Belarus' Official Language: A Historical Overview

Belarus has two official languages: Belarusian and Russian. Belarusian is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population, while Russian is the mother tongue of 41.5%. However, Russian is the most common language used at home, with 70% of the population speaking it in their day-to-day lives, compared to 23% for Belarusian. Russian is also the most widely spoken language in Belarus, with 69.8% of the population claiming to speak it at home in 2009, compared to 26.1% for Belarusian.

The Belarusian language is an East Slavic language, descending from Old East Slavic. It is written in a variant of the Cyrillic script and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other Slavic languages. It is closely related to both Ukrainian and Russian, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the three languages.

Russian is the most common language used at home in Belarus

The dominance of Russian in Belarus can be attributed to the country's history. In the 19th century, Russian and Polish were introduced as the official languages in the educational system when Russia and Poland began laying claim to the country. After Belarus gained independence in 1991, Belarusian became the sole official language. However, this decision was met with public protest, and in 1995, a referendum was held, resulting in Russian being reinstated as an official language.

The referendum, in which 88.3% of voters supported equal legal status for Russian and Belarusian, led to an increased use of Russian throughout the country. This is reflected in the decline of Belarusian speakers at home, dropping from 36.7% in 1999 to 11.9% in 2009.

While Belarusian is not as widely spoken as Russian, it is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population, compared to 41.5% for Russian. Additionally, 29.4% of Belarusians are fluent in Belarusian, and 52.5% can read and speak it.

The Belarusian language is closely related to Russian and Ukrainian, with all three belonging to the East Slavic language family. Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with Russian and Ukrainian, and the three languages retain a degree of mutual intelligibility.

Belarusian is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population

The Belarusian language is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, alongside Russian. It is also spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries.

Belarusian is an East Slavic language that is historically the native language of most Belarusians. It is written in a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form of this alphabet was defined in 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters.

The Belarusian language has historically been subject to political influence. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire treated Belarusian as a dialect of Russian. In the 20th century, several governments of Belarus had policies favouring the Russian language, and as a result, Russian is more widely used in education and public life than Belarusian.

The use of Belarusian has also been influenced by neighbouring countries. In the 16th century, the use of Belarusian in official documents was forbidden in favour of Polish. In the 19th century, Russian and Polish began introducing their official languages to the Belarusian educational system. After World War II, the region underwent "Soviet unification", which made Russian the principal form of communication.

Despite these influences, there have been efforts to preserve and promote the Belarusian language. In the early 20th century, a movement was made to record and formalize the grammar of the language. In 1924, under Soviet rule, Belarusian became one of four official languages. After Belarus gained independence in 1991, Belarusian once again became the only official language for a few years. Currently, Belarusian is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population, while Russian is the mother tongue of 41.5%.

Belarusian is written in Cyrillic

The Belarusian language is written in Cyrillic. It is one of two official languages in Belarus, alongside Russian. It is also spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries.

The written culture of Belarus is over 11 centuries old. The Cyrillic script (kirylica) was the most commonly used graphic system of the Old Belarusian language for religious and secular literature. The oldest Belarusian book is the Turaŭ [Turov] Gospel, discovered in 1865 in Turaŭ, a town in the south of contemporary Belarus. It is preserved in the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius. The manuscript is written in the Church Slavonic language, in uncial script (ustav) – the oldest type of Cyrillic writing.

Starting from the 14th century, a more economical half-uncial script was widely used in East Slavonic manuscripts. When the first Belarusian printer, Francysk Skaryna, established his press in the early 16th century, he chose a font based on handwritten half-uncial Cyrillic script.

All three versions of the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1529, 1566, and 1588) were written in Cyrillic, too. There is no academic consensus regarding their language, but they are important precursors of the modern Belarusian language. The 1588 version was printed using a Cyrillic font imitating an italic script (skoropis) of that time. This script was used for civil publications, while religious books continued to be printed in a more elaborate half-uncial script.

The organic development of the Cyrillic form of the Belarusian language was interrupted by the increased use of the Polish language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 17th and 18th centuries. Polish was replaced by Russian in official use after the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland were partitioned by their neighbours at the end of the 18th century.

