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Ukrainian Language

Ukrainian language

Ukrainian (украї́нська мо́ва, ukrayins'ka mova, ) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. It shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Slovakian. Ukrainian traces its origins to the Old East Slavic language of the ancient state of Kievan Rus'. The language has persisted despite the two bans by Imperial Russia and political persecution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its broad base among the people of Ukraine, its folklore songs, kobzars, prominent poets like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

History

Perspective

Before the eighteenth century the precursor to the modern Ukrainian language was a vernacular language used mostly by peasants and petit bourgeois, existing side-by-side with a literary language of foreign origin, the Church Slavonic evolved from the Old Slavonic language from Bulgaria. Although the spoken Ukrainian language was in no danger of extinction, it was only raised to the level of a language of literature, philosophy and science by being promoted at the expense of a separate "high language", be it Greek, Church Slavonic, Polish, Latin or Russian. Ivan Kotlyarevsky in 1794 published an epic poem, Eneyida, a burlesque in Ukrainian, based on Vergil's Aeneid. The book turned out to be the first literary work published in the vernacular Ukrainian, becoming an undying classic of Ukrainian literature. The Ukrainian language has a rich history that reflects the history of Ukraine, full of foreign oppression and undying resistance. Ukrainian traces its roots through the mid-fourteenth century as one of the state languages of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, back to the early written evidences of tenth-century Kievan Rus'.

Origin

Until the end of 18th century the written language used in Ukraine was quite different from the spoken one. From these reasons, there is no direct data on the origin of the Ukrainian language. One has to rely on indirect methods: analysis of typical mistakes in old manuscripts, comparison of linguistic data with historical, antropological, archeological ones, etc. Because of the difficulty of the question, several versions of the origin of Ukrainian language exist. Some early versions have already been proven wrong by modern linguistics, while others are still being discussed in the academic community. The first version of the origin was proposed by Mikhail Lomonosov in the middle of the 18th century when modern linguistic studies were not available. Lomonosov assumed existence of the common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of Kievan Rus', the language he called Русский (Russkiy) (it should be noted that in the Russian language the word Russkiy (Russian) relates both to what pertains to modern Russia and to Rus', see also Etymology of Rus and derivatives). According to Lomonosov, the differences that subsequently developed between Great Russian and Ukrainian (then called Little Russian) could be explained by the influence of the Polish language when, after the disintegration of the East Slavic state, the lands of Ukraine fell under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This theory became a basis of the mainstream scholarship within the Russian Empire, largely due to its political convenience. The theory of "polonization" was supported by the government of the Imperial Russia when in 1876 Ukrainian was banned from printing in the territory of the empire (see Ems Ukaz). The "polonization" theory was criticised as early as in the first half of the nineteenth by Mykhailo Maxymovych. In fact, the most distinctive features of Ukrainian language are present neither in Russian nor in Polish. Ukrainian and Polish language do share a lot of common or similar words, but so are most Slavic languages, since many words are carried over from the extinct Proto-Slavic language, predecessors of the modern ones. Much smaller part of their common vocabulary can be attributed to the later interaction of the two languages. The "polonization" theory has not been taken seriously by the academic community since the beginning of 20th century, but still has some circulation among anti-Ukrainian organizations and politicians. Another point of view developed during nineteenth and twentieth centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia and Soviet Union. Similarly to Lomonosov they assume the existence of the common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. But unlike Lomonosov's hypothesis, this theory does not view "polonization" or any other external influence as the main driving force that led to the formation of three different languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian from the common Old East Slavic language. The supportes of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet historiography manifested an ideology of three brotherly East Slavic nations. Soviet scholars tend to admit a difference between Ukrainian and Russian only at later time periods (fourteenth through sixteenth centuries). According to this view, Old East Slavic diverged into Belarusian and Ukrainian to the west (collectively, the Ruthenian language of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries), and Old Russian to the north-east, after the political boundaries of Kievan Rus’ were redrawn in the fourteenth century. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia (Ukraine and Belarus) into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainian and Belarusian diverged into identifiably separate languages. Other scholars see a divergence between the language of Halych-Volhynia and the language of Novgorod-Suzdal by the 1100s, assuming that before the 12th century the two languages were practically indistinguishable. Some European and American linguists concur (see, for example the articlein Encyclopedia Britannica). This point of view is, however, in varience with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes (that later likely became Volhynians and Buzhans), White Croatians, Tivertsi and Ulichs lived on the theritory of today's Ukraine long before the 12th century. It is notable that Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. Some researches admitting the differencies between the dialects spoken by East Slavic tribes in 10th and 11th centuries still consider them as "regional manifestations of a common language" (see, for instance, the article by Vasyl Nimchuk). In contrast, Ahathandel Krymskyi and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the common spoken language of Easten Slavs only in pre-historic times. According to their point of view, the disintegration of the Old East Slavic language took place in 8th or at the beginning of 9th century. The Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stockyi went even further: he denied the existence of common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar point of view was shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko and others. According to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes derived gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermadiate stages during 6st - 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by mixing and convergence of tribal dialects mostly due to intensive migration of the population within the theritory of today's Ukraine in the later historical periods. This point of view was also confirmed by phonological studies of Yurii Shevelov. This theory gains growing number of supporters among Ukrainian scientists. See also Ruthenian language.

Ancient history

Beyond the polemics between several ideological conceptions, the continuous presence of Slavic settlements in Ukraine, since at least the sixth century, provides an underlying ethno-linguistic factual basis for the origins of the Ukrainian language. The westernmost areas of modern-day Ukraine lay to the south from the postulated homeland of the original Slavs. Immigration of Slavic tribes to the Western Slavic and Southern Slavic portions of Eastern Europe led to the dissolution of Early Common Slavic into three groups by the seventh century (East Slavic, West Slavic, and South Slavic). During this time period, some East Slavic elements could have already provided a Slavic identity to the Antes civilization (of which nothing but an Iranian name is known).

Kievan Rus' and Halych-Volhynia

During the Khazar period, the territory of Ukraine, originally settled by Iranian (post-Scythian), Turkic (post-Hunnic, proto-Bulgarian), and Finno-Ugric (proto-Hungarian) tribes, was progressively Slavicized by several waves of migration from the Slavic north. Finally, the Varangian ruler of Novgorod, called Oleg, seized Kiev (Kyiv) and established the political entity of Rus'. Some theorists see an early Ukrainian stage in language development here; others term this era Early East Slavic or Old Ruthenian/Rus'ian. Russian theorists tend to amalgamate Rus' to the modern nation of Russia, and call this linguistic era Old Russian. Some hold that linguistic unity over Rus' was not present, but tribal diversity in language was present. The era of Rus' is the subject of some linguistic controversy, as the language of much of the literature was purely or heavily Old Slavonic. At the same time, most legal documents throughout Rus' were written in a purely East Slavic language (supposed to be based on the Kiev dialect of that epoch). Scholarly controversies over earlier development aside, literary records from Rus' testify to substantial divergence between Russian and Ruthenian/Rusyn forms of the Ukrainian language as early as the era of Rus'. One vehicle of this divergence (or widening divergence) was the large scale appropriation of the Old Slavonic language in the northern reaches of Rus' and of the Polish language at the territory of modern Ukraine. As evidenced by the contemporary chronicles, the ruling princes of Halych and Kiev called themselves "Russkie," which contrasts sharply with the lack of ethnic self-appellation for the area until the mid-nineteenth century. One prominent example of this north-south divergence in Rus' from around 1200, was the epic, The Tale of Igor's Campaign. Like other examples of Old Russian literature (for example, Byliny, the Russian Primary Chronicle), it survived only in Northern Russia (Upper Volga belt) and was probably written there. It shows dialectal features characteristic of Severian dialect with the exception of two words which were wrongly interpreted by early nineteenth-century German scholars as Polish loan words.

