| agency = National Academy of Sciences of Belarus
| iso1 = be
| iso2 = bel
| iso3 = bel
| glotto = bela1254
| glottorefname = Belarusian
| lingua = 53-AAA-eb < 53-AAA-e<br />(varieties: <br />53-AAA-eba to 53-AAA-ebg)
language of minority
| notice = IPA
| map = Idioma bielorruso.png
| mapcaption = Belarusian-speaking world<br />Legend: Dark blue – territory where Belarusian is the primary language; Light blue – territory where Belarusian is a minority language
| map2 = Lang Status 80-VU.svg
| mapcaption2 =
| image = Шыльда ў менскім мэтро.JPG
| imagecaption = Monolingually Belarusian sign by the Minsk metro.
Belarusian is an East Slavic language. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, the other being Russian. It is also spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland (where it is the official language in 5 bilingual municipalities), Ukraine, and the United States by the Belarusian diaspora.
Before Belarus gained independence in 1991, the language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, or alternatively as White Russian.' Following independence, it became known as Belarusian, or alternatively as Belarusan. About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources, such as Ethnologue, put the figure at approximately million active speakers in Belarus. In Russia, the Belarusian language is declared as a "familiar language" by about 316,000 inhabitants, among them about 248,000 Belarusians, comprising about 30.7% of Belarusians living in Russia. In Ukraine, the Belarusian language is declared as a "native language" by about 55,000 Belarusians, which comprise about 19.7% of Belarusians living in Ukraine. In Poland, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 40,000 inhabitants. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is actively used by only 11.9% of Belarusians (others speak a mixture of Russian and Belarusian, known as Trasianka). Approximately 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52.5% can only read and speak it. Nevertheless, there are no Belarusian-language universities in Belarus.
Names
Official English-language name
- Belarusian ( or ) – derived from the name of the country "Belarus". It may also be spelled Belarusan (), a form used officially from 1992 to 1995 including in the United Nations and by diaspora.
Historical
- Byelorussian – derived from the Russian-language name of the country "Byelorussia" (), used officially (in the Russian language) in the times of the USSR (1922–1991) and, later, in the Russian Federation.
- White Ruthenian, or White Russian,' (and its equivalents in other languages) – literally, a word-by-word translation of the parts of the composite word Belarusian. The term "White Ruthenian" with reference to language has appeared in English-language texts since at least 1921. The oldest one, Latin term "Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto" is recorded in 1381.
Alternative suggestions
- Grand-Lithuanian, or Grand Lithuanian, – proposed and used by Jan Stankievič since the 1960s, referencing chancery language of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, intended to part with the "diminishing tradition of having the name related to the Muscovite tradition of calling the Belarusian lands" and to pertain to the "great tradition of Belarusian statehood".
- Kryvian – derived from the name of the Slavonic tribe Kryvichs, one of the main tribes in the foundations of the forming of the Belarusian nation. Created and used in the 19th century by Belarusian Polish-speaking writers Jaroszewicz, Narbut, Rogalski, Jan Czeczot. Promoted by Vatslaw Lastowski.
Vernacular
- Simple, or local, – used mainly in times preceding the common recognition of the existence of Belarus in general.
- Simple Black Ruthenian – used in the beginning of the 19th century by the Russian researcher Baranovski and attributed to contemporary vernacular Belarusian.
Classification and relationship to other languages
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian languages.
Within East Slavic, the Belarusian language is most closely related to Ukrainian.
Dialects
[[File:Dialects of Belarusian language be-tarask.png|left|thumb|
Dialects<br />
Lines<br />
]]
Besides the standardized lect, there are two main dialects of the Belarusian language: the northeastern dialect and the southwestern dialect. In addition, there is a transitional "Middle Belarusian" dialect group and a separate "West Polesian" dialect group.
The northeastern and southwestern dialects are separated by a hypothetical line (Ashmyany–Minsk–Babruysk–Gomel) with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line.
The northeastern dialect is characterised by the "soft sounding R" and "strong akanye"; and the southwestern dialect is characterised by the "hard sounding R" and "moderate akanye".
