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.