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Languages and Characters of Russia
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USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) established in 1922
allied by ethnic Soviet republics collapsed in 1991
and split into 15 countries including Russia.
Eleven countries,
except Russia and three Baltic countries,
were called NIS (New Independent States) provisionally.
Each country has a major ethnic group
and, especially Russia, holds many ethnic minorities.
Belarus and Ukraine are Russian,
Moldova is linguistically Romanian,
5 countries under Kazakhstan took root as Central Asia.
Three Caucasus countries are located in the peculiar area,
which is divided by the Black Sea from Europe in west,
by the Caspian Sea from Asia in east,
by the Caucasus Mountains from Russia in north,
and borders on the Middle East (Turkey and/or Iran) in south.
Three Baltic countries, in 2004, had been affiliated with
NATO and
EU in succession,
and become European countries in fact as well as in name,
or returned to Europe. At the same time,
Kaliningrad
(
Калининград
, a Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland,
former
Königsberg,
famous for
seven bridges mathematically) had been isolated deeply.
Ethnic Russians live in Russia and its
outside as shown in the following map.
Their inhabited area is comparatively wide in Latvia,
the Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea peninsula,
and the Northern Kazakhstan.
Their population ratio is comparatively high
in Estonia (approx. 30%) and Kirghiz(approx. 20%).
Each country has their own language
and some countries admit Russian as one of official languages.
About half of countries adopt Russian (also called
Cyrillic) alphabet,
three Baltic countries adopt Latin,
Georgia and Armenia have their own,
Azervaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan converted Russian into Latin
when they gained their independence.
(See Russian bank note)
| Language family
| Country or area
| Indep.
| Language
| Character
| Remarks
|
| Indo-European, Germanic | Finland
| 1917 | Swedish | Latin | -
|
| Uralic, Finno
| Finnish
|
| Estonia
| 1991 | Estonian
| the north of three Baltic countries
|
| Indo-European, Baltic | Latvia
| 1991
| Latvian
| the middle of three Baltic countries
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| Lithuania
| 1991 | Lithuanian
| the south of three Baltic countries
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| Indo-European, Slavic | Russia
| 1991 | Russian | Russian | -
|
| Belarus
| 1991 | Belarusan (Belarusian, White Russian, Byelorussian) | -
|
| Ukraine
| 1991
| Ukrainian
| -
|
| Bulgaria
| 1908 | Bulgarian | -
|
| Macedonia
| 1991 | Macedonian | -
|
| Serbia
| 2003
| Serbian (Serbo-Croatian)
| Russian
| including Kosovo(Albanian) and Vojvodina.
See
the ethnic dispersion map.
|
| Latin
|
| Montenegro
| 2006 | Serbian | Latin | -
|
| Bosnia and Herzegovina
| 1992 | Serbian | Russian
| Serbo-Croatian (called Bosnian recently) too,
3 languages are similar to each other.
|
| Croatian | Latin
|
| Croatia
| 1991 | Croatian | Latin | -
|
| Slovenia
| 1991 | Slovenian | -
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| Poland | 1918 | Polish | -
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| Czech | 1993 | Czech (Bohemian) | -
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| Slovakia | 1993 | Slovak | -
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| Indo-European, Albanian | Albania
| 1912 | Albanian | -
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| Indo-European, Italic | Romania
| 1878 | Romanian | -
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Moldova
| 1991 | Russian or Latin
| also called Moldovan (or Moldavian).
Russian, Gagauz (a Turkish dialect) too.
|
| Caucasian, ? |
Dagestan
| -
| Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, ... (29 languages)
| ?
| see Caucasus Region: Ethnolinguistic Groups 1995.
|
| South Caucasian | Georgia (Gruziya)
| 1991 | Georgian | Georgian | -
|
| Indo-European, Armenian | Armenia
| 1991 | Armenian | Armenian | -
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| Altaic, Turkic
| Azervaijan (Azervaidzhan)
| 1991
| Azerbaijani (Azeri)
| Latin | Arabic character too.
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| Turkey
| 1923 | Turkish | once used Arabic character.
|
| Turkmenistan
| 1991
| Turkmen
| -
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| Uzbekistan
| 1991 | Uzbek | Russian character too.
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| Kazakhstan
| 1991 | Kazakh | Russian | -
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| Kyrgyz
| 1991 | Kirghiz | -
|
| Indo-European, Iranian
| Tajikistan (Tadzhik)
| 1991 | Tajiki | Arabic character too.
|
| Afghanistan
| 1919 | Pashto (Pakhtu, Afghan) | Arabic | -
|
| Dari (Eastern Farsi) | a dialect of Persian
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| Iran
| - | Persian (Western Farsi) | -
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| Uralic, Ugric | Hungary
| - | Hungarian | Latin | a linguistic island in Central Europe
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Cyril is the Apostle of the Slavs in the 9 th century,
Кирилл
in Slavic,
Κύριλλος
in Greek. He built the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Since the Cyrillic is based upon the Greek as the Latin is,
these three alphabets are similar to each other.