Post-independence: Lithuania/Poland, Muscovy/Russia, and Austro-Hungary

Severia (1561).]] After the fall of Halych-Volhynia, Ukrainians mainly fell under the rule of Lithuania, then Poland. Local autonomy of both rule and language was a marked feature of Lithuanian rule. Polish rule, which came mainly later, was accompanied by a more assimilationist policy. The Polish language has had heavy influences on Ukrainian (and on Belarusian). As the Ukrainian language developed further, some borrowings from Tatar and Turkish occurred. Ukrainian culture and language flourished in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, when Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ukrainian was also the official language of Ukrainian provinces of the Crown of Polish Kingdom. Among many schools established in that time, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kiev-Mogila Academy), founded by the Orthodox Metropolitan Peter Mogila (Petro Mohyla), was the most important. In the anarchy of the Khmelnytsky Uprising and following wars, Ukrainian high culture was sent into a long period of steady decline. In the aftemath, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was taken over by Russia. Most of the remaining Ukrainian schools also switched to Polish or Russian, in the territories controlled by these respective countries, which was followed by a new wave of Polonization and Russification of the native nobility. Gradually the official language of Ukrainian provinces under Poland was changed to Polish, while the Russian part of Ukraine used Russian widely. After the partitions of Poland, the Ukrainian language was banned from printing by Alexander II of Russia, in the Ems Ukaz, which retarded the literary development of the Ukrainian language. At the same time, in Austria-ruled Galicia and Bukovina, Ukrainian was widely used in the education and in official documents.

Soviet era

Bukovina".]] During the seven-decade-long Soviet era, the Ukrainian language held the formal position of the principal local language in the Ukrainian SSR. However, practice was often a different story: Ukrainian always had to compete with Russian, and the attitudes of the Soviet leadership towards the Ukrainian varied from encouragement and tolerance to discouragement and, at times, suppression. Officially, there was no state language in the Soviet Union. Still it was implicitly understood in the hopes of minority nations that Ukrainian would be used in the Ukrainian SSR, Uzbek would be used in the Uzbek SSR, and so on. However, Russian was used in all parts of the Soviet Union and a special term, "a language of inter-ethnic communication" was coined to denote its status. In reality, Russian was in a privileged position in the USSR and was the state official language in everything but formal name—although formally all languages were held up as equal. Often the Ukrainian language was frowned upon or quietly discouraged, which led to the gradual decline in its usage. Partly due to this suppression, in many parts of Ukraine, notably most urban areas of the east and south, Russian remains more widely spoken than Ukrainian. Soviet language policy in Ukraine is divided into six policy periods # Ukrainianization and tolerance (1921–late-1932) # Persecution and russification (1933–1957) # Khrushchev thaw (1958–1962) # The Shelest period: limited progress (1963–1972) # The Shcherbytsky period: gradual suppression (1973–1989) # Gorbachev and perestroika (1990–1991)

Ukrainianization and tolerance

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire was broken up. In different parts of the former empire, several nations, including Ukrainians, developed a renewed sense of national identity. In the chaotic post-revolutionary years, Ukraine went through several short-lived independent and quasi-independent states, and the Ukrainian language, for the first time in modern history, gained usage in most government affairs. Initially, this trend continued under the Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union, which in a political struggle with the old regime had their own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. While trying to ascertain and consolidate its power, the Bolshevik government was by far more concerned about many political oppositions connected to the pre-revolutionary order than about the national movements inside the former empire. Soviet Union, and the defence of Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."]] The widening use of Ukrainian further developed in the first years of Bolshevik rule into a policy called Korenization. The government pursued a policy of Ukrainianization (Ukrayinizatsiya, actively promoting the Ukrainian language), both in the government and among party personnel, and an impressive education program which raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural areas. Newly-generated academic efforts from the period of independence were co-opted by the Bolshevik government. The party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking but were encouraged to learn the Ukrainian language. Simultaneously, the newly-literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized—in both population and in education. The policy even reached those regions of southern Russian SFSR where the ethnic Ukrainian population was significant, particularly the areas by the Don River and especially Kuban in the North Caucasus. Ukrainian language teachers, just graduated from expanded institutions of higher education in Soviet Ukraine, were dispatched to these regions to staff newly opened Ukrainian schools or to teach Ukrainian as a second language in Russian schools. A string of local Ukrainian-language publications were started and departments of Ukrainian studies were opened in colleges. Overall, these policies were implemented in thirty-five raions

East Slavic languages

The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn (a small language spoken in Eastern Slovakia, South Eastern Poland, Eastern Hungary and South Western Ukraine and regarded by many as a Ukrainian dialect). Classification:
- Indo-European languages
- Satem
- Balto-Slavic
- Slavic languages
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- East Slavic languages or Old East Slavic language †
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- Old Russian language †
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- Russian language
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- Ruthenian language †
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- Ukrainian language
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- Belarusian language
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- Rusyn language, Rusin language

Current status

All these languages are nowadays considered to be separate languages in their own right, though in the 19th century it was usual to call Ukrainian ("Little Russian") and Belarusian ("White Russian") dialects of one common "Russian" language (the most prestigious dialect of which was called "Great Russian"). Despite the vast territory occupied by the East Slavs, their languages are astonishingly similar to one another, with transitional dialects in border regions. All these languages use the Cyrillic alphabet, but with particular modifications.

History

When the common Old East Slavic language became separated from the ancient Slavic tongue common to all Slavs is difficult to ascertain (6th–11th century). The history of the East Slavic languages is a very 'hot' subject, because it is interpreted from various political perspectives by the East Slavs "like all mortals, wishing to have an origin as ancient as possible" ("sicut ceteri mortalium, originem suam quam vetustissimam ostendere cupientes"), as Aeneas Sylvius observed in his Historia Bohemica in 1458. Therefore, a crucial differentiation has to be made between the history of the East Slavic dialects and that of the literary languages employed by the Eastern Slavs. Although most ancient texts betray the dialect their author(s) and/or scribe(s) spoke, it is also clearly visible that they tried to write in a language different from their dialects and to avoid those mistakes that enable us nowadays to locate them. In both cases one has to keep in mind that the history of the East Slavic languages is of course a history of written texts. We do not know how the writers of the preserved texts would have spoken in every-day life, let alone how an illiterate East Slavic peasant spoke to his family.

History of the literary languages

What follows is a short overview over the Old and Middle periods. For more detail see Old East Slavic language, Ruthenian language, and History of the Russian language. After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, which were written in "Old Bulgarian" or Old Church Slavonic. They continued to use this language, or rather a variant thereof, usually called (Middle) Church Slavonic, not only in liturgy, but also generally as the language of learning and written communication. This left a large imprint even on the rare secular texts. Throughout the Middle Ages (and in some way up to the present day) there existed a duality between the Church Slavonic language used as some kind of 'higher' register (not only) in religious texts and the popular tongue used as a 'lower' register for secular texts. It has been suggested to describe this situation as diglossia, although there do exist mixed texts where it is sometimes very hard to determine why a given author used a popular or a Church Slavonic form in a given context.

History of the dialects

The first divergence among the Old East Slavic texts is evident during the 12th century, during the era of Kievan Rus', i.e. some texts can be linguistically located to areas that are now in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus. This leads many Russian scholars to speak of the existence of a separate Russian language as early as the 12th century.

