Russia is a country where diverse cultures exist along with a high number of languages used all over the country. The Russian language itself is the most popular in the country where approximately 250 million people speak the language and it is also the official language of the country. Today, anyone can learn this language by taking up the Russian language course in Kolkata from an institute. Apart from the traditional Russian, there are 35 languages used as official languages in different regions of Russia with 100 other minority languages.

As the National Language of Russia

Russian is the national language of Russia as mentioned in the Constitution. It is one of the most spoken languages in the world with speakers in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Belarus apart from Russia. Among many, it is also one of the official languages of the United Nations.

Russian in its written form uses its unique alphabet along with additional vowels and consonants based on the Cyrillic script and it is classified as an Indo-European language and it falls under one of the four East Slavic languages.

The Russian Dialects

There are various dialects in the Russian language which are spoken all over the country and are homogeneous in nature. There is a fundamental dichotomy of the language that can be found in its two distinct dialects of the North and the South and some of these aspects can be known by taking up the Russian language course in Kolkata.

The Northern dialect is mostly used along the Volga River and can be further subdivided into five other smaller sub-dialects viz. Vlatka dialect, Vladimir dialect, Olonets dialect, Novgorod dialect, and the Arkhangelsk dialect. The Northern dialects possess unstressed syllables which do not have typical vowel reduction.

The Southern dialect, on the other hand, is mostly used in the Northern Caucasus region, lower to the Volga and the Don, to the south of Urals and in southern Siberia. The Southern dialect includes four smaller sub-dialects viz. Ryazan dialect, Smolensk dialect, Orel dialect as well as the Tula dialect. Some of the lesser dialects which exist outside these two principal dialects. These are the Steppe dialect and the Sloboda dialect.

The Standardized Russian

While there are various dialects in Russian, the commonly used dialect is the standardized one used in Moscow, the capital of Russia. Many linguists call the standardized one as the Central Russian dialect since it is mostly spoken in the regions situated between the Northern and the Southern dialects. For this reason, it can also be termed as the transition between the two major dialects. You can find more on the topic by taking up a Russian language course in Kolkata provided by a language training institute.

The Moscow dialect, or as it is called was originally used by prosperous civilians i.e. the urban population in Moscow until the 20th century when the government proposed and encouraged nationwide use of the dialect. Later, this standardized dialect was incorporated into the national education curriculum and it was also taught to foreigners as a second language.

The use of standardized Russian is regulated by the Russian Language Institute, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a government institution.

The Braille Script

The Braille script is a version of the standardized Russian language used nationwide in the country. The alphabets of the script are based on Cyrillic characters. The script also includes numbers and other arithmetic symbols. Apart from the dialects that are mentioned above, there are others as well. Some of these are Adyghe, Kabardian, Altai, Crimean Tatar, Abaza, etc. Of these, the Adyghe language has around 100000 speakers and is also known as West Circassian. The Russian language course in Kolkata will give you a detailed overview of these apart from training you to speak, read and write it effectively.

Posted by Harry Mike