends from Lianyungang to Rotterdam ,
16848-590: The railway lines of the two countries at Dostyk. In July 1991 the first goods train traveled along the line from China to Kazakhstan's then-capital of Almaty . In December 2009, a second rail link from China was built to the Kazakhstan border at Khorgos . The Jinghe–Yining–Khorgos Railway forks off of the Northern Xinjiang Railway at Jinghe and approaches Kazakhstan from the Ili River Valley. A rail link on Kazakh side will extend
16992-654: The railways connect with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including Iran . With the October 2013 completion of the rail link across the Bosphorus under the Marmaray project, the New Eurasian Land Bridge now theoretically connects to Europe via Central and South Asia . Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that
17136-601: The reign of Diocletian in the late 3rd century , the western Balkans were organized as a Roman diocese , and was ruled by Galerius . Under Constantine I Greece was part of the dioceses of Macedonia and Thrace . The eastern and southern Aegean islands formed the province of Insulae in the Diocese of Asia . Greece faced invasions from the Heruli , Goths , and Vandals during the reign of Theodosius I . Stilicho , who acted as regent for Arcadius , evacuated Thessaly when
17280-491: 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
17424-414: The rest of Europe and China. China's rail system had long linked to the Trans-Siberian via northeastern China and Mongolia . In 1990, China added a link between its rail system and the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan . China calls its uninterrupted rail link between the port city of Lianyungang and Kazakhstan the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge. In addition to Kazakhstan,
17568-723: The rest of Greece was divided into the Kingdom of Thessalonica , the Principality of Achaea , and the Duchy of Athens . The Venetians controlled the Duchy of the Archipelago in the Aegean, while the Despotate of Epirus was established as one of the three Byzantine Greek successor states . Michael VIII restored the empire in 1261, having also regained the Kingdom of Thessalonica. By his death in 1282, Michael had taken back
17712-929: The service indefinitely because of the global economic crisis . Another test run, from Chongqing to Duisburg via Alashankou crossing, Kazakhstan , Russia, Belarus , and Poland took place in March–April 2011, covering 10,300 km (6,400 mi) in 16 days. It was again said by DB that if there is enough demand, the service can be made regular already in 2011, As of March 2014, the Chongqing-Duisburg route makes three weekly services carrying up to 50 forty-foot-long containers. The transportation authorities in another industrial center of central China, Wuhan , plan to organize regular runs of direct freight train between Wuhan and European destinations (Czech Republic, Poland, Germany) starting in April 2014. Plans call for
17856-514: The service starting from 1–2 trains per month in April–June 2014, gradually increasing the frequency to 1–2 trains per week in 2015. A new customs facility is under construction in Wuhan's Wujiashan (吴家山) industrial area; after its planned opening in October 2015, exports from the Wuhan region will be able to clear Chinese customs there, instead of Alashankou . By 2016, the freight rail service between
18000-595: The southern Silk Road routes greatly diminished with the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century and development of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in the 16th century. By the 18th century, European influence on trade and new national boundaries severely restricted the movement of traders along all land routes between Europe and China, and overland trade between East Asia and Europe virtually disappeared. The Trans-Siberian Railway and its various associated branches and supporting lines, completed in 1916, established
18144-679: 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
18288-459: 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
18432-698: The territory of Kazakhstan to the Port Kuryk , then through the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan ( Ələt ), then to Georgia, and from the Georgian Poti Sea Port through the Black Sea to the countries of the European Union . After the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the disruption of previous routes, this route became more relevant. In 1996 a branch railway from Tejen was constructed across the border with Iran (at Serakhs ) and linked to
18576-444: The time despot of Mystras, but there was little he could do against most of the other Ottoman territories. Emperor Constantine XI was defeated and killed in 1453 when the Ottomans finally captured Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople , the Ottomans also captured Athens by 1458, but left a Byzantine despotate in the Peloponnese until 1460. The Venetians still controlled Crete, Aegean islands and some cities-ports, but otherwise
18720-455: The two companies who own the line, Northeast Asia Railway Group, a Chinese company, and JSC Golden Link, a Russian company, signed an agreement to resume operations on the line in May 2011. In November 2008, the transport ministries of Russia and the China signed an agreement about creating one more link between the railway systems of the two countries. It will involve a railway bridge between across
18864-786: 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
19008-511: 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
19152-723: 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 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
19296-583: Was an important aristocratic class from these themes, especially the Macedonian emperors who ruled the empire from 867 to 1056. Greece and the empire as a whole faced a new threat from the Normans of Sicily in the late 11th century . Robert Guiscard took Dyrrhachium and Corcyra in 1081 (see Battle of Dyrrhachium ), but Alexius I defeated him, and later his son Bohemund , by 1083. The Pechenegs also raided Thrace during this period. In 1147, while
19440-610: Was built farther south, between Hunchun (in China's Jilin province) and Russian Makhalino (a station on the Ussuriysk – Khasan –North Korean border line, 41 km (25 mi) before Khasan). It began operating in February 2000, and saw only a minor amount of traffic (678 railcars of lumber) over the next two years. The line was closed in 2002–03, briefly reopened in 2003, and closed again in September 2004. On 15 February 2011,
19584-474: Was completed in 1916, the former Chinese Eastern Railway route continues as an important connector between the two countries' railway networks. The western border point ( Zabaykalsk / Manzhouli ) and the line connecting it to the Trans-Siberian main line, are now being upgraded, with the goal of enabling the railway by 2010 to pass 30 freight trains in each direction across the border, each one up to 71 cars long. The cross-border freight volume at this rail crossing
19728-418: Was eliminated: when the Slavs first occupied the Peloponnese in the 6th century, a number Greeks had fled Patras and found refuge near Reggio Calabria, in southern Italy; the descendants of these refugees were ordered to return by Nicephorus, who resettled them in the Peloponnese. In the mid-7th century, the empire was reorganized into " themes " by the Emperor Constans II , including the Theme of Thrace ,
19872-405: 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
20016-421: 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
20160-404: Was reconquered in 961 from the Arabs, by Nikephoros II Phokas after the Siege of Chandax . In the late 10th century , the greatest threat to Greece was from Samuel , who constantly fought over the area with Basil II . In 985, Samuel captured Thessaly and the important city of Larissa, and in 989, he pillaged Thessalonica. Basil slowly began to recapture these areas in 991, but Samuel captured
20304-406: Was set up in Epirus and Thessaly. The Peloponnese, usually called Morea in this period, was now almost the centre of the empire, and was certainly the most fertile area. Mystras and Monemvasia were populous and prosperous, even after the Black Plague in the mid- 14th century . Mystras rivaled Constantinople in importance. It was a stronghold of Greek Orthodoxy and bitterly opposed attempts by
20448-414: Was still much less than 0.1% of the number of containers that travel via China's sea ports (some 170 million TEU). The original Moscow–Vladivostok route, completed in 1904, cut across China's northeastern provinces , or Manchuria ; the section of the railway located within China was known as the Chinese Eastern Railway . While the more northerly Trans-Siberian route, located entirely on Russian soil,
20592-402: 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
20736-455: Was used to exchange goods, ideas and people primarily between China and India and the Mediterranean and helped create a single-world system of trade between the civilisations of Europe and Asia. Exports from Asia transported along the Silk Road included fabrics, carpets, furs, weapons, utensils, metals, farm produce, livestock and slaves. Civilisations active in trading during the road's history included Scythia , Ancient and Byzantine Greece ,
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