Mutual Influences

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other languages as well. Officially recognized minority languages are often mistaken for official languages. However, a language officially recognized by a state, taught in schools, and used in official communication is not necessarily an official language. For example, Ladin and Sardinian in Italy and Mirandese in Portugal are only officially recognized minority languages, not official languages in the strict sense. Official languages are sometimes not the same as the medium of instruction and so, the two are not interchangeable. Half of the countries in the world have official languages. Some have only one official language, such as Albania, France, or Lithuania, despite the fact that in all these countries there are other native languages spoken as well. Some have more than one official language, such as Afghanistan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Eritrea, Finland, India, Paraguay, South Africa, and Switzerland. In some countries, such as Iraq, Italy, Palau, Philippines, Russia and Spain, there is an official language for the country, but other languages are co-official in some important regions. Some countries, such as Sweden, Tuvalu, and the United States have no official languages. The official languages of some former colonies, typically French or English, are not the national languages or the most widely spoken language. In contrast, Irish is the national language of the Republic of Ireland and its first official language, although it is spoken by perhaps less than a third of its people. English, which is spoken by nearly everyone, is described as the second official language by Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland. Irish is an official (treaty) language of the European Union and will become a full working language on 1 January 2007. In some countries, the issue of which language is to be used in what context is a major political issue; see List of countries where language is a political issue. The United Nations, a supra-national body, has six official (primary) working languages: Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French, and English. Category:Sociolinguistics ja:公用語 simple:Official language th:ภาษาราชการ

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Origins

The plan of the alphabet is derived from the early Cyrillic alphabet, itself a derivative of the Glagolitic alphabet, a ninth century uncial cursive usually credited to two brothers from Thessaloniki, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. The glyphs in the Cyrillic alphabet are, however, mainly Byzantine Greek letters. Some of them, especially those representing sounds that did not exist in medieval Greek, retain their Glagolitic forms. Whereas it is widely accepted that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius, the origins of the early Cyrillic alphabet are still a source of much controversy. Though it is usually attributed to Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian scholar and disciple of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the alphabet is more likely to have developed at the Preslav Literary School in north-eastern Bulgaria, where the oldest Cyrillic inscriptions have been found, dating back to the 940s. The theory is supported by the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet almost completely replaced the Glagolitic in northeastern Bulgaria as early as the end of the tenth century, whereas the Ohrid Literary School—where Saint Clement worked—continued to use the Glagolitic until the twelfth century. Among the reasons for the replacement of the Glagolithic with the Cyrillic alphabet is the greater simplicity and ease of use of the latter and its closeness with the Greek alphabet, which had been well known in the First Bulgarian Empire. There are also other theories regarding the origins of the Cyrillic alphabet, namely that the alphabet was created by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius themselves, or that it preceded the Glagolitic alphabet, representing a "transitional" stage between Greek and Glagolitic cursive, but these have been widely disproved. Although Cyril is almost certainly not the author of the Cyrillic alphabet, his contributions to the Glagolitic and hence to the Cyrillic alphabet are still recognised, as the latter is named after him. The alphabet was disseminated along with the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language, and the alphabet used for modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the following ten centuries, the Cyrillic alphabet adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reforms and political decrees. Today, dozens of languages in Eastern Europe and Asia are written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Letter-forms and typography

The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (still found on many icon inscriptions even today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often shared between adjacent letters. Peter the Great, tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early eighteenth century; over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the alphabet. Thus, unlike modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles (such as the placement of serifs, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules), modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter-forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with the exception of a few forms such as "а" and "е" which adopted western lowercase shapes), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small caps glyphs. small capitals In the absence of Roman and Italic traditions, Cyrillic type fonts are properly classified as upright (Russian: pryamoi shrift) and cursive (kursivnyi). Cursive or hand-written shapes of many letters, especially the lowercase letters, are entirely different from the upright shapes. As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically-sloped oblique font (naklonnyi). In Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian, some cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These cursive letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. External link: [http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE]. The following table shows the differences between the upright and cursive Cyrillic letters as used in Russian. Cursive glyphs that are bound to confuse beginners (either because of an entirely different look, or because of being a false friend with an entirely different Latin character) are highlighted. Reference: Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.

Romanization

There are various systems for Romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin characters, and transcription to convey pronunciation. Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:
- Scientific transliteration, used in linguistics, is based on the Latin Croatian alphabet.
- The [http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/ Working Group on Romanization Systems] of the United Nations recommends different systems for specific languages. These are the most commonly used around the world.
- ISO 9:1995, from the International Organization for Standardization.
- America Library Association & Library of Congress (ALA-LC) [http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets], used in North American libraries.
- BGN/PCGN 1947 transliteration system (United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use).
- GOST 16876-71 (1983), from the Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the former Soviet Union. Russian abbreviation of GOsudarstvenny STandart, "the State Standard". GOST has limited support for non-Russian alphabets. Serbian is written in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin alphabet for Belarusian, and some non-Slavic languages, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek or Moldavian have confronted permanent Romanization after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In Serbian there is a one-to-one correspondence between Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Cyrillic and Ljudevit Gaj's Croatian Gajica (derived from the Czech alphabet. See Serbo-Croatian language#Writing systems.) The Belarusian Latin alphabet is traditionally based on Polish and is called Łacinka, but, because of the political realities in the former USSR, Belarusian is usually Romanized by analogy to Russian. See also:
- Romanization.
- Transliteration of Russian into English.
- Romanization of Ukrainian.
- Transliteration of Bulgarian into English. External links:
- [http://transliteration.eki.ee/ Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts], a collection of writing systems and transliteration tables, by Thomas T. Pederson. Includes PDF reference charts for many languages' transliteration systems.

As used in various languages

Sounds are indicated using IPA. These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian его (meaning him/his), which is pronounced instead of . Note that spellings of names may vary, especially Y/J/I, but also GH/G/H and ZH/J.

Slavic languages

Old Church Slavonic

Main article: early Cyrillic alphabet Old Church Slavonic is the first literary and liturgical Slavic language developed from the native language of the 9th century missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is not the same as the modern Church Slavonic language, which is still used in some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic church services. As the Cyrillic alphabet spread throughout the Slavic world, it was adopted for writing local languages, such as Old Ruthenian. Its adaptation to the characteristics of local languages led to the development of its many modern variants, below. Yeri (ЪІ) was originally a ligature of Yer and I. Ya (Я) was written in an archaic form called A iotified. Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic and varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet. Some characters are missing from the current Unicode standard altogether, including Cyrillic dotless I, iotified Yat, abbreviated Yer ("Yerok"), and many ligatures. See also: Glagolitic alphabet.

Russian

Main article: Russian alphabet Notes: # In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, still preserved in Bulgarian. See the notes for Bulgarian. # When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with ) follows a consonant, the consonant will become palatalised (the sound will mix with the consonant), and the vowel's sound will not be heard independently. The Hard Sign will indicate that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign will indicate the consonant should be palatised, but the vowel's sound will not mix with the palatalization of the consonant. The Soft Sign will also indicate that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatised. Examples: та (); тя (); тья (); тъя (); т (); ть (). Historical letters: before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: (replaced by Ии), (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

Ukrainian

Main article: Ukrainian alphabet. Ukrainian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- He (Г, г) is a voiced fricative consonant, pronounced .
- Ge (Ґ, ґ) appears after He, pronounced , i.e., like a Russian Г. It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in the Soviet Union after 1933, so it is missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)
- E (Е, е) is pronounced .
- Ye (Є, є) appears after E, pronounced . It looks like a mirrored Russian letter Э.
- Y (И, и) is pronounced (similar to Russian Yery).
- I (І, і) appears after Y, pronounced . It looks like the Latin letter I.
- Yi (Ї, ї) appears after I, pronounced . It looks like I with a diaeresis above it (the same two dots that appear over the Russian letter Yo).
- Yot (Й, й) is the equivalent of Russian Short I.
- Shcha (Щ, щ) is pronounced .
- An apostrophe (’) serves the purpose of the Russian Hard Sign.
- Yo does not appear.

Belarusian

Belarusian is also written in a Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka). Historically, Belarusian Tatars have written the language in the Arabic alphabet (Arabica), and Belarusian Jews in the Hebrew alphabet. NB: Before 1933, Ґ () was also present. Some linguists call for restoring the letter. Belarusian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- I looks like the Latin letter I (І, і). (But non-syllable short I looks the same as in Russian.)
- Between U and Ef is the letter U short (Ў, ў), which looks like U (У) with a breve and pronounced , or like the u part in diphthongs in now, low.
- Shcha (Щщ) does not appear. A combination of sh and ch (ШЧ/шч) is typically used instead.
- The Hard Sign is not used. Its purpose (removing of palatalisation) is served by an apostrophe.
- The letter combinations Дж дж and Дз дз appear after Д д in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. These digraphs each represent one sound: Дж , Дз .
- Г represents a voiced fricative consonant.