A civil script, grazhdanka, was developed for the Russian alphabet under Tsar Peter the Great and was adopted by newspaper and book publishers after publishing in Belarusian became legal in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. After a short period of experimentation, the Belarusian alphabet settled into its current form, which is very close to the Russian and Ukrainian alphabets but has its own particularities, such as the letter (ŭ).

The Latin script (lacinka) was also used widely in Belarus for writing in Latin and Polish. From the 16th century, there are examples of Belarusian texts, usually written in Latin script using the Polish alphabet. In the 19th century, lacinka dominated publications in Belarusian.

The earliest Belarusian newspapers and books published legally under the Russian Empire used both Cyrillic and Latin scripts, which they referred to as “Russian and Polish characters”. Cyrillic was used to address the Orthodox Christian population, and the Latin alphabet was for Roman Catholics.

In Soviet Belarus, the possibility of adopting the Latin script was discussed only once, during the Academic Conference for Reform of the Belarusian Grammar and Alphabet in 1926. The conference agreed that such a change would be the best solution, but premature at that time. Three years later, the Bolsheviks described such views as sabotage and tearing Belarusian culture away from that of Russia. Mass purges of the Belarusian intelligentsia followed soon after.

A slightly modified version of Branislaŭ Taraškievič’s lacinka has recently been adopted by the Belarusian government for transliterating Belarusian geographic names into Latin script and recommended for use by the United Nations.

The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters.

Trasianka is a mix of Russian and Belarusian

Trasianka, derived from the Belarusian word for 'low-quality mixed grains', is a mix of Russian and Belarusian. It is a linguistic variety in Belarus that emerged from long-lasting and intensive Belarusian-Russian language contact. Trasianka is still practised by a large part of the country's population.

The mixing of languages in Belarus is not a recent phenomenon. For a long time, Belarusian territories have been borderlands, where local dialects came into contact with more socially dominant languages like Polish or Russian. However, the form of Trasianka that is now recognised emerged due to the changes in Soviet Belarus after World War II. Postwar industrialisation led to substantial labour migration from rural areas to towns. Villagers brought Belarusian, especially dialectal varieties, into towns, where Russian was the dominant language. The dominance of the Russian language was further reinforced by the migration of ethnic Russians from other parts of the Soviet Union, who assumed leadership positions. As a result, the newly urbanised population struggled with linguistic accommodation, leading to the emergence of Trasianka.

Trasianka has been stigmatised and associated with poor taste and a lack of education. However, it is used by people of different educational levels and is not necessarily an indicator of a lack of proficiency in Russian or Belarusian. It is an index of its rural origin and is used alongside the standard language, which is usually Russian. Trasianka is particularly common among older generations, with its relative weight decreasing in favour of Russian among younger Belarusians.

From a linguistic perspective, Trasianka combines Belarusian and Russian elements and structures arbitrarily. It is characterised by the presence of certain palatal affricate consonants and the absence of palatalisation of consonants before the semivowel. It also features aspirated sibilants and "hard" sounds instead of the "soft" sounds typical of Russian. Additionally, Trasianka includes Russian words shaped by Belarusian phonology and morphology, as well as some vocabulary exclusively from Belarusian.

The question of whether Trasianka is a dialect of Belarusian or Russian is debated among linguists. Some scholars claim it is a variety of Belarusian, while others suggest it might develop into a regional dialect of Russian. However, among laypeople, opinions vary, with some considering it a mix of the two languages or something in between.

Russian is one of the two official languages of Belarus

Russian is more widely used in education and public life than Belarusian. This is due in part to the historical influence of Russia and the Soviet Union on Belarus. Under Soviet rule, Russian was declared the language of interethnic communication across the USSR, and it was introduced as a mandatory subject in all schools in non-Russian Soviet republics in 1938.

In the 1994-1995 academic year, 58% of students in the first classes of elementary school were taught in the Belarusian language in Minsk. However, following the election of Alexander Lukashenko as president in 1994, the number of these classes decreased. By 1999, only 5.3% of students in the first classes of elementary school in Minsk were taught in Belarusian.

The dominance of Russian in Belarus has led to the emergence of Trasianka, a mixed language in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures are used interchangeably.

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