The West Polesian dialect group is separated from the rest of the country by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Tsyelyakhany–Luninyets–Stolin.
History
thumb|upright=0.8|The [[Casimir's Code of 1468, in Ruthenian]]
thumb|upright=0.8|The third [[Statutes of Lithuania|Lithuanian statute of 1588, all three written in Ruthenian]]
The modern Belarusian language was redeveloped on the base of the vernacular spoken remnants of the Ruthenian language, surviving in the ethnic Belarusian territories in the 19th century. The end of the 18th century (the times of the Divisions of Commonwealth) is the usual conventional borderline between the Ruthenian and Modern Belarusian stages of development.
By the end of the 18th century, (Old) Belarusian was still common among the minor nobility in the eastern part, in the territory of present-day Belarus, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereafter Lithuania). Jan Czeczot in the 1840s had mentioned that even his generation's grandfathers preferred speaking (Old) Belarusian. According to A. N. Pypin, the Belarusian language was spoken in some areas among the minor nobility during the 19th century. In its vernacular form, it was the language of the smaller town dwellers and of the peasantry and it had been the language of oral folklore. Teaching in Belarusian was conducted mainly in schools run by the Basilian order.
The development of Belarusian in the 19th century was strongly influenced by the political conflict in the territories of the former Lithuania, between the Russian Imperial authorities, trying to consolidate their rule over the "joined provinces", and the Polish and Polonized nobility, trying to bring back its pre-Partitions rule
thumb|left|upright=0.8|Ruthenian Bible by [[Francysk Skaryna, 1517, first ever book printed in Eastern Europe]] One of the important manifestations of this conflict was the struggle for ideological control over the educational system. The Polish and Russian languages were being introduced and re-introduced, while the general state of the people's education remained poor until the very end of the Russian Empire.
In summary, the first two decades of the 19th century had seen the unprecedented prosperity of Polish culture and language in the former Lithuanian lands, and had prepared the era of such famous Polish writers as Adam Mickiewicz and Władysław Syrokomla. The era had seen the effective completion of the Polonization of the lowest level of the nobility, the further reduction of the area of use of contemporary Belarusian, and the effective folklorization of Belarusian culture. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 19th century "there began a revival of national pride within the country … and a growth in interest [in Belarusian] from outside".
Due both to the state of the people's education and to the strong positions of Polish and Polonized nobility, it was only after the 1880s–1890s that the educated Belarusian element, still shunned because of "peasant origin", began to appear in state offices.
<!--=== Grammar in 19th century ===-->
<!--There was a grammar of Belarusian language (using Cyrillic alphabet) prepared by bishop ... By the early 2000s the manuscript for it had not yet been found. (Smalyanchuk 2001)-->
In 1846, ethnographer Pavel Shpilevskiy prepared a Belarusian grammar (using the Cyrillic alphabet) on the basis of the folk dialects of the Minsk region. However, the Russian Academy of Sciences refused to print his submission, on the basis that it had not been prepared in a sufficiently scientific manner.
From the mid-1830s ethnographic works began to appear, and tentative attempts to study the language were instigated (e.g. Shpilevskiy's grammar). The Belarusian literary tradition began to re-form, based on the folk language, initiated by the works of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich.
thumb|upright=0.8|The cover of the copy of [[The First Belarusian Dictionary by Ivan Nasovič preserved at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum]]
At the beginning of the 1860s, both the Russian and Polish parties in Belarusian lands had begun to realise that the decisive role in the upcoming conflicts was shifting to the peasantry, overwhelmingly Belarusian. So a large amount of propaganda appeared, targeted at the peasantry and written in Belarusian; notably, the anti-Russian, anti-Tsarist, anti-Eastern Orthodox "Manifesto" and the first newspaper Mužyckaja prauda (; 1862–1863) by Konstanty Kalinowski, and anti-Polish, anti-Revolutionary, pro-Orthodox booklets and poems (1862).
The advent of the all-Russian narodniks and Belarusian national movements during the late 1870s and early 1880s renewed interest in the Belarusian language and literary tradition. During these times, Belarusian writer Francišak Bahuševič made his appeal to Belarusians: "Do not forsake our language, lest you pass away".