External links

- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_belarusian_alphabet.asp Introduction to Belarusian Alphabet]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_lac1.asp Introduction to Belarusian Latin Script]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_kitab1_en.asp Belarusian language using Arabic script]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_letter_frequency.asp Letter Frequency in Belarusian and Russian]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/translator.asp Converter from Latin "Translit" into Cyrillics]

Bulgarian

See Bulgarian language#Alphabet. Bulgarian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- Ye (Е) is pronounced and is called "E".
- Yo (Ё) does not appear.
- The Russian letter Э does not appear.
- Shcha (Щ) is pronounced and is called "Shta".
- The Hard Sign (Ъ) is used for a vowel, (Schwa).
- Yery (Ы) does not appear.

Modern Serbian since the 19th century

Serbian can also be written with the Latin alphabet. See Serbo-Croatian language. Serbian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- Ye is pronounced . Yo does not appear. The Russian letter E does not appear.
- Between D and E is the letter Djə (Ђ, ђ), which is pronounced , and looks like Tjə, except that the loop of the H curls farther and dips downwards.
- Short I does not appear. Between I and K is the letter Jə (Ј, ј), pronounced , which looks like the Latin letter J.
- Between L and M is the letter Ljə (Љ, љ), pronounced , which looks like L and the Soft Sign smashed together.
- Between N and O is the letter Njə (Њ, њ), pronounced , which looks like N and the Soft Sign smashed together.
- Between T and U is the letter Tjə (Ћ, ћ), which is pronounced and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top half of the vertical line.
- Between Ch and Sh is the letter Dzhə (Џ, џ), pronounced , which looks like Ts but with the downturn moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.
- Sh is the last letter; the rest do not appear.

Macedonian

Macedonian differs from Serbian in the following ways:
- Between Ze and I is the letter Dze (Ѕ, ѕ), pronounced , which looks like the Latin letter S.
- Djerv is replaced by Gje (Ѓ, ѓ), pronounced , which looks like Ghe with an acute accent (´).
- Tjerv is replaced by Kja (Ќ, ќ), pronounced , which looks like Ka with an acute accent (´).

Non-Slavic languages

These alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of them were generated by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, Kerashen Tatars) in 1870s. Later such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those alphabets were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script, etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in late 1930s, all of the Roman-based alphabets of the peoples of then Soviet Union were switched over to Cyrillic as well. The Abkhazian alphabet was switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Stalin Abkhaz also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before. In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to represent local languages has often been a politically controversial issue after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule (see Russification). Some of Russia's languages have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law (see Tatar alphabet). A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman-based or returning to a former script. Unlike the Roman alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages by using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Abkhaz

Abkhaz is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia. See Abkhaz alphabet.

Turkic languages

Chuvash

The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.

Kazakh

Kazakh is also written with the Latin alphabet (in Turkey and now in Kazakhstan as well), and modified Arabic alphabet (in China, Iran and Afghanistan).
- Ә ә =
- Ғ ғ = (uvular fricative)
- Қ қ = (uvular plosive)
- Ң ң =
- Ө ө =
- У у = , ,
- Ұ ұ =
- Ү ү =
- Һ һ =
- İ і = The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.

Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.
- Ң ң =
- Ү ү =
- Ө ө =

Moldovan

The Moldovan language used the Cyrillic alphabet between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the breakaway republic of Transnistria.

Mongolian

The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia), Buryat (around Lake Baikal) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet, which is being slowly reintroduced in Mongolia.

Khalkha

- В в =
- Е е = ,
- Ё ё =
- Ж ж =
- З з =
- Н н = ,
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =
- Ы ы = (after a hard consonant)
- Ь ь = (extra short)
- Ю ю = , The Cyrillic letters Кк, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat

The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.
- Е е = ,
- Ё ё =
- Ж ж =
- Н н = ,
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =
- Һ һ =
- Ы ы = ,
- Ю ю = ,

Kalmyk

The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = xaʎmag).
- Ә ә =
- В в =
- Һ һ =
- Е е = ,
- Җ җ =
- Ң ң =
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =

Cyrillic in Unicode

Main article: Cyrillic characters in Unicode. In Unicode, the Cyrillic block extends from U+0400 to U+052F. The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script. Unicode does not include accented Cyrillic letters, but they can be combined by adding U+0301 ("combining acute accent") after the accented vowel (e.g., ы́ э́ ю́ я́). Some languages (e.g., modern Church Slavonic) still are not fully supported.

External links

- [http://toma.dnsalias.net/phonetic Bulgarian Online Transliterator]
- [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cyrillic.htm Cyrillic alphabet at omniglot.com]
- [http://www.terena.nl/library/multiling/euroml/mlcs5-cyr.txt A Survey of The Use of Modern Cyrillic Script], including the complete required repertoire of graphic characters, by J. W. van Wingen.
- [http://www.peoples.org.ru/eng_index.html Minority Languages of Russia on the Net], a list of resources.
- [http://www.easybulgarian.com/members/u0a_sample.html Bulgarian Cyrillic Alphabet audio]
- [http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/translit.htm Information on Cyrillic transliteration] and the handwritten script form of Cyrillic.
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf Unicode Code Charts "Cyrillic"] (PDF)
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0500.pdf Unicode Code Charts "Cyrillic Supplement"] (PDF)
- [http://czyborra.com/charsets/cyrillic.html The Cyrillic Charset Soup], Roman Czyborra's overview and history of Cyrillic charsets.
- [https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=561 The Russ Key Mozilla Firefox extension], this extension allows typing in Russian and other languages and transliterating HTML text into Cyrillic. Category:Cyrillic alphabet als:Kyrillisches Alphabet ko:키릴 문자 ja:キリル文字 th:อักษรซีริลลิก

Polish language

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the Western Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. Polish was once a lingua franca in various regions of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although no longer having as great an influence outside of Poland, due in part to the dominance of the Russian language, it is still sometimes spoken or at least understood in western border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language.

Outside Influence

Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, Czech, French, German, Italian, Old Belarusian, Russian and recently it has been virtually bombarded by English, especially American English language elements). Many words have been borrowed from German as a result of heavy contact with Germans and the German language. This process has been going on since medieval times. Examples include szlachta (from German Adelsgeschlecht=nobility), rachunek (Rechnung=account), ratusz (Rathaus=town hall), burmistrz (Bürgermeister=mayor; word used only for mayors of smaller cities), handel (Handel=commerce), kac (Kater=hangover), kartofel (Kartoffel=potato; this word is dialectal: most Poles use the word 'ziemniak' for potato, but both words are understood anywhere), cukier (Zucker=sugar), kelner (Kellner=waiter) and malarz (Maler=painter; also the word 'malować' has entered Polish as the verb "to paint"). This is especially true of the regional dialects of Upper Silesia. There are also several words of French origin in the language, most likely dating from the Napoleon era, such as ekran (écran=screen), rekin (requin=shark), meble (meuble=furniture), fotel (fauteuil=armchair), plaża (plage=beach) and koszmar (cauchemar=nightmare). Some place names have also been adapted from French, such as the two Warsaw boroughs of Żoliborz (joli bord=beautiful riverside) and Mokotów (mon coteau=my cottage), as well as the suburb of Żyrardów (from the name Girard, with the Polish suffix -ów attached to form the town's name). Other words are borrowed from other Slavic languages, for example "hańba" and "brama" from Czech. When borrowing international words, Polish often changes their spelling. For example, the Latin suffix spelled '-tion' in English corresponds to '-cja'. To make the word plural, -cja becomes -cje. Examples of this include "inauguracja" (inauguration), dewastacja (devastation), konurbacja (conurbation) and konotacje (connotations). Also, the digraph 'qu' becomes 'kw' (kwadrat=quadrant; frekwencja=frequency). Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations (which affected several countries after the Second World War, with Poland being an extreme case) standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist, particularly in the south and south-west in the hilly areas bordering the Czech and Slovak Republics. In the western and northern territories, resettled in large measure by Poles from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, the older generation speaks a dialect of Polish characteristic of the former eastern provinces.

