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119-558: The 2014 Winter Olympics , officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games ( Russian : XXII Олимпийские зимние игры , romanized :  XXII Olimpiyskiye zimniye igry ) and commonly known as Sochi 2014 ( Russian : Сочи 2014 ), were an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi , Russia. Opening rounds in certain events were held on 6 February 2014,

238-674: 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

357-510: A humid subtropical climate , Sochi is the warmest city to host a Winter Olympic Games. Sochi 2014 is the 12th straight Olympics to outlaw smoking; all Sochi venues, Olympic Park bars and restaurants and public areas were smoke-free during the Games. It is also the first time that an Olympic Park has been built for hosting winter games. The Sochi Olympic Park was built by the Black Sea coast in

476-519: 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

595-658: A fifth of that budget ($ 10.8 billion) was directly related to the Olympic games, while the rest went into urban and regional regeneration and the conversion of the Sochi region into an all-year round sea and alpine resort. The breakdown table below is based on a report that has analyzed the distribution of Olimpstroy's $ 49.5 billion budget. Estimates also suggest that additional unrecoverable operational costs (including for security) could have added another $ 3 billion. With an average February temperature of 8.3 °C (46.9 °F) and

714-515: 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) Pyeongchang County Pyeongchang hosted the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2018 Winter Paralympics . It was officially rebranded as " PyeongChang " (with a capital 'C') for the purposes of the 2018 Games, in order to avoid confusion with Pyongyang in North Korea . Pyeongchang region

833-558: 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

952-484: 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

1071-539: 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 the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian

1190-588: 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

1309-622: 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

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1428-526: 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

1547-539: 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,

1666-481: 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

1785-401: 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

1904-610: 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

2023-488: 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

2142-624: 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

2261-611: Is located between Adler and Krasnaya Polyana connecting the Olympic Park, Sochi International Airport , and the venues in Krasnaya Polyana. The existing 102 km (63-mile), Tuapse-to-Adler railroad was renovated to provide double track throughout, increasing capacity and enabling a reliable regional service to be provided and extending to the airport. In December 2009, Russian Railways ordered 38 Siemens Mobility Desiro trains for delivery in 2013 for use during

2380-573: 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

2499-564: 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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2618-657: 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 is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to

2737-762: 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

2856-402: 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

2975-569: 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

3094-585: 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

3213-518: 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

3332-637: Is wide-ranging, with 84% of its territory comprising mountains with average elevations of 750 m (2,460 ft). Its best-known place, the township of Daegwallyeong-myeon , averages between 700 and 800 m (2,300 and 2,600 ft) above sea level, with some areas over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high. Under the Köppen climate classification , Pyeongchang County experiences a warm-summer humid continental climate ( Dwb ). Pyeongchang's winters are long and very snowy, while summers are relatively short. Average temperature of Pyeongchang from 2001 to 2010

3451-559: The 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics , to which it lost to Vancouver, Canada , and Sochi, Russia , respectively. For the 2018 Olympics, Pyeongchang was marketed with the CamelCase spelling of " PyeongChang ", so the global audience would not confuse it with Pyongyang , the capital of neighboring North Korea . The two main facilities created for the 2018 Winter Olympics were the PyeongChang Olympic Plaza (where

3570-470: 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

3689-562: The 2018 FIFA World Cup . A new ice hockey team in the Kontinental Hockey League , HC Sochi Leopards , now plays in Bolshoy Arena. The Olympic infrastructure was constructed according to a Federal Target Program (FTP). In June 2009, the Games' organizers reported they were one year ahead in building the main Olympic facilities as compared to recent Olympic Games. In November 2011, IOC President Jacques Rogge

2014 Winter Olympics - Misplaced Pages Continue

3808-468: The 2018 Winter Olympics , connecting Pyeongchang to Seoul with a journey time of less than 80 minutes. The new line, which was officially opened on 22 August 2017, provides a main-line high-speed rail service that passes through Pyeongchang from west to east, with KTX trains calling at Pyeongchang station and Jinbu station (for the Olympic Stadium). KTX trains to Jinbu station were increased for

