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59-417: The term Old East Slavic is used in reference to the modern family of East Slavic languages . However, it is not universally applied. The language is also traditionally known as Old Russian ; however, the term may be viewed as anachronistic, because the initial stages of the language which it denotes predate the dialectal divisions marking the nascent distinction between modern East Slavic languages, therefore

118-545: A Lechitic West Slavic language. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed to Church Slavonic , featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, for example: Additionally, the original East Slavic phonetic form was kept in many words in Ukrainian and Belarusian, for example: In general, Ukrainian and Belarusian are also closer to other Western European languages, especially to German (via Polish). At

177-578: A record of his adventures , which has been translated into English and published for the Hakluyt Society . A curious monument of old Slavonic times is the Pouchenie ("Instruction"), written by Vladimir Monomakh for the benefit of his sons. This composition is generally found inserted in the Chronicle of Nestor; it gives a fine picture of the daily life of a Slavonic prince. The Paterik of

236-788: A century before the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the establishment of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Documentation of the Old East Slavic language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. There are references in Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaeological finds and

295-534: A corroboration by the tenth-century monk Chernorizets Hrabar that ancient Slavs wrote in " strokes and incisions ", the exact nature of this system is unknown. Although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod , it was soon entirely superseded by Cyrillic . The samples of birch-bark writing excavated in Novgorod have provided crucial information about

354-481: A curious Discourse to the Brethren . From the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people. He finds fault with them for allowing these to continue, and also for their drunkenness; nor do the monks escape his censures. Zhidiata writes in a more vernacular style than many of his contemporaries; he eschews the declamatory tone of the Byzantine authors. And here may be mentioned

413-472: A development of the old perfect. Note the style of punctuation. Слово о пълку Игоревѣ. c.  1200 , from the Pskov manuscript, fifteenth cent. Illustrates the sung epics , with typical use of metaphor and simile. It has been suggested that the phrase растекаться мыслью по древу ( rastekat'sja mysl'ju po drevu , to run in thought upon/over wood), which has become proverbial in modern Russian with

472-493: A duality between the Church Slavonic language used as some kind of 'higher' register (not only) in religious texts and the popular tongue used as a 'lower' register for secular texts. It has been suggested to describe this situation as diglossia , although there do exist mixed texts where it is sometimes very hard to determine why a given author used a popular or a Church Slavonic form in a given context. Church Slavonic

531-734: A line between the two languages. Central or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect , has many original and archaic features. Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as "Chancery Slavonic" until

590-483: A linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect , which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area , making it virtually impossible to draw

649-408: A number of Ukrainian linguists ( Stepan Smal-Stotsky , Ivan Ohienko , George Shevelov , Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo ), deny the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. According to them, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages. Following the end of the "Tatar yoke",

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708-590: A number of authors have proposed using Old East Slavic (or Common East Slavic ) as a more appropriate term. Old Russian is also used to describe the written language in Russia until the 18th century, when it became Modern Russian , though the early stages of the language is often called Old East Slavic instead; the period after the common language of the East Slavs is sometimes distinguished as Middle Russian , or Great Russian . Some scholars have also called

767-473: A nyne mę vŭ tomŭ ęla kŭnęgyni a nyne sę družina po mę poručila a nyne ka posŭli kŭ tomu muževi gramotu e li u nego roba a se ti xoču kone kupivŭ i kŭnęžŭ mužŭ vŭsadivŭ ta na sŭvody a ty atče esi ne vŭzalŭ kunŭ texŭ a ne emli ničŭto že u nego Translation (with added explanations not present in the original text in brackets): Letter from Zhiznomir to Mikula: You have bought a female slave in Pskov . And now

826-595: A standard reference until the appearance of a 24-volume academic dictionary in 1975–99. East Slavic languages The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages , distinct from the West and South Slavic languages . East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe , and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East . In part due to

885-638: Is mostly pronounced as /i/ (identical with the Ukrainian І), while in Ukrainian it's mostly pronounced as /ɪ/ (very similar to the Russian Ы). Other examples: B. ваўчыца (vaŭčyca) U. вовчиця (vovčyc’a) ”female wolf” B. яшчэ /jaˈʂt͡ʂe/ U. ще /ʃt͡ʃe/ “yet” /u̯/ (at the end of a closed syllable) B. стэп /stɛp/, U. степ /stɛp/ "steppe" B. Вікторыя (Viktoryja) U. кобзар (kobzár (nominative case) кобзаря (kobzar’á (genetive case) R. кровь (krov’), кровавый (krovávyj) B. кроў (kroŭ), крывавы (kryvávy) U. кров (krov), кривавий (kryvávyj) ”blood, bloody” B. скажа (skáža) U. скаже (skáže) ”(he/she) will say” After