Classification

The Polish language is the most widely-spoken of the Slavic language subgroup of Lechitic languages which include Kashubian (the only surviving dialect of Pomeranian language) and the extinct Polabian language. The three languages, along with Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belong to the West branch of Slavic languages. To English ears, it sounds virtually indistinguishable from Russian, and indeed the two languages have a very similar grammar; however, Polish and Russian speakers cannot understand each other without training due to a very different vocabulary. In other words, to a speaker of one, the other sounds to them about how the first stanza of the poem Jabberwocky would sound to an English-speaker.

Geographic distribution

Polish is mainly spoken in Poland. In fact, Poland is one of the most homogenous European countries in terms of its mother tongue, as close to 97% of Polish citizens declare Polish as their mother tongue. After the Second World War the previously Polish territories annexed by the USSR retained a large amount of the Polish population that was unwilling or unable to migrate toward the post-1945 Poland and even today ethnic Poles in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine constitute large minorities. In Lithuania 9 percent of the population declared Polish to be their mother tongue. It is by far the most widely used minority language in the Vilniaus Apskritis (Vilnius region) (26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results), but it is also present in other apskritis. In Ukraine, Polish is most often used in the Lwów and Łuck regions. Western Belarus has an important Polish minority, especially in the Brześć and Grodno regions. There are also significant numbers of Polish speakers in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, New Zealand, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, UAE, the UK and the United States. In the U.S. the number of people of Polish descent is over 9 million, see: Polish language in the United States, but most of them do not use Polish in their everyday communications. According to the United States 2000 Census, 667,414 Americans of age 5 years and over reported Polish as language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English or 0.25% of the U.S. population.

Dialects

It has several dialects that correspond in the main to the old tribal divisions; the most significant of these (in terms of numbers of speakers) are Great Polish (spoken in the west), Little Polish (spoken in the south and southeast), Mazovian (Mazur) spoken throughout the centre and east of the country, and Silesian spoken in the southwest. Mazovian shares some features with the Kashubian language, whose remaining speakers (53.000, according to 2002 Census) live around the city of Gdańsk near the Baltic Sea, predominantly to the west of the city. There are also several, now mostly extinct, regional dialects of Polish, including the Warsaw dialect. Small numbers of people in Poland also speak Belarusian, Ukrainian, and German as well as several varieties of Romany.

Phonology

Orthography

The Polish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet but uses diacritics such as kreska (graphically similar to acute accent), superior dot and ogonek. Polish orthography also includes seven digraphs: Note that although the Polish orthography is mostly phonetic, some sounds may be written in more than one way:
- as either h or ch
- as either ż or rz (though rż denotes a cluster)
- as either u or ó
- some soft consonants as either ć, dź, ń, ś, ź, or ci, dzi, ni, si, zi Unlike in English, if consonants are doubled in script, it means that they are also doubled in pronunciation, for example: wanna , not ('bathtub'); motto , not .

Grammar

Polish is often said to be one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to learn; of course, this depends on one's native language. While difficult for English speakers, it is relatively easy for speakers of Russian and other Slavic languages. It has a complex gender system with five genders: neuter, feminine and three masculine genders (personal, animate and inanimate). There are 7 cases and 2 numbers. Nouns, adjectives and verbs are inflected, and both noun declension and verb conjugation are highly irregular. Every verb is either perfective or imperfective. Verbs often come in pairs, one of them imperfective and the other perfective (usually imperfective verb plus a prefix), but often there are many perfective verbs with different prefixes for single imperfective words. Tenses are: Movable suffix is usually attached to verb or to the most accented word of sentence, like question preposition. Sometimes the sentence may be emphasised with a particle -że- (-ż). So what have you done ? can be:
- Co zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili?
- Cóżeście zrobili? (It could be derived from Cóż zrobiliście? which actually sounds odd and is not used) All the above examples show inflected forms of the verb "zrobić" for the subject "you" informal plural ("wy"). However, it is of note that none of the above examples include the subject itself. The inclusion of the subject is not necessary here because Polish is a pro-drop language. This means that a subject does not need to be used with an inflected verb. Instead, the reader or listener can tell which subject is implied through the type ending on the verb. This is different for each pronoun in Polish with the exceptions of on/ona/ono (he/she/it) which all have the same verb ending as each other and oni/one (they - of a group including male humans/they - of a group of people or things not including male humans) which also have the same verb ending as each other. Because the subject can be dropped, if the subject is used with an inflected verb it places the emphasis of the sentence on the subject. Of the above three examples, a native speaker would not include the subject in the middle sentence and would be unlikely to include a subject in the last one. The below examples show how the subject could be included in such sentences, where possible:
- Co wy zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili? (a native speaker would not use a subject here)
- Co wyście zrobili? (this example places the stress strongly on "you" -- "wy"+ście)
- Co żeście zrobili? (this example includes the use of the że- particle - considered very colloquial) Past participle depends on number and gender, so 3rd person, singular past perfect tense can be:
- zrobił (he made/did)
- zrobiła (she made/did)
- zrobiło (it made/did)

Word order

From Wikibooks' Polish Language Course. Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. These sentences mean the same ("Ala (Alice) has a cat"):
- Ala ma kota
- Ala kota ma
- Kota ma Ala
- Ma Ala kota
- Kota Ala ma
- Ma kota Ala Yet only the first of these sounds natural in Polish, and others should be used for emphasis only, if at all. If a question mark is added to the end of those sentences they will all mean "does Ala have a cat?"; an optional 'czy' could be added to the begining but native speakers don't use it. The first is usually used as a reassuring question (really, Ala has a cat?). The fourth would be used as a standard question (does Ala have a cat?) If apparent from context, you can drop the subject, object or even the verb:
- Ma kota - can be used if it's obvious who is being talked about
- Ma - answer for "Czy Ala ma kota?" ("Does Ala have a cat?")
- Ala - answer for "Kto ma kota?" ("Who has a cat?")
- Kota - answer for "Co ma Ala?" ("What does Ala have?")
- Ala ma - answer for "Kto z naszych znajomych ma kota?" ("Which of our friends has a cat?") Note the marker "czy" which is used to start a yes/no question, much as the French use "est-ce que". There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object and you rarely know the object but not the subject. If the question was "Kto ma kota ?" (who has a cat ?), the answer should be "Ala" alone, without a verb. In particular, "ja" (I) and "ty" (you, singular), and also their plural equivalents "my" (we) and "wy" (you, plural), are almost always dropped.

Conjugation

Conjugation of "iść" ("walking" in Present Continuous):
- Ja idę – I am walking
- Ty idziesz – You are walking
- On/ona/ono idzie – He/she/it is walking
- My idziemy – We are walking
- Wy idziecie – You are walking (Plural)
- Oni/one idą – They are walking ("Oni" masculine, "one" feminine or neuter)

Vocabulary

Singular:
ja - I
ty - you
on - he
ona - she
ono - it
Plural:
my - we
wy - you (Plural)
oni - they (mixed group, both men and women)
one - they (group of only women and children or things) pies - dog
krowa - cow
świnia - pig
mucha - fly
osa - wasp
pszczoła - bee
drzewo - tree
kwiat - flower
Anglia - England
Szkocja - Scotland
Walia - Wales
Irlandia - Ireland
Wielka Brytania - Great Britain
Zjednoczone Królestwo - United Kingdom
Niemcy - Germany
Japonia - Japan
Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki - The United States of America
Francja - France
Hiszpania - Spain
Wenezuela - Venezuela
Polska - Poland
Polak - Pole
polski - Polish
Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka - a little girl from Constantinople (the longest word in Polish)

Notes

¹ You can hear the voice samples by clicking on the Polish example (ogg format).