3927-1000: 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

4046-413: 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

4165-536: The Imeretinsky Valley , about 4 km (2.5 miles) from Russia's border with Abkhazia / Georgia . The venues were clustered around a central water basin on which the Medals Plaza is built, allowing all indoor venues to be within walking distance. It also features "The Waters of the Olympic Park" (designed by California -based company WET ), a choreographed fountain which served as the backdrop in

4284-679: The Olympic flag during the opening ceremony, as India was originally suspended in December 2012 over the election process of the Indian Olympic Association . On 11 February, the Indian Olympic Association was reinstated and India's athletes were allowed the option to compete under their own flag from that time onward. Although Shiva Keshavan competed as an Independent athlete and is recorded as such, he

4403-859: The Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic previously hosted the Summer Olympics in 1980 . A record ninety-eight events in fifteen winter sport disciplines were held during the Games. A number of new competitions—a total of twelve accounting for gender—were held during the Games, including biathlon mixed relay, women's ski jumping , mixed-team figure skating , mixed-team luge , half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle , and snowboard parallel slalom . The events were held around two clusters of new venues: an Olympic Park constructed in Sochi's Imeretinsky Valley on

4522-584: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On

4641-641: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to

4760-409: The "2018 Dream Program", a program initially created in relation to the 2010 bid. The 2018 Dream Program was the fifth iteration of this sports and cultural program, involving 124 participants from 31 countries, who were invited because they live where there is no snowfall and have no opportunity to participate in winter sports. Gangwon Province , which includes Pyeongchang, was chosen as the host for

4879-571: The 2014 Winter Olympics was held on 7 February 2014 at Fisht Olympic Stadium , an indoor arena built specifically for the ceremonies. The ceremony featured scenes based around aspects of Russian history and arts, including ballet , classical music , the Russian Revolution , and the age of the Soviet Union . The opening scene of the ceremony featured a notable technical error, where one of five snowflakes, which were to expand to form

2014 Winter Olympics - Misplaced Pages Continue

4998-599: The 2024 Winter Youth Olympics. Outdoor venues in Pyeongchang used in the 2018 Winter Olympics have been repurposed for the games. Pyeongchang County is traversed from west to east by the Gyeonggang Line and Yeongdong Expressway . The railway and expressway both originate in the Seoul metropolitan region . A new KTX line, named the Gyeonggang Line , was built between Wonju and Gangneung via Pyeongchang for

5117-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as

5236-471: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home

5355-586: The Gangwon Provincial Office. The count of cultural heritage designations is as follows. Sangwonsa is a temple on Odaesan Mountain that was originally established as Jinyeowon in 705. Although the Joseon Dynasty's policy was the prohibition of Buddhism , it constantly donated to rebuild the temple. In 1401, King Taejong donated to the construction of Sajaam Hermitage. In 1465, King Sejo and administrators donated to rebuild

5474-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,

5593-577: The IOC announced that three events would be added to the program. These events, which were officially declared by Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge on 4 July 2011, were: Ski slopestyle , Snowboard slopestyle, Snowboard parallel special slalom. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It

5712-590: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this

5831-526: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of

5950-453: The Olympic rings, malfunctioned and did not expand (a mishap mocked by the organizers at the closing ceremony where one of the roundrelay dance groups symbolizing the Olympic rings "failed" to expand). The torch was taken into the stadium by Maria Sharapova , who then passed it to Yelena Isinbayeva who, in turn, passed it to wrestler Aleksandr Karelin . Karelin then passed the torch to gymnast Alina Kabaeva . Figure skater Irina Rodnina took

6069-594: The Olympics, with an option for a further 16 partly built in Russia. At Sochi International Airport , a new terminal was built along a 3.5 km (2.2-mile) runway extension, overlapping the Mzymta River . At the Port of Sochi , a new offshore terminal 1.5 km (0.93 mi) from the shore allows docking for cruise ships with capacities of 3,000 passengers. The cargo terminal of the seaport would be moved from

