Russian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. What are its most unique properties?
Facts about the Russian language
Russian belongs to the Slavic, more precisely - the East Slavic languages, along with Ukrainian, Belarusian, as well as in a number of cases isolated as a separate Rusyn (it is also considered as a dialect of Ukrainian). All East Slavic languages have a common ancestor - the Old Russian language, which was formed in the 9-12 centuries.
The modern literary Russian language took shape around the middle of the 18th century - as it is believed, on the basis of the Moscow dialect, largely supplemented by a large number of other Russian dialects.
The writing of the Russian language, as well as other East Slavic and many Slavic languages of the far abroad - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.
The total number of Russian speakers, according to some estimates, is about 260 million people. On the Internet, the official language of the Russian Federation is in second place in popularity, yielding only to English (albeit quite significantly): about 6.4% of modern sites are based on Russian content, while approximately 53.6% of the web is written in English. -pages. For comparison, about 5.6% of sites contain content in German (the language has the 3rd place in terms of prevalence on the Web), 5.1% - in Japanese (4th place).
It is obvious that Russian is a language of world significance, which is native or understandable for a huge number of people from various states. It is difficult to explain its popularity only by the political and cultural role of Russia in the world - although, of course, in both cases it is significant. The Russian language is beautiful due to the presence in it of a number of unique properties that distinguish it from other languages.
We can consider some of the most notable examples of this.
Where is the most obvious difference?
First of all, Russian is one of the few European languages in which sentences can be constructed with an almost free arrangement of words. In particular, this applies to subjects and predicates. “I went to the library”, “I went to the library”, “I went to the library” - the essence is the same.
Often Russian words form oxymorons - that is, combinations of words that are opposite in meaning, as well as stable phrases according to principles that are not quite logical for a native speaker, relatively speaking, of the English language. But - quite correct from the point of view of the perception of the native speaker of the Russian. The phrases “No, probably”, “Hands don't reach” will most likely not be translated literally into Western European languages.
In the Russian language, the morphology of numerals is very complex. Depending on the case, one can say: “three hundred and forty-four”, “three hundred and forty-four”, “three hundred and forty-four”, etc. It is extremely difficult for a person for whom Russian is a non-native language to adapt to this particular feature of the use of numbers.
In Russian, the strengthening or weakening of a subjective assessment of something is usually expressed using suffixes. For example, in words like "house" and "house". In English, this method is difficult, and only phrases - little house and big house - will be similar in meaning.
Of course, there is still more than one difference between the Russian language and other languages. We have covered just a few examples. Taking into account the unique characteristics of the official language of the Russian Federation, we will try to reflect the difference between Russian and other languages in a small table.
Table
Russian language | Other languages |
Allows free arrangement of words in sentences | Few European languages (and not related to East Slavic) are characterized by this property - these include Finnish, Estonian |
Has a complex morphology of numerals | Mainly only East Slavic languages have this property |
Allows you to strengthen or weaken the subjective assessment of the subject with the suffix | Basically, only East Slavic languages have this property |
It is characterized by unique principles of the formation of oxymorons and stable phrases | Many Russian oxymorons and fixed phrases do not have a direct correspondence in European languages |