External links

- [http://slownik.web-monkeys.com/ słownik polski - polish dictionary]
- [http://www.polishgrammar.com/ 1,000 free multi-choice Polish grammar drills online]
- [http://www.polish-dictionary.com/ Basic English-Polish Dictionary]
- [http://www.polish-translations.com/PolishTranslation/ Articles about Polish Language]
- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=pol Polish language on Ethnologue]
- [http://www.fdicts.com/dictlist1.php?k1=75 All free Polish dictionaries]
- [http://sjp.pwn.pl/ PWN Polish-Polish Dictionary]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Polish-english/ Webster's Online Polish-English Dictionary]
- [http://www.dict.pl Polish-English dictionary]
- [http://www.anglik.net/polish.htm Free Polish Translation]
- [http://www.poltran.com/ Online translation Polish<->English]
- [http://golem.umcs.lublin.pl/users/ppikuta/lessons/less0.htm Polish language course]
- [http://www.langsites.com/Polish.htm Polish On-line]
- [http://seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/compgrammar_polish.pdf A Concise Polish Grammar, by Ronald F. Feldstein (110-page 600-KB pdf)]
- [http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu Univ. of Pittsburgh: Polish Language Website] Category:Languages of Poland Category:West Slavic languages ko:폴란드어 ja:ポーランド語 th:ภาษาโปแลนด์

Slovakian language

The Slovak language (slovenčina, slovenský jazyk) is an Indo-European language, more precisely a West Slavic language (together with mainly the Czech, Polish, and Sorbian languages). Slovak is especially close to Czech, speakers of both languages usually understand each other well. People born after circa 1985 may have difficulty grasping the few words that differ significantly, or understanding fast spoken language. Slovak is spoken in Slovakia (by 5 million people), the United States (500,000, emigrants), the Czech Republic (320,000, due to former Czechoslovakia), Hungary (110,000, ancient ethnic minority), Northern Serbia and Montenegro-Vojvodina (60,000, descendants of earlier settlers during the Habsburg rule), Romania (22,000, ancient ethnic minority), Poland (20,000), Canada (20,000, emigrants), Australia (emigrants), Austria, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Croatia (5,000) and some other countries. The correct American English adjective for the language, people, and culture of Slovakia is 'Slovak;' Slovak belongs to the 'Slavic' group of languages. British usage sometimes employs 'Slovakian' for the American 'Slovak' and uses 'Slavonic' where the American usage is 'Slavic'.

Alphabet

A technical note for users of the English wikipedia: All Slovak vowels, but no Slovak-specific consonants (that is no č, ď, ľ, ĺ, ň, ŕ, š, ť, ž) are available within the Latin-1 encoding. The Slovak language uses a modified Roman (Latin) alphabet. Modified means that it uses four types of diacritical marks (ˇ, ´, ¨, ^; see Pronunciation) placed above some letters. The lexicographic ordering of the Slovak alphabet is very similar to the English alphabet: A B C D DZ E F G H CH I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. The complete alphabet, however, allows for characters with diacritics (the character with diacritics always comes after the same character without diacritics) and is as follows: a á ä b c č d ď dz dž e é f g h ch i í j k l ĺ ľ m n ň o ó ô p q r ŕ s š t ť u ú v w x y ý z ž. Note that dz, dž and ch are considered single letters and that ch follows the h (not the c). The letters "q", "w" are only used in loan words, never in native or naturalized Slovak words. The names of the letters (like in English ey, bee, cee, dee …) are: a (á), á (dlhé á), á s dvoma bodkami, bé, cé, čé, dé, ďé, dzé, džé, e (é), é (dlhé é), ef, gé, há, chá, i (í), í (dlhé í), jé, ká, el, eľ, dlhé el, em, en, eň, o (ó), ó (dlhé ó), ó s vokáňom, pé, kvé, er, dlhé er, eš, té, ťé, u (ú), ú (dlhé ú), vé, dvojité vé, iks, ypsilon (ý), dlhé ý, zet, žet (for pronunciation see below) The characters are divided as follows:
- Vowels are: a á ä e é i í o ó y ý u ú.
- Diphthongs are: ia, ie, iu, ô.
- Consonants are: b c č d ď dz dž f g h ch j k l ľ ĺ m n ň p q r ŕ s š t ť v w x z ž. The consonants r, l, ŕ, ĺ are considered vowels in some cases (see Pronunciation).

Pronunciation and spelling

The Slovak language has distinctive palatalization. The accent (stress) in standard language is always on the first syllable of a word (or on the preceding preposition, see below). It is however different in some dialects. The eastern dialects, for example, have penultimate stress, which does not contribute to their intelligibility with standard Slovak. Some of the north-central dialects have a weak stress on the first syllable, which becomes stronger and "moves" to the penultima in some kinds of sentences. The stress is weaker than the English or German or Russian accent, but stronger than the French one. Monosyllabic conjunctions, monosyllabic short personal pronouns and auxiliary verb forms of the verb byť (to be) are, as a rule, not stressed. Prepositions are pronounced together with the following word, unless the words are long (four syllables or more) or the preposition stands at the very beginning of a sentence. The acute mark (in Slovak "dĺžeň", that is prolongation mark) indicates the long pronunciation of the character below it, for example í = approximately ii . The acute can be above all vowels and only above the 2 consonants "l" and "r" (strictly speaking, the r and l are called vowels then, because in Slovak r and l can function either as a vowel (long or short)—a so-called syllabic r, l—or as a consonant). Long vowels are about two times longer than corresponding normal (that is short) vowels, the long l or r should have an even longer pronunciation. Note that the acute mark has nothing to do with accent in the Slovak language. The circumflex ("vokáň") exists only above the letter "o" (and turns the o into a diphthong – see below). The diaresis (umlaut, "dve bodky" = two dots) is only used above the letter "a" (and turns the a into e – see below). The caron (in Slovak "mäkčeň", that is palatalization mark or softening mark) indicates either palatalization or change of alveolar fricatives into post-alveolar, in informal Slovak linguistics often called just "palatalization". Only 8 consonants can bear a caron, that is not all "normal" consonants have a "carroned" counterpart:
- In printed texts, the caron is printed in two forms: (1) č, dž, š, ž and (2) ľ,ď,ť (looking more like an apostrophe), but this is just a convention. In handwritten texts, it always takes the form (1).
- Phonetically, there are two forms of "palatalization": ľ,ň,ď,ť are palatalized consonants, while the č, dž, š, ž are postalveolar fricatives.
- To accelerate writing, a rule has been introduced that the frequent character combinations ňe, ďe, ťe, ľe, ňi, ďi, ťi, ľi, ňí, ďí, ťí, ľí must be written ne, de, te, le, ni, di, ti, li, ní, dí, tí, lí (that is without the caron). In other words ne, de, te, le, ni, di etc. are pronounced as if there were a caron above the consonant. There are, however, exceptions to this rule: :# foreign words (for example telefón is pronounced with a hard t and a hard l) :# the following old Slavic words: ten (that), jeden (one), vtedy (then) are pronounced with hard t and d :# nominative masculine plural endings of pronouns and adjectives do not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l (for example tí odvážni mladí muži , the/those brave young men) :# short e in adjectival endings that is, actually (morphonemically), long é shortened by the "rhythmical rule" (see below) does not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l (for example krásne stromy , beautiful trees, c.f. zelené stromy , green trees)
- ľ is pronounced nowadays by many speakers, esp. from western Slovakia, as a non-palatalized l, esp. in li and le where the caron is not written. The officially correct pronunciation of li and le as palatalized is already frequently perceived as marked (either as a trait of middle and eastern dialect, or as a feature of language zealots). (A similar tendency occurs in yeista Spanish, where however the palatal ll is pronounced like English j instead of l.) In addition, the following rules hold: # When a voiced consonant having a voiceless correspondent (that is b, d, ď, dz, dž, g, h, z, ž) stands at the end of the word before a pause, it is pronounced as a voiceless consonant (that is p, t, ť, c, č, k, ch, s, š, respectively), for example pohyb is pronounced , prípad is pronounced # When "v" stands at the end of the syllable, it is pronounced as non-syllabic u (bilabial approximant ), with the exception of the position before "n" or "ň", for example, kov (metal), kravský (cow - adjective), but povstať (uprise) because the v is not at the end of the syllable (po-vstať), hlavný because "v" stands before "n" here # The assimilation rule: When voiced consonant(s) having a voiceless correspondent and voiceless consonant(s) meet in the word, all consonants of the group are pronounced as voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or as voiceless if the last consonant is a voiceless one, for example otázka is pronounced , vzchopiť sa is pronounced . This rule applies also over the word boundary, for example prísť domov (to come home), viac jahôd (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "ch" is . # The rhythmical rule: A long syllable (that is a syllable containing á, é, í, ý, ó, ú, ŕ, ĺ, ia, ie, iu, ô) cannot be followed by another long syllable in the same word, that is the following syllable must be made short (in writing and pronunciation) (this rule has implications for the formation, declension (for example žen-ám but tráv-am) and conjugation (for example nos-ím but súd-im) of words; there are several exceptions to this rule; this rule is typical of the literary Slovak language (not existing in the closely related Czech, or some Slovak dialects).

