GEOGRAPHIC ORIGINS

Sometime between 3500 to 2500 BC the people who spoke Indo-European traveled and those tribes and communities in the Eastern Europe area developed distinct dialects that would come to form the root of the Slavic languages. Sometime later, the Eastern Slavic or Old Russian language split into three major dialect groups: Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian. Ukrainian was officially declared a distinct language in 1906; Belorussian after the revolution in 1917. Today, there are still hundreds of dialects spoken in the geographic area where Russian is spoken.

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THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

The evolution of the Slavic writing system has a history of planned change and reform. There are four particularly important events. These are the "birth" of the Cyrillic alphabet in 862 AD, a set of 13th century reforms known as the Second Southern Slavic Influence, Peter the Great's reforms of the 18th century, and the Communist reforms of 1917.

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Although some scholars argue otherwise, it is believed that there was no written language amongst the Slavic tribes and that people were not widely literate. The first attempt at a writing system came in 862 AD by Thessalonian monks charged to bring the Bible to the Slavic people.

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Many of the changes that have been made in the written form of the language were due to the constant tension between the written and spoken versions. The major reforms going on in 1453 during the Second Southern Slavic Influence were primarily to counter the "corruption" of the language and restor archaic expressions that have been modernized. These reforms reintroduced the "d" and "ts" sounds, also representing the "oo" sound as "y."

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During the 18th century, Peter the Great changed the language to make it simpler and more straightforward so that the Russian literacy rate could rise more easily and dramatically. This became known as the "civil alphabet." It removed some letters and accent marks.

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Minor changes were made to Peter's alphabet during the Communist Revolution in 1917. These changes also simplified the written language.

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All the while, the language of the Russian Orthodox Church (OCS) has retained the language since the 13th century. In contrast, the common Russian language has worked hard over to time to make the spoken and written languages more closely related. Therefore, there are two distinct written languages that are not mutually intelligible. 

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PHONETIC ASPECTS

Some of the phonetic changes have happened gradually through the use of the language. For example, in Old Russian, the letter "o" was pronounced  as [oh] in every context. However, the during the 13th and 14th centuries, the unstressed "o" began to be pronounced as [ah] or [uh]. It spread gradually until it became a "provincial" dialect and finally became part of the standard dialect (officially in the late 18th and early 19th centuries).

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HISTORICAL REFLEXES IN THE MODERN LEXICON

The history of the words that make up the Russian language is extremely complex. The intricate web of words reflects the complicated historical interactions of the Russian people. There are four lexical categories: Common-Slavonic words, Eastern-Slavonic words, pure Russian words, and words borrowed from other languages.

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Common-Slavonic words are words that have cognates across Slavic languages. They are related to nature, body, social relationships, and work. They reflect unchanging elements of a speaker's world passed down from parent to child over centuries, so a Russian today would use a very similar form for words such as "earth," "rain," "heart," "neighbor," and "grain" as their pre-5th century Slavic ancestors.

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Words of the Eastern-Slavonic (Old Russian) origin are common to present-day Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian, but are absent from Western and Southern dialects. These words include family relationships, animals, colors, and time references.

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However, the bulk of the words in modern Russian are "pure" Russian. Many of these include words coined during the Soviet era, particularly contractions and compounds which flourished in an age of bureaucratic language.

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Many words in Russian have been borrowed from various other languages at different points in history. The first Slavonic princes were Vikings from Scandinavia. Only a few Scandinavian words remain, but names like Igor and Olga are direct examples of Scandinavian influence. Words like "brick," "guard," and "money" are remnants of the Tartar invasion from 1240-1480. When Russians were "baptized" into Orthodox Christianity in 988 AD, Greek religious words like "angel," "gospel," "icon," and "monastery" were adopted. During Peter the Great's reforms, new foreign literature flooded into the country. Often, translators would copy foreign words instead of searching for suitable Russian equivalents. Eventually, even Peter the Great had to call for a limit on the use of foreign words. French was especially admired during the 18th and 19th centuries because it was seen as fashionable and superior to Russian.