Russian is an Eastern Slavonic language closely related to Ukrainian and Belarusian with about 277 million speakers mainly in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. It is also spoken in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonian, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Finland, Mongolia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Israel, Afghanistan, the USA, Canada and a number of countries.
The earliest known writing in Russia dates from the 10th century and was found at Novgorod. The main languages written on them in an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet were Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic. There are also some texts in Finnish, Latin and Greek.
Russian started appearing in writing regularly during the reign of Peter the Great (a.k.a. Peter I) (1672-1725) who introduced a revised alphabet and encouraged authors to use a literary style closer to their spoken language. The dialect of Moscow was used as the basis for written Russian.
Russian literature started to flower during the 19th century when Tolstoi, Dostoyevskii, Gogol and Pushkin were active. During the Soviet era knowledge of the Russian language was wide spread though the subjects authors could write about were restricted.
There are a number of transliteration schemes for Russian, details of which can be found at: http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/ntr/russisch/umschrifttabelle.html
This is a version of the cursive handwritten Russian alphabet. A number of letters have quite different shapes when written in this way.
Все люди рождаются свободными и равными в своем достоинстве и правах. Они наделены разумом и совестью и должны поступать в отношении друг друга в духе братства.
Vse ljudi roždajutsya svobodnymi i ravnymi v svoem dostoinstve i pravakh. Oni nadeleny razumom i sovest'ju i dolžny postupat' v otnošenii drug druga v dukhe bratstva.
A recording of this text by Yuri from Belarus
A recording of this text by Max Bollinger
Russian voiceover audio by Max.Bollinger@Gmail.com
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Tower of Babel in Russian | Useful phrases in Russian
Russian language learning materials
Information about the Russian language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language
Online Russian lessons
http://masterrussian.com
http://www.waytorussia.net/WhatIsRussia/Russian.html
http://www.russianlessons.net
http://speakrussian.blogspot.com/
http://listen2russian.com/
http://www.learningrussian.net
http://www.ruslang.com
http://www.study-languages-online.com
http://www.russianforeveryone.com
http://WikiTranslate.org/wiki/Russian_language_course
http://www.yesrussian.com
http://www.bridgetorussian.com
http://russianeasy.ru/index/russian_language_level_1/0-12
Learn Russian abroad | Learn Russian
Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Kashubian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian, Ukrainian
Other languages written with the Cyrillic alphabet
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