Official transcriptions

Slovak linguists do not usually use IPA for phonetic transcription (neither for the Slovak language, nor for other common languages), but rather their own system based on the Slovak alphabet. In the following table, pronunciation of each grapheme is given in this system as well as in IPA and Kirshenbaum. Some additional notes (transcriptions in IPA unless otherwise stated):
- Pronunciation of ä as [æ] is already archaic (or dialectical) but still considered correct by some linguistic authorities; the other standard pronunciation today is .
- r and l can be syllabic phonemes and , which leads to words like vlk (wolf), prst (finger), štvrť (quarter), krk (neck).
- ch, normally the unvoiced [x], can have the voiced as an allophone as a result of phonetic assimilation.
- The sound group or graphemic group -ou (at the end of words) is pronounced but is not considered a separate diphthong, nor grapheme respectively (unlike ch, dz, dž). Its phonemic interpretation is /ov/.
- ia, ie, iu form diphthongs in native Slovak words, but glides in foreign and loan words.
- m has the allophone in front of the labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/.
- n in front of (post)alveoral fricatives has an allophone written as in Slovak phonemic transcription; this is, however, an allophone of /n/.
- n can be [ŋ] in front of the velar plosives /k/ and /g/.
- f can be voiced as a result of phonetic assimilation.

Intuitive transcription for English speakers

Following list shows approximate pronunciation for English speakers: The values of the characters b, d, f, h, l, k, m, n, p, x are approximately equal to their English counterparts. The vowel combinations ia, ie, iu, ô [pronounced appr. like uo] are diphthongs, that is both elements are pronounced "together" the first element is almost a Slovak j for ia, ie, and iu and almost an English w for ô.
- a – approx. u in cut
- á – approx. a in father (long a)
- ä – e in set (or in archaic pronunciation like a in fat)
- c – ts in its
- č – approx. ch in child
- ď – approx. British d in during, dew
- dz – approx. d+z (voiced c; like the Italian zz in organizzare)
- dž – j in John (voiced č)
- e – e in set
- é – ai in fair (long e)
- g – g in go
- ch – Scottish ch, for example in Loch Ness (approx. like German ch, Russian x)
- i – i in sit
- í – ee in need (long i)
- j – y in yes
- ľ – approx. l in lurid (like gli... in Italian or ll in non-yeista Spanish)
- ĺ – approx. "lll"
- ň – approx. n in new (like French or Italian gn or Spanish ñ)
- o – o in odd
- ó – aw in saw, a in ball (long o)
- r – "rolled r" like in Italian, Scottish, Bavarian (and like a Spanish r that is not before a vowel and not at the beginning of the word, for example in color)
- ŕ – approx. Spanish rr in Zorro)
- s – s in save
- š – approx. sh in she
- ť – approx. t in tutor
- ô – approx. wo in wonder (or like Italian uo in buono)
- q – qu is like Slovak kv; q does not occur elsewhere
- u – u in put
- ú – oo in choose (long u)
- v – v in very (but at the end of the syllable approx. as w in window, see above)
- y – like Slovak i
- ý – like Slovak í (long y)
- z – z in zone
- ž – s in pleasure (like French j in journal or g in général)
- w – like Slovak v

Orthography

The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonetic principle (that is "Write as you hear") – as opposed to the English spelling where the etymological principle is primary. The secondary principle is the morphological principle (that is all forms derived from the same stem are written the same way even if they are pronounced differently in reality) – the main example is the assimilation rule (see Pronunciation). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are pronounced the same way. And finally there is the rarely applied grammatical principle, under which, for example, there is a difference in writing (but not in the pronunciation) between the basic singular and plural form of masculine adjectives, for example pekný (nice – sg.) vs pekní (nice – pl.). Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time, for example "weekend" is víkend, "software" is softvér (but some 15-years-ago spelled the English way), and "quality" is spelled kvalita. However, personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling, unless there is a fully Slovak form for the name (for example Londýn for "London"). Slovak orthography has changed many times. One of the most important changes was after World War II when s began to be written as z where pronounced as [z], for example smluva into zmluva, sväz into zväz.

Syntax

The main features of Slovak syntax are:
- The verb (predicate) agrees in person and number with its subject – just like for example in German, Slavic and Romance languages, for example: :Speváčka spieva. (The+woman+singer is+singing.) :(Speváčk-a spieva-0, where -0 is a third person singular ending) :Speváčky spievajú. (The+woman+singers are+singing.) :(Speváčk-y spieva-j-ú, where -ú is a third person plural ending, -j- is a hiatus sound) :My speváčky spievame. (We the+woman+singers are+singing.) :(My speváčk-y spieva-me, where -me is the first person plural ending) :and so forth.
- An adjective, pronoun and partly also a numeral agrees in person, gender and case with the noun it refers to (see Slovak declension) – just like in most Slavic languages.
- An adjective always precedes the corresponding noun – as in English, unlike in Polish and Romance languages. Botanic or zoological terms are exceptions (for example, mačka divá, literally "cat wild", Felis silvestris). The word order is relatively free (unlike in English or French), because – as opposed to English – the strong inflection of the words enables to identify the role of a word (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of its placement within the sentence. The relatively free word order enables the Slovaks (just like other Slavs) to use the word order to convey information on which information is considered most important or new: Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry most emphasis. Examples: :Ten veľký človek tam dnes otvára obchod. = The big man opens a store there today. (Ten = The; veľky´ = big; človek = man; tam = there; dnes = today; otvára = opens; obchod = store) :Ten veľký človek dnes otvára obchod tam. = It is there that the big man opens a store today. :Dnes tam otvára obchod ten veľký človek. = It is the big man who opens a store there today. :Obchod tam dnes otvára ten veľký človek. = As for the store, it is opened there by the big man. However, the normal order is Subject-Verb-Object (as in English) and the word order is not completely arbitrary. For example, in the above example, the following combinations are not possible: :Ten otvára veľký človek tam dnes obchod. :Obchod človek tam ten veľký dnes otvára. ... And the following, for instance, are not likely to occur: :Otvára ten veľký človek tam dnes obchod. :Obchod ten veľký človek dnes tam otvára. ...

Morphology

Articles (Členy):

There are no articles in the Slovak language. If it is really necessary to emphasize that the thing that one is talking about was already mentioned, the demonstrative pronoun ten (fem: tá, neuter: to) can be used in front of the noun.

