Belarusian
Language History
Belarusian belongs to the East Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Old Belarusian was the main language used in the early 14th century which was influenced by Old Church Slavonic. Eventually in 1569, Poland took over the areas, leading Polish to become the dominant language and Belarusian to be suppressed. Although some literary works remained in Belarusian, by the late 18th century, Russian eventually became widespread in the area.
In the years following up, Russian became incredibly dominant – a period known as the ‘russification’ of Belarusan which saw the replacement of Belarusian words of Polish origin with Russian words. It wasn’t until 1991 when Belarusian finally became the national language of Belarus, being used in government, the media, and education. In 1995, Russian was also given this official status, making this language somewhat more common that Belarusian in public life and in education.
According to Ethnologue, there are around 7.8 million Belarusian speakers around the world.
Where is Belarusian Spoken?
FACT
Did you Know?
Belarusian Dialects
• Northeastern
• Southwestern
• Central on which Standard Belarusian is based.
4 Easy Phrases in Belarusian!
Population vs. Internet Penetration
Belarus Population:
9,449,323
Internet Users:
7,521,628
Penetration:
79.6%
As of 2020. Source:
www.internetworldstats.com
FACT
Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian & Polish Words!
Belarusian Translation Tips
• Belarusian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.
• It has three cases of numbers: singular and plural and sometimes dual.
• Belarusian has no indefinite or definite articles.
• The neutral word order in Belarusian is Subject-Verb-Object, however other orders are possible.
• Verbs in Belarusian have two tenses: past and non-past. The present and future tenses have the same endings.