944-556: Is probable that there were many dialects of Old East Slavonic. Therefore, today we may speak definitively only of the languages of surviving manuscripts, which, according to some interpretations, show regional divergence from the beginning of the historical records. By c.  1150 , it had the weakest local variations among the four regional macrodialects of Common Slavic , c.  800  – c.  1000 , which had just begun to differentiate into its branches. With time, it evolved into several more diversified forms; following

1003-466: Is represented under the form of spring, Paganism and Judaism under that of winter, and evil thoughts are spoken of as boisterous winds. There are also the works of early travellers, as the igumen Daniel , who visited the Holy Land at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century. A later traveller was Afanasiy Nikitin , a merchant of Tver , who visited India in 1470. He has left

1062-540: Is traditionally more common in Belarus, while the usage of the Cyrillic script in Russia and Ukraine could never be compared to any other alphabet. Modern East Slavic languages include Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian. The Rusyn language is sometimes considered the fourth living language of the group, its status as an independent language being the subject of scientific debate. The East Slavic territory exhibits

1121-505: The Church Slavonic which dominated the written literature of the period. Most of the letters feature informal writing such as personal correspondence, instructions, complaints, news, and reminders. Such widespread usage indicates a high level of literacy, even among women and children. The preserved notes display the original spelling of the time; unlike some texts, they were not copied, rewritten or edited by later scribes. Today,

1180-745: The Russkaya Pravda of Yaroslav the Wise , which is preserved in the chronicle of Novgorod; the date is between 1018 and 1072. The earliest attempts to compile a comprehensive lexicon of Old East Slavic were undertaken by Alexander Vostokov and Izmail Sreznevsky in the nineteenth century. Sreznevsky's Materials for the Dictionary of the Old Russian Language on the Basis of Written Records (1893–1903), though incomplete, remained

1239-752: The Volga river valley, the language of the Russian principalities including the Grand Duchy of Moscow . All these languages use the Cyrillic script , but with particular modifications. Belarusian and Ukrainian , which are descendants of Ruthenian , have a tradition of using Latin-based alphabets —the Belarusian Łacinka and the Ukrainian Latynka alphabets, respectively (also Rusyn uses Latin in some regions, e.g. in Slovakia ). The Latin alphabet

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1298-526: The swampy soil which isolated them from oxygen . Many letters are found buried amidst the layers under streets which were previously paved with logs. The short birch-bark texts are written in a peculiar Slavic vernacular , reflecting living speech, and almost entirely free of the heavy Church Slavonic influence seen in the literary language of the period. Some of the observed linguistic features are not found in any other Slavic dialect, representing important Proto-Slavic archaisms. Zaliznyak differentiates

1357-647: The 11th century, all consonants become palatalized before front vowels. The language was a descendant of the Proto-Slavic language and retained many of its features. It developed so-called pleophony (or polnoglasie 'full vocalisation'), which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic dialects. For instance, Common Slavic *gȏrdъ 'settlement, town' was reflected as OESl. gorodъ , Common Slavic *melkò 'milk' > OESl. moloko , and Common Slavic *kòrva 'cow' > OESl korova . Other Slavic dialects differed by resolving

1416-454: The 11th to 15th centuries, the texts were excavated in Novgorod and its surroundings. The term was introduced by Andrey Zaliznyak . Old Novgorodian is of particular interest in that it has retained some archaic features which were lost in other Slavic dialects, such as the absence of second palatalization . Furthermore, letters provide unique evidence of the Slavic vernacular, as opposed to

1475-569: The 14th or 15th century, major language differences were not between the regions occupied by modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, but rather between the north-west (around modern Velikiy Novgorod and Pskov) and the center (around modern Kyiv, Suzdal, Rostov, Moscow as well as Belarus) of the East Slavic territories. The Old Novgorodian dialect of that time differed from the central East Slavic dialects as well as from all other Slavic languages much more than in later centuries. According to Zaliznyak,