Numerals (Číslovky)

The basic formation of Slovak numerals is like in English: There are special words for 0-19 and for 20, 30 . . . 90, 100, 1000 etc. and the compound numerals (21, 1054) are simply combinations of these special words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (for example 21 = dvadsaťjeden (that is literally „twentyone“)). The numerals are: (1) jeden, (2) dva, (3) tri, (4) štyri, (5) päť, (6) šesť, (7) sedem, (8) osem, (9) deväť, (10) desať, (11) jedenásť, (12) dvanásť, (13) trinásť, (14) štrnásť, (15) pätnásť, (16) šestnásť, (17) sedemnásť, (18) osemnásť, (19) devätnásť, (20) dvadsať, (21) dvadsaťjeden . . . ., (30) tridsať, (31) tridsaťjeden . . . (40) štyridsať, . . . (50) päťdesiat, . . . (60) šesťdesiat, . . . (70) sedemdesiat, . . . (80) osemdesiat, . . . (90) deväťdesiat, . . . (100) sto, (101) stojeden, . . . . (200) dvesto, . . . (300) tristo, . . . (900)deväťsto, . . . (1,000) tisíc, . . . (1,100) tisícsto, . . . (2,000) dvetisíc, . . (100,000) stotisíc, . . . (1,000,000) milión, . . . See also: Slovak declension

Verbs (Slovesá)

- Verbs have three major conjugations distinguishing 3 persons and 2 numbers (singular and plural) – just like in English. There are several conjugation paradigms- like in most European languages. Here is the conjugation of some randomly chosen verbs (the forms are given in the order: I – you (sg) – he/she/it – we – you (pl) – they ): :to be (byť): som – si –je –sme –ste- sú :to have (mať): mám – máš –má –máme –máte –majú :to work (pracovať): pracujem – pracuješ –pracuje –pracujeme- pracujete – pracujú :to carry (niesť) nesiem – nesieš –nesie –nesieme – nesiete – nesú :to hide (skryť): skryjem – skryješ –skryje –skryjeme – skryjete - skryjú
- Subject personal pronouns are often omitted unless they are emphatic - like in Italian or Spanish, unlike in Russian or English.
- The infinitive always ends in -ť (see for example the above examples).
- The English continuous form (that is to be . . . ing) is expressed by a change in the stem of the verb or by removing the prefix (note however that this statement is a strong simplification). The non-continuous version is called a perfective verb and the continuous version an imperfective verb. Example: :to hide = skryť, to be hiding = skrývať
- There are only two past tenses. Both are formed analytically. The latter, however, is not used in the modern language and is considered dated and/or grammatically incorrect. Examples for two verbs (note that the continuous form is considered a separate verb in Slavic languages): :skryť (to hide) : skryl som (I hid / I have hid); bol som skryl (I had hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrýval som (I was hiding); bol som skrýval (I had been hiding)
- There is only one future tense. For imperfective verbs, it is formed analytically, for perfective verbs it is identical with the present tense. Examples: :skryť (to hide) : skryjem (I will hide / I will have hid) :skrývať (to be hiding) : budem skrývať (I will be hiding)
- There are two conditional forms. Both are formed analytically from the past tense: :skryť (to hide) : skryl by som (I would hide), bol by som skryl (I would have hid) :skrývať (to be hiding) : skrýval by som (I would be hiding), bol by som skrýval (I would have been hiding)
- The passive voice is formed either like in English (to be + past participle) or like in Romance languages (using the reflexive pronoun 'sa'): :skryť (to hide): je skrytý (he is hid); sa skryje (he is hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): je skrývaný (he is being hid); sa skrýva (he is being hid)
- The active present participle (=which is ...ing) is formed using the suffixes –úci/ -iaci / - aci :skryť (to hide) : skryjúci (which is hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývajúci (which is being hiding)
- The gerund (=by/when ...ing) is formed using the suffixes –úc / -uc / –iac/-ac :skryť (to hide): skryjúc (by/when hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývajúc (by/when being hiding)
- The active past participle (= which was ...ing) was formerly formed using the suffix –vší, but is no longer used.
- The passive participle (= ...ed (adj.)) is formed using the suffixes -ný / -tý / -ený: :skryť (to hide): skrytý (hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývaný (being hid)
- The 'verbal noun' (= the ...ing) is formed using the suffix –ie: :skryť (to hide): skrytie (the hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývanie (the continuous hiding)

Adverbs (Príslovky)

Adverbs are usually formed by replacing the adjectival ending with the ending –o or sometimes –e / -y(sometimes both –o an d-e are possible). Examples: :vysoký (high) – vysoko (highly) :pekný (nice) – pekne (nicely) :priateľský (friendly) – priateľsky (in a friendly manner) :rýchly (fast) – rýchlo / rýchle (quickly) The comparative/superlative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjective comparative/superlative ending - (ej)ší by the ending –(ej)šie. Examples: :rýchly (fast)– rýchlejší (faster) – najrýchlejší (fastest):rýchlo (quickly) – rýchlejšie (more quickly) – najrýchlejšie (most quickly)

Prepositions (Predložky)

They are used like in English, except that, in addition, each single preposition is associated with a particular grammatical case and the noun following the preposition must take the ending of the case required by the preposition. Example: :from friends = od priateľov (priateľov is the genitive case of priatelia, because the preposition od (=from) always calls for its objects to be in the genitive case)

Conjunctions (Spojky), Particles (Častice), Interjections (Citoslovce)

They work more or less like in the English language. Note: The Slovak (and Czech) definition of particles has been taken from Russian linguistics. Although the English linguists subsume them under the conjunctions, interjections and other word types, they nevertheless work like in English. Examples of particles as they are understood by Slovak linguists are the English words (the text in the brackets gives a sentence as an example): Well (, what will we do?), yes, anyway, obviously, above all, not ...at all, And ( what do you think?), But ( that is impossible!), so (, that's it!), hardly, really, most importantly, also, (what) the hell (is he doing?), actually, please, even, in sum, believe it or not, maybe, unfortunately, of course, I wonder where (you have been), in one word ...

Vocabulary

History

See: History of the Slovak language

Relationships to other languages

The Slovak language arose directly from the Proto-Slavic language independently of other Slavic languages (see History). The present-day Slovak language is closely related to the other west Slavic languages. Some observers compare the difference between Slovak and Czech to that between Italian and Spanish. Others prefer to compare it to the differences between Scandinavian languages, or between German dialects or differences between English and Scots language. Generally, it can be said that while the vocabulary (especially the professional one) is quite similar, and the used spelling almost the same, the declension, conjugation a

Ukrainian language

History

Perspective

Origin

Ancient history

Kievan Rus' and Halych-Volhynia

Post-independence: Lithuania/Poland, Muscovy/Russia, and Austro-Hungary

Soviet era

Ukrainianization and tolerance

East Slavic languages

Current status

History

History of the literary languages

History of the dialects

Mutual Influences

See also

Official language

Cyrillic alphabet

Origins

Letter-forms and typography

Romanization

As used in various languages

Slavic languages

Old Church Slavonic

Russian

Ukrainian

Belarusian

External links

Bulgarian

Modern Serbian since the 19th century

Macedonian

Non-Slavic languages

Abkhaz

Turkic languages

Chuvash

Kazakh

Kyrgyz

Moldovan

Mongolian

Khalkha

Buryat

Kalmyk

Cyrillic in Unicode

See also

External links

Polish language

Outside Influence

Classification

Geographic distribution

Dialects

Phonology

Orthography

Grammar

Word order

Conjugation

Vocabulary

Notes

See also

External links

Slovakian language

Alphabet

Pronunciation and spelling

Official transcriptions

Intuitive transcription for English speakers

Orthography

Syntax

Morphology

Articles (Členy):

Nouns (Podstatné mená)

Adjectives (Prídavné mená)

Pronouns (Zámená)

Numerals (Číslovky)

Verbs (Slovesá)

Adverbs (Príslovky)

Prepositions (Predložky)

Conjunctions (Spojky), Particles (Častice), Interjections (Citoslovce)

Vocabulary

History

Relationships to other languages