The First Belarusian Dictionary by Ivan Nasovič was published in 1870. In the editorial introduction to the dictionary, it is noted that:
thumb|left|Geographic distribution of Belarusian language in the Russian Empire according to the 1897 census
In 1891, in the preface to the Belarusian Flute, Francišak Bahuševič wrote, "There have been many peoples, which first lost their language... and then they perished entirely. So do not abandon our Belarusian language, lest we perish!"
According to the 1897 Russian Empire census, about 5.89 million people declared themselves speakers of Belarusian (then known as White Russian).
The end of the 19th century, however, still showed that the urban language of Belarusian towns remained either Polish or Russian. The same census showed that towns with a population greater than 50,000 had fewer than a tenth Belarusian speakers. This state of affairs greatly contributed to a perception that Belarusian was a "rural" and "uneducated" language.
However, the census was a major breakthrough for the first steps of the Belarusian national self-awareness and identity, since it clearly showed to the Imperial authorities and the still-strong Polish minority that the population and the language were neither Polish nor Russian.
<div class="regular">
{| class="wikitable" style="width:50%; float:right; margin-left:6px;"
|+ Excerpt from the Russian Empire Census results
|-
!
! Total population
! Belarusian
! Russian
! Polish
|-
| Vilna
| 1,591,207
| 891,903
| 78,623
| 130,054
|-
| Vitebsk
| 1,489,246
| 987,020
| 198,001
| 50,377
|-
| Grodno
| 1,603,409
| 1,141,714
| 74,143
| 161,662
|-
| Minsk
| 2,147,621
| 1,633,091
| 83,999
| 64,617
|-
| Mogilev
| 1,686,764
| 1,389,782
| 58,155
| 17,526
|-
| Smolensk
| 1,525,279
| 100,757
| 1,397,875
| 7,314
|-
| Chernigov
| 2,297,854
| 151,465
| 495,963
| 3,302
|-
| Privislinsky Krai
| 9,402,253
| 29,347
| 335,337
| 6,755,503
|-
| Russian Empire
| 125,640,021
| 5,885,547
| 55,667,469
| 7,931,307
|-
| colspan="5" | <sup>*</sup> See also: Administrative-territorial division of Belarus and bordering lands in 2nd half 19 cent. (right half-page) and Ethnic composition of Belarus and bordering lands (prep. by Mikola Bich on the basis of 1897 data)
|}</div>
1900s–1910s
The rising influence of socialist ideas (e.g., Belarusian Socialist Assembly, Alaiza Pashkevich) further advanced the emancipation of the Belarusian language. The fundamental works of Yefim Karsky marked a turning point in the scientific perception of Belarusian. The ban on publishing books and papers in Belarusian was officially removed on 25 December 1904. The unprecedented surge of national feeling in the 20th century, especially among the workers and peasants, particularly after the events of 1905, gave momentum to the intensive development of Belarusian literature and press (e.g., Nasha Niva, Yanka Kupala, Yakub Kolas).
1914–1917
On 22 December 1915, Paul von Hindenburg issued an order on schooling in German Army-occupied territories in the Russian Empire (Ober Ost), banning schooling in Russian and including the Belarusian language in an exclusive list of four languages made mandatory in the respective native schooling systems (Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish). School attendance was not made mandatory, though. Passports at this time were bilingual, in German and in one of the "native languages". Also at this time, Belarusian preparatory schools, printing houses, press organs were opened.
1917–1920
In the Belarusian Democratic Republic, Belarusian was used as the only official language (decreed by Belarusian People's Secretariat on 28 April 1918). In the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR), Belarusian was decreed by the Central Executive Committee to be one of the four official languages – along with Polish, Russian, and Yiddish – in February 1921.
1920–1930
Soviet Belarus
A decree of 15 July 1924 confirmed that the Belarusian, Russian, Yiddish and Polish languages had equal status in Soviet Belarus.
In the BSSR, Tarashkyevich's grammar had been officially accepted for use in state schooling after its re-publication in unchanged form, first in 1922 by Yazep Lyosik under his own name as Practical grammar. Part I, then in 1923 by the Belarusian State Publishing House under the title Belarusian language. Grammar. Ed. I. 1923, also by "Ya. Lyosik".