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6188-606: The Olympics. In November 2013, it was reported that the fiber-optic cable that was built by the Federal Communications Agency , Rossvyaz, had no operator. With Rostelecom and Megafon both refusing to operate it, the line was transferred to the ownership of the state enterprise Center for Monitoring & Development of Infocommunication Technologies (Russian: Центр МИР ИТ ). Russian mobile phone operator Megafon expanded and improved Sochi's telecom infrastructure with over 700 new 2G/3G/4G cell towers. Sochi

6307-807: 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

6426-458: 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

6545-458: 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

6664-403: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of

6783-403: 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

6902-625: The centre of Sochi. Roadways were detoured, some going around the construction site and others being cut off. In May 2009, Russian Railways started the construction of tunnel complex No. 1 (the final total is six) on the combined road (automobile and railway) from Adler to Alpica Service Mountain Resort in the Krasnaya Polyana region. The tunnel complex No. 1 is located near Akhshtyr in Adlersky City District, and includes: Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin stated

7021-454: The cities of Tuapse and Novorossiysk and construction of a cable-wire powerline, partially on the floor of the Black Sea . The transport infrastructure prepared to support the Olympics includes many roads, tunnels, bridges, interchanges, railroads and stations in and around Sochi. Among others, 8 flyovers, 102 bridges, tens of tunnels and a bypass route for heavy trucks – 367 km (228 mi) of roads were paved. The Sochi Light Metro

7140-423: The coast of the Black Sea , with Fisht Olympic Stadium , and the Games' indoor venues located within walking distance; and snow events in the resort settlement of Krasnaya Polyana . The 2014 Winter Olympics were the most expensive Games in the history of the Olympics. While originally budgeted at US$ 12 billion, major cost overruns caused this figure to expand to US$ 51 billion, more than three times

7259-683: The cost of the 2012 London Olympics and even surpassing the estimated cost of US$ 44 billion for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The 2014 Games achieved a record broadcast audience of 2.1 billion people worldwide. In 2016, an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed allegations that the Russian Olympic team had been involved in a state-sponsored doping program , active from at least late 2011 through August 2015. The program

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7378-460: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language

7497-447: The day before the opening ceremony . These were the first Olympic Games under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency of Thomas Bach . Both the Olympics and Paralympics were organized by the Sochi Organizing Committee (SOOC). Sochi was selected as the host city in July 2007, during the 119th IOC Session held in Guatemala City . It was the first Olympics to be held in a CIS state and former Warsaw Pact state after

7616-436: The day of the opening ceremony, 7 February 2014. It is the longest torch relay in Olympic history, a 60,000-kilometre (40,000-mile) route that passes through all regions of the country, from Kaliningrad in the west to Chukotka in the east. The Olympic torch reached the North Pole for first time via a nuclear-powered icebreaker ( 50 Let Pobedy ) . The torch was also passed for the first time in space , though not lit for

7735-463: The duration of the 2018 Olympics. Pyeongchang Bus Terminal and Jangpyeong Bus Terminal, Jinbu Bus Station and Hoenggye Bus Station are the main intercity bus terminals of the county. Daehwa Bus Station is also served by intercity buses. Local transit operators connect communities in the county to hubs at Pyeongchang Bus Station, Jangpyeong Bus Terminal, and Jinbu Bus Station. Yeongdong Expressway passes through Pyeongchang from west to east. After

7854-504: The duration of the flight for safety reasons, on flight Soyuz TMA-11M to the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft itself was adorned with Olympic-themed livery including the Games' emblem. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky waved the torch on a spacewalk outside the ISS. The torch returned to Earth five days later on board Soyuz TMA-09M . The torch also reached Europe's highest mountain, Mount Elbrus , and Siberia's Lake Baikal . The opening ceremony of

7973-427: The estimated $ 44 billion cost of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which hosted 3 times as many events. Dmitry Kozak was the main overseer for the events in Sochi. In its final budget published in June 2014, Olimpstroy—the state corporation that oversaw the Sochi Olympics development—reported the total allocated funds for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics of 1,524 billion rubles (US$ 49.5 billion). However, only about

