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One of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe; and the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups.

Current East Slavic languages: Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian and other related dialects.

Linguists consider each of these three languages to be separate languages in their own right. The languages are somewhat similar to one another, with transitional dialects in border regions.

All these languages use the Cyrillic alphabet, but with particular modifications.

History

In general, each of the three Eastern Slavic languages developed separately from a common East Slavic root language. When this root language became separated from the ancient Slavic tongue common to all Slavs is difficult to ascertain (6th century-11th century AD?). The theorized divergence of Eastern Slavic from the early common Slavic and the early patterns of local Eastern Slavic evolution into multiple languages is obscured by a widely present historical artifact: the use of Old Church Slavonic (essentially Old Macedonian-Bulgarian, from the South Slavic group of languages) as the language of learning and written communication among the Eastern Slavs after the conversion of the first Eastern Slavic State of Kievan Rus' to Christianity in the 10th century.

Nonetheless, the first divergence among the Eastern Slavic languages is evident during the 12th century, during the era of Kievan Rus'. The language of the Slavic population in the north/northeast part of Rus' diverged from the language of the south/southwest part of Rus'. The conversion of the region to Christianity using service books borrowed from Bulgaria, left a large imprint of Old Church Slavonic superimposed upon the local population. This blending of native East Slavic elements with Old Church Slavonic gave birth to the early Russian language, no later than the 12th century.

The Slavs of southern and south-western Rus' (the regions of Kiev, Halych, and Polotsk, et alii) did not intermingle with Finno-Ugric populations, and developed more organically from the East Slavic root language into the Middle Rusian or Old Ruthenian language, a forerunner of the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. The speakers of the Early Russian language referred to this language in the 14th and 15th century as the "Lithuanian dialect." The divergence of East Slavic into separate northern and southern languages is perhaps best evidenced by the epic, The Tale of Igor's Campaign. This linguistic divergence is confirmed by the need for translators during the mid-seventeenth-century negotiations for the Treaty of Pereyaslav, between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, (Bogdan Chmielnicki), ruler of Rus'-Ukraine and the state of Russia, which in the eighteenth century came to be called the Russian Empire.

The Old Ruthenian language perdured in Ukraine and Belarus after the Rus' period, through the time of the separate political states of Halych and Volynia, continuing through the successor state of Rus', Halych-Volynia, into the eras of Lithuania (Belarus, generally) and Poland (Ukraine, generally). Notably, the local Belarusian variant of this language served as the lingua franca and language of governance for the nation of Lithuania. During the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this Ruthenian/Rusian language began to diverge into separate Ukrainian and Belarusian languages (circa 1600-1760).

Thus, by 1800, the historic Eastern Slavic language had evolved into three modern languages.

See also:

• Old Slavonic language

• Slavic languages