In 1925, Lyosik added two new chapters, addressing the orthography of compound words and partly modifying the orthography of assimilated words. From this point on, Belarusian grammar had been popularized and taught in the educational system in that form. The ambiguous and insufficient development of several components of Tarashkyevich's grammar was perceived to be the cause of some problems in practical usage, and this led to discontent with the grammar.
In 1924 and 1925, Lyosik and his brother Anton prepared and published their project of orthographic reform, proposing a number of radical changes. A fully phonetic orthography was introduced. One of the most distinctive changes brought in was the principle of akanye, wherein unstressed is written as .
thumb|The 1926 Belarusian Academic Conference on Reform of the Orthography and Alphabet in [[Minsk]]
The Belarusian Academic Conference on Reform of the Orthography and Alphabet was convened in 1926. After discussions on the project, the Conference made resolutions on some of the problems. However, the Lyosik brothers' project had not addressed all the problematic issues, so the Conference was not able to address all of those.
As the outcome of the conference, the Orthographic Commission was created to prepare the project of the actual reform. This was instigated on 1 October 1927, headed by S. Nyekrashevich, with the following principal guidelines of its work adopted:
- To consider the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926) non-mandatory, although highly competent material.
- To simplify Tarashkyevich's grammar where it was ambiguous or difficult in use, to amend it where it was insufficiently developed (e.g., orthography of assimilated words), and to create new rules if absent (orthography of proper names and geographical names).
During its work between 1927 and 1929, the commission had actually prepared the project for spelling reform. The resulting project had included both completely new rules and existing rules in unchanged and changed forms, some of the changes being the work of the commission itself, and others resulting from the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926), re-approved by the commission.
Notably, the use of the Ь (soft sign) before the combinations "consonant+iotated vowel" ("softened consonants"), which had been previously denounced as highly redundant (e.g., in the proceedings of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926)), was cancelled. However, the complete resolution of the highly important issue of the orthography of unstressed Е (IE) was not achieved.
Both the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926) and the project of the Orthographic Commission (1930) caused much disagreement in the Belarusian academic environment. Several elements of the project were to be put under appeal in the "higher (political) bodies of power".
West Belarus
In Western Belorussia, under Polish rule, the Belarusian language was at a disadvantage. Schooling in the Belarusian language was obstructed, and the printing in Belarusian experienced political oppression.
Authors who later emigrated treated homeland as inseparable from the Belarusian language.
Tarashkyevich's grammar was re-published five times in Western Belarus. However, the 5th edition (1929) was the version diverging from the previously published one, which Tarashkyevich had prepared disregarding the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926) resolutions.
1930s
Soviet Belarus
From 1929 to 1930, Soviet authorities of Belarus made a series of drastic crackdowns against the supposed "national-democratic counter-revolution" (informally "nats-dems"). Effectively, entire generations of Socialist Belarusian national activists in the first quarter of the 20th century were wiped out of political, scientific and social existence. Only the most famous cult figures (e.g. Yanka Kupala) were spared.
However, a new power group in Belarusian science quickly formed during these power shifts, under the virtual leadership of the Head of the Philosophy Institute of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, academician . The book published under his editorship, Science in Service of Nats-Dems' Counter-Revolution (1931), represented the new spirit of political life in Soviet Belarus.
1933 reform of Belarusian grammar
The Reform of Belarusian Grammar (1933) had been brought out with the project published in the central newspaper of the Belarusian Communist Party (Zviazda) on 28 June 1933, and the decree of the Council of People's Commissars (Council of Ministers) of BSSR issued on 28 August 1933, to gain the status of law on 16 September 1933.
The morphological principle in the orthography had been strengthened, which also had been proposed in 1920s.
