Origins

The modern Belarusian language derives from Old Belarusian, spoken on the ethnic Belarusian lands in the 19th Century. It belongs to the Balto-Slavonic group, part of the East Slavonic languages, which are within the large family of Indo-European languages. Its written system is based on the Cyrillic alphabet and contains 32 letters. Far back in history, there were texts with some Latin and Arabic symbols used for the Belarusian language.

Official Language

Belarusian is the official language of the Republic of Belarus, and in some parts of Poland. In Belarus, it’s not the only official language – due to historic events and mainly the effects of the Russian Communist regime and its reforms, Belarusian has not yet managed to regain its previous popularity among the people, and is used together with Russian at the current time.

Varieties

Belarusian has two major dialects, North-Eastern and South-Western. The major difference characterising each of them is the pronunciation of “R”, soft in the North-Eastern and hard in the South-Western. West Palyesian is a transitional dialect, which besides adopting key features from the two basic varieties has great similarities to the Ukrainian language.

Brief History

The Belarusian language derives from the Old Belarusian language. The frontier marking the transition to modern Belarusian was positioned in the end of the 18th Century.

Marked by its geographical situation, the Belarusian nation and language have always been the object of Russian and Polish influences. These had a major impact on the formation of Modern Belarusian, which accelerated in its development and popularity in the 19th Century.