1534-814: The East Slavic area into two dialectal groupings: Proto-Novgorodian-Pskovian on one side, singled out chiefly on the basis of two instances lacking second palatalization of velars and the ending -e in nominative singular of masculine o-stems, and all the remaining East Slavic dialects on the other. (between end of 11th century and 1110s; excavated 1954) Original text (with added word division): грамота ѡтъ жизномира къ микоуле коупилъ еси робоу плъскове а ныне мѧ въ томъ ѧла кънѧгыни а ныне сѧ дроужина по мѧ пороучила а ныне ка посъли къ томоу моужеви грамотоу е ли оу него роба а се ти хочоу коне коупивъ и кънѧжъ моужъ въсадивъ та на съводы а ты атче еси не възалъ коунъ техъ а не емли ничъто же оу него Transliteration: gramota otŭ žiznomira kŭ mikule kupilŭ esi robu plŭskove

1593-445: The East Slavic languages are all written in the Cyrillic script, however each of them has their own letters and pronunciations. Russian and Ukrainian have 33 letters, while Belarusian has 32. Additionally, Belarusian and Ukrainian use the apostrophe (') for the hard sign , which has the same function as the letter Ъ in Russian. Some letters, that are not included in the alphabet of a language, can be written as digraphs . For example,

1652-636: The Kievan Caves Monastery is a typical medieval collection of stories from the life of monks, featuring devils, angels, ghosts, and miraculous resurrections. Lay of Igor's Campaign narrates the expedition of Igor Svyatoslavich , the prince of Novgorod-Seversk, against the Cumans . It is neither epic nor a poem but is written in rhythmic prose. An interesting aspect of the text is its mix of Christianity and ancient Slavic religion . Igor's wife Yaroslavna famously invokes natural forces from

1711-489: The Old Novgorod features that were already known before the discovery of the birch bark letters and those that have been ascertained after their study during the last few decades such as the following: Features of the Old Novgorod dialect ascertained by the philological study in the last decades are: Often the orthography is domestic (as opposed to bookish), using ъ and о on the one hand and ь and е on

1770-605: The Russian language developed as a convergence of that dialect and the central ones, whereas Ukrainian and Belarusian were continuation of development of the central dialects of the East Slavs. Also, Russian linguist Sergey Nikolaev, analysing historical development of Slavic dialects' accent system, concluded that a number of other tribes in Kievan Rus' came from different Slavic branches and spoke distant Slavic dialects. Another Russian linguist, G. A. Khaburgaev, as well as

1829-674: The Slavic languages that were, after all, written down) was influenced as regards style and vocabulary by religious texts written in Church Slavonic. Surviving literary monuments include the legal code Russkaya Pravda , a corpus of hagiography and homily , The Tale of Igor's Campaign , and the earliest surviving manuscript of the Primary Chronicle – the Laurentian Codex of 1377. The earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic (or, rather, of Church Slavonic with pronounced East Slavic interference) must be considered

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1888-407: The closed-syllable clusters *eRC and *aRC as liquid metathesis ( South Slavic and West Slavic ), or by no change at all (see the article on Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony for a detailed account). Since extant written records of the language are sparse, it is difficult to assess the level of its unity. In consideration of the number of tribes and clans that constituted Kievan Rus' , it

1947-411: The consonant /tsʲ/ does not exist in the Russian language, while in Ukrainian and especially Belarusian, on the contrary, it is relatively common (Ukrainian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Belarusian ц; Belarusian ць etymologically corresponds to Russian and Ukrainian ть). Moreover, the letter Щ in standard Russian is always pronounced softly ( palatalization ). Standard Ukrainian, unlike all

2006-606: The conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria , which were written in Old Church Slavonic (a South Slavic language ). The Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form. Throughout the Middle Ages (and in some way up to the present day) there existed

2065-843: The end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. It was also the native language of the Cossack Hetmanate until the end of the 18th century, when the Ukrainian state completely became part of the Russian Empire in 1764. The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk from 1710 is one of the most important written sources of the Ruthenian language. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish,

2124-550: The extant East Slavic languages. Some linguists also consider Rusyn a separate language, although it is sometimes considered a dialect of Ukrainian. The modern East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor spoken in Kievan Rus' from the 9th to 13th centuries, which later evolved into Ruthenian , the chancery language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Dnieper river valley, and into medieval Russian in

2183-592: The fragmentation of Kievan Rus' after 1100, dialectal differentiation accelerated. The regional languages were distinguishable starting in the 12th or 13th century. Thus different variations evolved of the Russian language in the regions of Novgorod, Moscow , South Russia and meanwhile the Ukrainian language was also formed. Each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary. The Russian language in particular borrows more words from Church Slavonic than does Ukrainian. However, findings by Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak suggest that, until