The "removing of the artificial barriers between the Russian and Belarusian languages" (virtually the often-quoted "Russification of Belarusian") had – according to Stankyevich – moved the normative Belarusian morphology and syntax closer to their Russian counterparts, often removing from use the indigenous features of the Belarusian language.
|-
!rowspan="2"| Year
!colspan="2"| Spoken at home
!colspan="2"| Mother Tongue
!rowspan="2"| Total
|-
!#
!%
!#
!%
|-
| 1970 || || || 6,899,088 || 76.6 || 9,002,338
|-
| 1979 || || || 6,657,315 || 69.8 || 9,532,516
|-
| 1989 || || || 6,664,156 || 65.6 ||10,151,806
|-
| 1999 || 3,682,607 || 36.7 || 7,404,979 || 73.7 ||10,045,237
|-
| 2009 || 2,227,175 || 23.4 || 5,058,402 || 53.2 ||9,503,807
|-
| 2019 || 2,447,764 || 26.0 || 5,094,928 || 54.1 ||9,413,446
|}
After the Second World War, several major factors influenced the development of the Belarusian language. The most important was the implementation of the "rapprochement and unification of Soviet people" policy, which resulted by the 1980s in the Russian language effectively and officially assuming the role of the principal means of communication, with Belarusian relegated to a secondary role. The post-war growth in the number of publications in the Belarusian language in BSSR drastically lagged behind those in Russian. The use of Belarusian as the main language of education was gradually limited to rural schools and humanitarian faculties. The BSSR counterpart of the USSR law "On strengthening of ties between school and real life and on the further development of popular education in the USSR" (1958), adopted in 1959, along with introduction of a mandatory 8-year school education, made it possible for the parents of pupils to opt for non-mandatory studying of the "second language of instruction", which would be Belarusian in a Russian language school and vice versa. However, for example in the 1955–56 school year, there were 95% of schools with Russian as the primary language of instruction, and 5% with Belarusian as the primary language of instruction. The Belarusian was mostly used as a language of instruction in Belarusian rural schools or humanities faculties and was popularly regarded as an "uncultured, rural language of rural people".
That was the source of concern for the nationally minded and caused, for example, the series of publications by Barys Sachanka in 1957–61 and the text named "Letter to a Russian Friend" by Alyaksyey Kawka (1979). The BSSR Communist party leader Kirill Mazurov made some tentative moves to strengthen the role of the Belarusian language in the second half of the 1950s.
After the beginning of Perestroika and the relaxing of political control in the late 1980s, a new campaign in support of the Belarusian language was mounted in BSSR, expressed in the "Letter of 58" and other publications, producing a certain level of popular support and resulting in the BSSR Supreme Soviet ratifying the "Law on Languages" of 26 January 1990, requiring the strengthening of the role of Belarusian in state and civic structures.
1959 reform of grammar
A discussion on problems in Belarusian orthography and on the further development of the language was held from 1935 to 1941. From 1949 to 1957 this continued, although it was deemed there was a need to amend some unwarranted changes to the 1933 reform. The Orthography Commission, headed by Yakub Kolas, set up the project in about 1951, but it was approved only in 1957, and the normative rules were published in 1959. These rules had been accepted as normative for the Belarusian language since then, receiving minor practical changes in the 1985 edition.
A project to correct parts of the 1959 rules was conducted from 2006 to 2007.
Post-1991
The process of government support for "Belarusisation" began even before the breakup of the Soviet Union, with the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR passing a law on languages in 1990 that aimed for the gradual increase in prestige and general use of the Belarusian language over the next 10 years, followed by the creation that same year of a National Language Program to support this endeavor. After Belarus became independent in 1991, support for the cause of the Belarusian language gained prestige and popular interest, with the post-Soviet Belarusian government the continued creation of policies to actively promote the use of the Belarusian language, especially in education. The creation of the 1994 Constitution declared Belarusian to be the sole official language, though Russian was given the status as "language of inter-ethnic communication". In 1996, Russian language was given equal status to Belarusian following changes in the Constitution of Belarus and subsequently became Belarus's language of administration, business and education. In a 2006 article, Roy Medvedev compared the position of the Belarusian language in Belarus with that of the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland. Adam Maldzis considers that one of typological similarities is the official bilinguism both in Belarus and Ireland, and the low real status of the mother-tongue.
A spelling reform of the official Belarusian language, making the spelling of some words more similar to Taraškievič's system, was decided on 23 July 2008, and went into effect on 1 September 2010.