8092-436: The estimated combined cost of the 2014 Winter Olympics had topped US$ 51 billion. This amount included the cost for Olympic games themselves and cost of Sochi infrastructural projects (roads, railroads, power plants). This total is over four times the initial budget of $ 12 billion (compared to the $ 8 billion spent for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver), and made the Sochi games the most expensive Olympics in history, exceeding

8211-413: 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,

8330-402: 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

8449-441: The first company to introduce ramyeon instant noodles into a poverty-ridden South Korea in the 1960s. It is the filming location of the drama Autumn in My Heart and the movie Lover's Concerto . Pyeongchang hosted the 1999 Asian Winter Games and 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games . The 2018 Winter Olympics were also held in Pyeongchang, as well as the 2009 IBU Biathlon World Championships . The Asian Winter Games

8568-697: The first time ever, all of the current members of the European Olympic Committees participated at the Winter Olympics. Kristina Krone qualified to compete in her second consecutive games for Puerto Rico , but the island's Olympic Committee once again chose not to send her to compete. Similarly, South Africa decided not to send alpine skier Sive Speelman to Sochi. Algeria also did not enter its only qualified athlete, Mehdi-Selim Khelifi . India 's athletes originally competed as Independent Olympic Participants and marched under

8687-463: The focus of the 2018 Cultural Olympiad , with a new, purpose-built concert hall within the resort with an indoor water park. Samyang Ranch is the largest highlands farm in Asia, located in the hills of Daegwallyeong at 850 to 1,470 meters above sea level. It is operated as a petting zoo and features a pastoral landscape. The ranch is operated by the leading Korean food and dairy company Samyang food,

8806-631: 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

8925-480: 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

9044-445: The home of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Alpensia ski resort has six slopes for skiing and snowboarding , with runs up to 1,400.0 m (4,593.2 ft) long, for beginners and advanced skiers, and an area reserved for snowboarders. The resort is open year-round. Alpensia hosted the majority of the Olympic snow events. Yongpyong Resort , which has a total of 28 ski slopes, hosted the technical alpine skiing events. Alpensia will be

9163-481: The largest Winter Olympics to date. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each separate discipline. On 6 April 2011, the IOC accepted a number of events that were submitted by their respective sports federations to be considered for inclusion into the official program of these Olympic Games. The events included a Figure skating team event, Women's ski jumping, Mixed relay biathlon, Ski half-pipe , and Team relay luge. On 4 July 2011,

9282-523: The main media centre in Olympic Park and in the mountain village of Estosadok . In addition to standard services, customers had access to unique services including two new products, Fotomarka and Retropismo. Fotomarka presents an opportunity to get a stylised sheet of eight souvenir stamps with one's own photos, using the services of a photographer in the office. Retropismo service allows a customer to write with their own stylus or pen on antique paper with further letters, winding string and wax seal affixing. All

9401-631: The medals awards and the opening and closing ceremonies of the event. The new venues include: A street circuit known as the Sochi Autodrom was constructed in and around Olympic Park. Its primary use is to host the Formula One Russian Grand Prix , which held its inaugural edition in October 2014. In January 2015, work began on adapting Fisht Olympic Stadium into an open-air football stadium to host matches during

9520-481: The monk in 643. After it was established, it was consistently rebuilt. During the Third Battle of Seoul , 10 buildings were totally destroyed by fire. Tanheo the monk restored Jeokgwangjeon, one of the burnt buildings, in 1964, and Manhwa the monk gradually reconstructed other buildings. Woljeongsa has the following cultural heritage sites: The Pyeongchang Odaesan Historic Archive ( Historic Site No. 34 )

9639-463: The new sites and post offices in Sochi were opened during the Olympics until late night 7 days a week, and employees were trained to speak English. On 29 September 2013, the Olympic torch was lit in Ancient Olympia , beginning a seven-day journey across Greece and on to Russia, then the torch relay started at Moscow on 7 October 2013 before passing 83 Russian cities and arriving at Sochi on

