Belarusian language
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-04-02

Belarusian language, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45213 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Belarusian_language
#Languages_of_Belarus
#Languages_of_Estonia
#Languages_of_Latvia
#Languages_of_Lithuania
#Languages_of_Poland
#Languages_of_Russia
#Ruthenian_language
#East_Slavic_languages
Belarusian language

Belarusian (; ) is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is also spoken in Russia (where it is known as "Western Russian"), Poland and Ukraine.
Before Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was only known in English as "Byelorussian" or "Belorussian", transliterating the Russian name, "Belorusskiy yazyk", or alternatively as "White Ruthenian" () or "White Russian". Following independence, it has acquired the additional name "Belarusian".

Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage is known as Ruthenian (14th to 17th centuries), in turn descended from Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).

In the first Belarus Census of 1999, the Belarusian language was declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens (36.7% of the population). About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources, such as Ethnologue, put the figure at approximately 2.5 million active speakers.

According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is actively used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. Approximately 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52.5% can only read and speak it. 

According to UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, Belarusian language is stated as vulnerable. 

Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, especially Ukrainian, Belarusian phonology is distinc...