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History of the Russian language

The Russian language is a language in the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. 


The Proto-Slavic language was spoken by the Proto-Slavic people living in the area around the modern-day town of Pripyat (famous for its association with the Chernobyl nuclear power station) between modern-day Belarus and Ukraine. From the 500s, the Slavs spread out westwards and southwards (and some in a north-westerly direction). 

From 862, missionaries from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius, introduced an alphabet and liturgy (text of a church service) for the Slavonic-speaking people of Great Moravia (modern-day Czechia), based on the Slavonic language spoken near their native city of Thessalonica. The Slavonic liturgy, originally created by Cyril and Methodius for the people of Great Moravia, is common to all Slavic peoples who profess Eastern Orthodox Christianity, however it has increasingly differed from the everyday speech of the various Slavic peoples. Already by the time of Cyril and Methodius, the Slavic language had developed into three regional subgroups, namely West Slavic, South Slavic and East Slavic. 

In 988, the "Rus" people of Kyiv officially embraced Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the language they would have spoken would have been the East Slavic regional subgroup. During the centuries between 988 and the 1500s, East Slavic likewise split into distinct languages, namely the future Ukrainian, Belarussian and Russian languages. 

The form of the Russian language from the 1400s until the 1700s is known in English as "Middle Russian". This is what would have been spoken at the time of Ivan the Terrible. By the 1700s, this evolved into the modern Russian language. An early representative of modern Russian is the author Karamzin. 



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