The Cyrillic alphabet was developed for propagating the Christianity
to Slavs, thus from a modern viewpoint
countries which adopt the alphabet mostly
believe in the Greek Orthodox Christianity,
for example, in addition to some old Soviet countries,
Bulgaria, Macedonia, part of Serbia & Montenegro, and
part of Bosnia & Herzegovina, etc.
On the other hand
Mongolia employs the alphabet on the political, not religious, ground.
Historically speaking,
- As a result of
the Coronation of Charles I (Charlemagne) from Pope Leo III in 800,
the Christendom split into
the Greek Orthodox Church whose head is the Eastern Roman Emperor
and the Roman Catholic Church whose head is Pope.
And after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555,
the Protestant Church (the sect of Luther)
became independent of the Roman Catholic Church,
and spread over Europe of north of Germany.
- Norman (the German branch lived in the Scandinavia Peninsula)
immigrated into Russia became Slavic from early times.
In the end of 10th century, Vladimir I
who married a princess of the Eastern Roman Empire,
converted to the Greek Orthodox Christianity and
forced citizens to do so.
- In 9th century,
under the domination of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire),
Slavic immigrated into the Balkan Peninsula
converted to the Greek Orthodox Christianity.
Unicode Ver.4 defines 246 letters in
Cyrillic
and 16 letters in
Cyrillic Supplementary.
| Classification | # | Contents |
|---|
| Basic Russian alphabet | 64 |
32 each capital and small letters.
Ё(ё)
is defined in Cyrillic extensions
with the comment that it equals
Е(е) + ̈
(Combining Diaeresis : Combining Diacritical Marks U0308).
|
| Cyrillic extensions | 32 |
16 each capital and small letters for
Abkhasian (ab),
Altay (ALT,
ATV),
Azerbaijani (az),
Byelorussian (be, Belarusian),
Macedonian (mk),
Russian (ru),
Serbian (sr),
Ukrainian (uk),
Uzbek (uz).
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| Historic letters | 34 |
17 each capital and small letters.
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| Historic miscellaneous | 7 |
Marks.
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| Extended Cyrillic | 109 |
54 each capital and small letters, and
Ӏ
(Палочка
[Palochka] : aspiration sign in many Caucasian languages)
which has no lowercase form i.e. case-invariant. For
Abkhasian (ab),
Altay (ALT, ALV),
Azerbaijani (az),
Bashkir (ba),
Chukchi (CKT),
Chuvash (cv),
Kazakh (kk),
Khanty (KCA),
Kildin Sami (LPD),
Mari (chm),
Moldavian (mo),
Nenets (YRK),
Tajik (tg),
Tatar (tt),
Ukrainian (uk),
Uzbek (uz),
Yakut (sah).
|
| Cyrillic Supplementary | 16 |
8 each capital and small letters for Komi (kv).
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| Note |
A code in parentheses of the Contents column is
ISO 639-1, 2 (lowercase) or Ethnologue's (uppercase).
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Several ways of
transliteration are proposed.
The following table shows the one from Russian
(33 letters) to English.
Notice that some pairs have the same face and the different
pronunciation.
| Russian |
А |
Б |
В |
Г |
Д |
Е |
Ё |
Ж |
З |
И |
Й |
К |
Л |
М |
Н |
О |
П |
Р |
С |
Т |
У |
Ф |
Х |
Ц |
Ч |
Ш |
Щ |
Ъ |
Ы |
Ь |
Э |
Ю |
Я |
| а |
б |
в |
г |
д |
е |
ё |
ж |
з |
и |
й |
к |
л |
м |
н |
о |
п |
р |
с |
т |
у |
ф |
х |
ц |
ч |
ш |
щ |
ъ |
ы |
ь |
э |
ю |
я |
| English |
a | b | v |
g | d | ye |
yo | zh | z |
i | y | k |
l | m | n |
o | p | r |
s | t | u |
f | kh | ts |
ch | sh | shch |
" | y | ' |
e | yu | ya |
ъ, called hard sign
(твердый
знак or
твёрдый
знак),
is very rare in modern Russian.
It indicates that the previous consonant remains hard even though
followed by a front vowel.
ь, called soft sign
(мягкий знак),
indicates that the previous consonant is
palatalized even when a front vowel does not follow.
Let's look at some names of Russian Mathematicians.
Almost all of them are transliterated regularly,
but е tends to become
“e” not “ye”.
| Updated on 2004.6.20 |
First edition : 2001.12.25 |