2242-427: The language Old Rus'ian or Old Rusan , Rusian , or simply Rus , although these are the least commonly used forms. Ukrainian-American linguist George Shevelov used the term Common Russian or Common Eastern Slavic to refer to the hypothetical uniform language of the East Slavs. American Slavist Alexander M. Schenker pointed out that modern terms for the medieval language of the East Slavs varied depending on

2301-647: The large historical influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union , the Russian language is also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia . Of the three Slavic branches, East Slavic is the most spoken, with the number of native speakers larger than the Western and Southern branches combined. The common consensus is that Belarusian , Russian and Ukrainian are

2360-608: The many lives of the saints and the Fathers to be found in early East Slavic literature, starting with the two Lives of Sts Boris and Gleb , written in the late eleventh century and attributed to Jacob the Monk and to Nestor the Chronicler . With the so-called Primary Chronicle , also attributed to Nestor, begins the long series of the Russian annalists. There is a regular catena of these chronicles, extending with only two breaks to

2419-461: The meaning "to speak ornately, at length, excessively," is a misreading of an original мысію , mysiju (akin to мышь "mouse") from "run like a squirrel/mouse on a tree"; however, the reading мыслью , myslǐju is present in both the manuscript copy of 1790 and the first edition of 1800, and in all subsequent scholarly editions. The Old East Slavic language developed a certain literature of its own, though much of it (in hand with those of

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2478-661: The meanings of many words found in it have not been satisfactorily explained by scholars. The Zadonshchina is a sort of prose poem much in the style of the Tale of Igor's Campaign , and the resemblance of the latter to this piece furnishes an additional proof of its genuineness. This account of the Battle of Kulikovo , which was gained by Dmitry Donskoy over the Mongols in 1380, has come down in three important versions. The early laws of Rus’ present many features of interest, such as

2537-478: The more recent finds. This fact indicates, contrary to what may be expected, that the development was convergent rather than divergent, with regard to other northern East Slavic dialects . According to Zaliznyak, the discovery of Old Novgorod dialect suggests that earlier conceptions which held East Slavic as a relatively homogeneous linguistic grouping, have been dispelled by a view advancing it instead as an area of much greater dialectal diversity. Zaliznyak divides

2596-1053: The original excerpt has been partly modernized. The translations are best attempts at being literal, not literary. c.  1110 , from the Laurentian Codex , 1377: [REDACTED] In this usage example of the language, the fall of the yers is in progress or arguably complete: several words end with a consonant, e.g. кнѧжит , knęžit "to rule" < кънѧжити , kǔnęžiti (modern Uk княжити , knjažyty , R княжить , knjažit' , B княжыць , knjažyc' ). South Slavic features include времѧньнъıх , vremęnǐnyx "bygone" (modern R минувших , minuvšix , Uk минулих , mynulyx , B мінулых , minulyx ). Correct use of perfect and aorist : єсть пошла , estǐ pošla "is/has come" (modern B пайшла , pajšla , R пошла , pošla , Uk пішла , pišla ), нача , nača "began" (modern Uk [почав] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |3= ( help ) , B пачаў , pačaŭ , R начал , načal ) as

2655-452: The other Slavic languages (excl. Serbo-Croatian ), does not exhibit final devoicing . Nevertheless, this rule is not that clear when listening to colloquial Ukrainian. It's one of the typical deviations that occur in the Ukrainian spoken language. Besides the differences of the alphabets, some letters represent different sounds depending on the language. For example, the letter И (romanized as I for Russian and Y for Ukrainian) in Russian

2714-407: The other synonymously (about 50% of birchbark manuscripts from the mid-12th to the late 14th century). The Novgorod material is divided by Zaliznyak into seven chronological groups: According to Zaliznyak , the Old Novgorod linguistic features, instead of being merely isolated deviations, represent a bundle of peculiar isoglosses. The deviations are more abundant in older birch bark letters than in

2773-418: The political context. He suggested using the neutral term East Slavic for that language. Note that there were also iotated variants: ꙗ, ѥ, ю, ѩ, ѭ. By the 13th century, ь and ъ either became silent or merged with е and о, and ѧ and ѫ had merged with ꙗ and у respectively. Old East slavic retains all the consonants of Proto-Slavic , with the exception of ť and ď which merged into č and ž respectively. After

2832-413: The princess for the time the stolen slave would be needed as " corpus delicti " in a lawsuit to find out who the thief was. ) And I want to buy a horse and have the magistrate (the "prince's man") sit on it and initiate a svod ( the legal procedure to trace a whole buying chain back to the original seller and ultimately the thief ). And if you have not taken the money, do not take anything from him ( i.e.

