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.

Comments

Bury, Greater Manchester - Timeline of churches

979? First Church on the site of the present Parish Church (the picture below is an artist's impression of Bury parish church in 1485). This was the only church in the town of Bury until 1719 (see below). 1585 Parish church (re)built in the gothic style . 1650 During the Commonwealth, Henry Pendlebury was ordained for Holcombe Chapelry. 1662 Having been ejected from the Church of England, Henry Pendlebury of Holcombe (1626-1695) held services at a Chapel on Bass Lane by Richard Kay, and others ejected from the C of E (replaced in 1712 by Dundee Chapel, Holcombe) 1669 The vicar of Bury parish reported to the Bishop of Chester that he heard several conventicles were "constantly kept at private houses of Independents, Presbyterians, Dippers and other such like jointly, of the bset rank of the yeomanry and other inferiors." 1689 ...

The history of the Christian Church in twenty places

α. Jerusalem (30 or 33 AD) The place where Christ, the Son-of-God-become-man, died on the Cross, was raised from the dead on the third day, and from where he ascended back to heaven. This is also where the Holy Spirit was poured out on the first disciples. Sometime after AD 44 (Acts 12), Peter, John and other Apostles dispersed across the world to bear testimony to the risen Christ. 1. Ephesus (approx. 100 AD) The place where the Apostles, Paul and John, handed over to the next generation of Christian leaders, which included the “Apostolic Fathers”. One such “Apostolic Father”, Ignatius of Antioch, passed through Ephesus on his way to martyrdom at Rome, and addressed a letter to the church at Ephesus. 2. Athens (second century) The centre of Greek thought, which Justin Martyr and other Second Century Apologists addressed in their presentations of the Christian faith, proclaiming Christ as the Logos (the Word or principle underlying the universe). 3. Lyon (from 177) The church in ...

William Tyndale & the translation of the Bible into English

This year (2025) marks the 500 anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English by William Tyndale. There were translations of the Bible from Hebrew/Greek into other languages from the earliest centuries of the Christian church. The first languages to "get" translations were Syriac (the area stretching eastwards from Antioch), Latin (Rome and western Europe) and Coptic (Egypt). Later, in the centuries from the 300s to 500s, translations were also made into Gothic, Armenian, Georgian and Ge'ez (Ethiopia) languages. There had been translations of the Bible into English before Tyndale. The Venerable Bede, a leading monk living at Jarrow from the late 600s, undertook a translation of John's gospel into English. Also, King Alfred (849-899) translated the first five books of the Old Testament into English. Later, in 1384, Reformer John Wycliffe and his followers completed a translation into English from the Latin (Vulgate). However, the institutional church durin...

Crumbs from the Table

Search This Blog