9758-430: The newest equipment for the television coverage of the Games arrived in the port of Adler . Prepared specifically for the Games, a team of regional specialists and the latest technology provide a qualitatively new level of television production in the region. The fiber-optic channel links Sochi between Adler and Krasnaya Polyana. The 46-kilometre-long (29 mi) channel enables videoconferencing and news reporting from

9877-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of

9996-524: The opening / closing ceremonies and victory ceremonies were held) and the Gangneung Olympic Park (where the men's and women's short track, speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey, curling events were held). The 2018 Winter Paralympics was held in the same venues starting 9 March 2018. In preparation for the 2018 Olympics, the region built facilities including hotels and a world-class ski resort, named Alpensia . The region also ran

10115-515: 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

10234-461: 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,

10353-446: 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

10472-453: 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

10591-459: 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

10710-418: 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

10829-617: The power supply of the Sochi region was presented by Russian energy experts during a seminar on 29 May 2009, held by the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, and attended by International Olympic Committee (IOC) experts and officials from the Russian Ministry of Regional Development , the Russian Ministry of Energy , the State Corporation Olimpstroy and the Krasnodar Krai administration. According to

10948-479: 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

11067-472: 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 ,

11186-597: The region was promoted from a hyeon to a county ( gun ). After the territory was divided into 8 Provinces under the reign of King Taejong , it was involved in Gangwon-do . After the territory was divided into 23 districts in 1895 with the 8-provincial system abolished, it was included in Chugju-bu. When a 13-provincial system was enacted in 1896, it was involved in Gangwon-do. The altitude of Pyeongchang

11305-491: 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

11424-498: The road construction costed more than 200 billion rubles. In addition, Sochi's railway stations were renovated. These are Dagomys , Sochi , Matsesta , Khosta , Lazarevskaya , and Loo railway stations. In Adler, a new railway station was built while the original building was preserved, and in the Olympic park cluster, a new station was built from scratch, the Olympic Park railway station . Another new railway station

11543-412: The strategy, the capacity of the regional energy network would increase by two and a half times by 2014, guaranteeing a stable power supply during and after the Games. The power demand of Sochi at the end of May 2009 was 424 MW. The power demand of the Olympic infrastructure was expected to be about 340 MW. Earlier plans also include building combined cycle (steam and gas) power stations near

11662-679: 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

11781-459: 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

11900-450: The systems, and worked with other technology partners to provide athletes, dignitaries and fans information about the Games. The 2014 Olympics is the first "fabric-enabled" Games using Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) technology. The network is capable of handling up to 54 Tbit/s of traffic. Infrastructure built for the games included: During the Games, the core networks of Rostelecom and Transtelekom were used. In January 2012,

12019-542: The temple. Sejo's son, King Yejong designated it as a memorial for his father. During the Third Battle of Seoul , the United Nations Command ordered that the temple be burned, but a Buddhist monk prevented it. Instead, the Command agreed to burn only the doors of the temple. Sangwonsa has the following cultural heritage sites: Woljeongsa is a temple on Odaesan Mountain established by Jajang

12138-657: The torch and was met by former ice hockey goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak , who exited the stadium to jointly light the Olympic cauldron located near the center of Olympic Park. A record 88 nations qualified to compete, which beat the previous record of 82 set at the previous Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The number of athletes who qualified per country is listed in the table below (number of athletes shown in parentheses). Seven nations made their Winter Olympics debut: Dominica , Malta , Paraguay , Timor-Leste , Togo , Tonga , and Zimbabwe . The Winter debut of Malta meant that for

12257-786: 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

12376-511: 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

12495-468: Was 7.0 °C, and it was lower than Gangwon 's 8.9 °C. Annual precipitation of the region from 2001 to 2010 was 1,555.0 mm, and it was more than Gangwon's 1,491.5 mm. The warmest months of the year are July and August, with January and February being the coldest. In Pyeongchang, 16 heritage sites were registered by the South Korean government, and 45 Heritages were registered by