2891-424: The princess has arrested me for it. ( Obviously she has recognized the slave as having been stolen from her, and Zhiznomir is somehow connected with the affair, maybe as Mikula's family member or business partner. ) But now druzhina has guaranteed for me. And now send a letter to that man (whom you have bought the slave from) and ask him whether he has another female slave. ( This other slave would have to be given to

2950-496: The pure tenth-century vernacular in North-West Russia , almost entirely free of Church Slavonic influence. It is also known that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic. The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments. NOTE: The spelling of

3009-536: The same time Russian was being heavily influenced by Church Slavonic (South Slavic language), but also by the Turkic and Uralic languages. For example: What's more, all three languages do also have false friends , that sometimes can lead to (big) misunderstandings. For example, Ukrainian орати ( oraty ) — "to plow" and Russian орать ( orat́ ) — "to scream", or Ukrainian помітити ( pomityty ) — "to notice" and Russian пометить ( pometit́ ) — "to mark". The alphabets of

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3068-442: The seventeenth century. Besides the work attributed to Nestor the Chronicler , there are the chronicles of Novgorod , Kiev , Volhynia and many others. Every town of any importance could boast of its annalists, Pskov and Suzdal among others. In the 12th century, we have the sermons of bishop Cyril of Turov , which are attempts to imitate in Old East Slavic the florid Byzantine style. In his sermon on Holy Week , Christianity

3127-533: The slave-trader, because otherwise the whole plan might leak out ). (1340s to 1380s; excavated 1972) Original text (with added word division): поколоно ѿ гаврили ѿ посени ко зати моемоу ко горигори жи коумоу ко сестори моеи ко оулите чо би есте поихали во городо ко радости моеи а нашего солова не ѡставили да бого вамо радосте ми вашего солова вохи не ѡсотавимо Transliteration: pokolono ot gavrili ot poseni ko zati mojemu ko gorigori ži kumu ko sestori mojei ko ulite čo bi este poixali vo gorodo ko radosti mojei

3186-473: The sound values of the letter Ё, which doesn't exist in the Ukrainian alphabet, can be written as ЙО (ЬО before and after consonants), while the letter Щ in Russian and Ukrainian corresponds to ШЧ in Belarusian (compare Belarusian плошча and Ukrainian площа ("area")). There are also different rules of usage for certain letters, e.g. the soft sign (Ь) cannot be written after the letter Ц in Russian, because

3245-615: The study of Novgorodian birch bark letters is an established scholarly field in Russian historical linguistics , with far-ranging historical and archaeological implications for the study of the Russian Middle Ages. The first birch bark letter was found on July 26, 1951, by Nina Fedorovna Akulova. At least 1025 have been unearthed since, 923 in Novgorod alone. Almost all of them were written with styluses of bronze and iron , and never ink . The letters were preserved due to

3304-416: The territory of former Kievan Rus' was divided between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow , and two separate literary traditions emerged in these states, Ruthenian in the west and medieval Russian in the east. The political unification of the region into the state called Kievan Rus' , from which modern Belarus , Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, occurred approximately

3363-602: The walls of Putyvl . Christian motifs present along with depersonalised pagan gods in the form of artistic images. Another aspect, which sets the book apart from contemporary Western epics, are its numerous and vivid descriptions of nature, and the role which nature plays in human lives. Of the whole bulk of the Old East Slavic literature, the Lay is the only work familiar to every educated Russian or Ukrainian. Its brooding flow of images, murky metaphors , and ever changing rhythm have not been successfully rendered into English yet. Indeed,

3422-617: The written Sermon on Law and Grace by Hilarion , metropolitan of Kiev . In this work there is a panegyric on Prince Vladimir of Kiev , the hero of so much of East Slavic popular poetry. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk. Other 11th-century writers are Theodosius , a monk of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra , who wrote on the Latin faith and some Pouchenia or Instructions , and Luka Zhidiata , bishop of Novgorod , who has left

3481-538: Was a major factor in the evolution of modern Russian, where there still exists a "high stratum" of words that were imported from this language. Old Novgorodian dialect The Old Novgorod dialect ( Russian : древненовгородский диалект , romanized :  drevnenovgorodskiy dialekt ; also translated as Old Novgorodian or Ancient Novgorod dialect ) is the Old East Slavic dialect found in birch bark writings ( berestyanaya gramota ). Dating from

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