12614-542: Was active during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and athletes had benefited from the cover-up . The IOC stripped thirteen medals from Russian athletes in 2017, but nine were reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport . In December 2017, the IOC voted to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee , with an option for whitelisted athletes to compete independently during the 2018 Winter Olympics . Sochi

12733-645: Was announced as the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2018 Winter Paralympics . The other candidates were Annecy, France and Munich, Germany . It is the third Winter Games in Asia after the 1972 games in Sapporo, Japan and the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan . It also is the first Asian locality to host the Winter Games outside Japan. Pyeongchang won their 2018 bid after two previous failed attempts for

12852-596: Was built in Estosadok, close to Krasnaya Polyana. Funds were spent on the construction of hotels for 10,300 guests. The first of the Olympic hotels, Zvezdny ( Stellar ), was rebuilt anew. Significant funds were spent on the construction of an advanced sewage treatment system in Sochi, designed by Olimpstroy. The system meets BREF standards and employs top available technologies for environment protection, including tertiary treatment with microfiltration . Six post offices were opened at competition venues, two of them in

12971-464: Was elected on 4 July 2007 during the 119th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session held in Guatemala City , Guatemala , defeating bids from Salzburg , Austria ; and Pyeongchang , South Korea. This is the first time that the Russian Federation has hosted the Winter Olympics. The Soviet Union was the host of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in and around Moscow. As of October 2013,

13090-405: 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

13209-421: 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

13328-572: Was held in 1999 in Gangwon Province including Pyeongchang. Originally, it hoped to host the 3rd Asian Winter Games, which North Korea gave up; however, Harbin was announced to host the 3rd Games. It was decided that Gangwon would host the 4th Asian Winter Games at the same time. In total, 799 athletes participated in the Games. Alpine skiing , cross-country skiing , biathlon , short track speed skating , and figure skating events were held in Pyeongchang. On 6 July 2011, Pyeongchang

13447-670: Was in Sochi and concluded that the city had made significant progress since he last visited eighteen months earlier. According to the FTP, US$ 580 million would be spent on construction and modernization of telecommunications in the region. Avaya was named by the Sochi Organizing Committee as the official supplier of telecommunications equipment. Avaya provided the data network equipment, including switches , routers , security, telephones and contact-center systems . It provided engineers and technicians to design and test

13566-653: Was involved in Sakbang-do, and the south of the region was involved in Jungwon-do. When a new administrative system was carried out by King Hyeonjong , the east of the region was involved in Dong-gyeo, and the rest of it was included in Yanggwang-do. An administrator for the region was sent from the central government, and it became independent of Wonju in 1299. When the Joseon Dynasty was founded in 1392,

13685-522: Was one of five archival locations in the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty for the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty and Sonwon-kyebo-kiryak . Odaesan Mountain is the home of historical Buddhist temples including Sangwonsa and Woljeongsa . It was designated as a national park in 1975. The highest peak, Birobong Peak is 1,563 m (5,128 ft) high. Two major ski resorts in the county were

13804-483: Was permitted to walk under the flag of India at the Closing Ceremony. During the Games some countries had a national house, a meeting place for supporters, athletes and other followers. Houses could be either free for visitors to access or have limited access by invitation only. The 2014 Winter Olympics featured 98 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports. A total of twelve new events were contested, making it

13923-723: Was ruled by the Goguryeo Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period, and it was called Uk-o-hyeon (욱오현). After the Silla dynasty conquered the Goguryeo Dynasty and Baekje Dynasty, it was renamed Baek-o-hyeon (백오현). After the Goryeo Dynasty was established, it renamed Pyeongchang-hyeon. Then, it was under control of Wonju . When a 10-provincial system was enforced, the north of Pyeongchang region

14042-546: Was the first Games to offer 4G connectivity at a speed of 10 MB/sec. In January 2014, Rostelecom reported that it had connected the Olympic media center in Sochi to the Internet and organized channels of communication with the main media center of the Olympic Games in the coastal cluster and press center in Moscow. The media center was built at total cost of 17 million rubles. A five-year strategy for increasing

14161-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between

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