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108-579: Khors is a Slavic god of uncertain functions mentioned since the 12th century. Generally interpreted as a sun god, sometimes as a moon god. The meaning of the theonym is also unknown: most often his name has been combined with the Iranian word for sun, such as the Persian xoršid , or the Ossetian xor , but modern linguists strongly criticize such an etymology, and other native etymologies are proposed instead. Khors

216-649: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in

324-510: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to

432-412: A golden statue of Perun is described, Sigismund von Herberstein recognized the word golden ( us zlat ) as an independent name Uslad , and he never existed in the Russian pantheon. Many historians considered the mentioned passage unreliable. Wunderer realized that a field camp of Stephen Báthory , who besieged Pskov in 1581-1582, had once been located near the statues, and this information led to

540-479: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but

648-572: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between

756-607: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it

864-516: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in

972-599: A sacrifice in honour of the god in exchange for their life and, once they have been spared, they sacrifice whatever they have to hand and believe they have bought their salvation with this sacrifice. Similar information, however, concerning the West Slavic Polabians , appears in Helmold 's Chronicle : Within the multifarious aspect of the manifestations of their divinities, to which their fields, forests, sadness, and happiness are entrusted, they do not deny that there

1080-578: A wolf, from Kiev he ran to Tmutarakan , before the cock crowed, as a wolf he ran along the road of the great Khors." God is also mentioned in the apocryphal work Sermon and Apocalypse of the Holy Apostles , which mentions Perun and Khors as old men, and Khors is credited with real life in Cyprus . Khors also appears in the apocryphal text Conversation of the Three Saints , in which St. Basil , St. Gregory

1188-527: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,

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1296-475: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under

1404-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of

1512-593: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this

1620-501: Is also no reliable attestation of this theonym in West and South Slavic languages. In that case, according to Pukanec, the theonym was borrowed from Persian xuršēt "shining sun", but he does not address the criticism of such etymology by other linguists presented earlier. He also points to another possibility. Proto-Slavic TorT passed into Church Slavonic as TъrT and TrъT, which would explain both notations *Xorsъ and *Xъrsъ and recognizes

1728-544: Is also the direction of the word formation: Khors → khoroshiy . It is only the concrete Iranian source of the name Hors that raises doubts. Borrowing from Iranian languages has been accepted by religious scholars without much complaint, but linguists, such as Max Vasmer , point out phonetic problems. Iranian hva- does not explain the Slavic short vowel ъ ( ŭ ), and š could not in Slavic languages remain as s , but according to

1836-456: Is another name of Dadzbog, his hypostasis, or that they are related in some other way. Such a view was supported e.g. by Henryk Łowmiański , according to whom Dazhbog was an explanation of Khors . He pointed out, however, that he was not sure if conjunction wasn't there. Brückner argued against this view, claiming that the lack of conjunctions was irrelevant, and he considered the association of Dazhbog with Khors to be unjustified. An analysis of

1944-485: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to

2052-613: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There

2160-496: Is generally believed that Perun , or Svarog , was involved here. Cosmas of Prague describes Czech paganism in his Chronica Boemorum through the Interpretatio Romana : "Therefore, sacrifice to your gods an ass so that they become your succour. Those who wish you to make this offering are Jupiter , most important of the gods, Mars himself, his sister Bellona and the son-in law of Ceres (i.e. Pluto ). In

2268-563: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially

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2376-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which

2484-399: Is one god in heaven who reigns above the others, that this is the only one responsible for celestial matters, and that the others obey him; each assuming a role, they come from his line and are more powerful the closer they are to said god. It is unclear how reliably these accounts describe Slavic theology. Some scholars believe that these texts are Christian interpretations of the faith of

2592-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and

2700-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to

2808-576: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in

2916-674: Is the most frequently mentioned Slavic god, after Perun. He first appears in the Primary Chronicle letopis along with other gods to whom Vladimir the Great erected statues: And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kiev. And he placed idols on the hill outside the palace: a Perun in wood with a silver head and a gold moustache, and Khors, Dazhdbog and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh . And they offered sacrifices and called them gods, and they took their sons and daughters to them and sacrificed them to

3024-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using

3132-851: The *Xъrsъ notation as primary. As the PS *x may derive from PIE *k or *g , when searching for the PIE etymology of the word, attention must be paid primarily to the rounded phones *kʷ , *gʷ , and *gʷʰ ; the Proto-Indo-European stem can thus be reconstructed as *kʷr̥s- or *gʷr̥s- or *gʷʰr̥s- . Of the aforementioned stems, only one, *kʷr̥s- , is found in Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch , who reconstructed this stem using Greek πρῖνος, prînos "oak ( holly )", Gaulish prenne "large tree", Old High German horst , hurst "bush, thicket" or Slovene hrást "oak", which, like

3240-461: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population

3348-966: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian

Khors - Misplaced Pages Continue

3456-688: The Avestan Hvar (because of the final -s ), or hvarə хšаētəm : the expression was shortened to xwaršēδ / xoršid in Middle Persian during the Sassanid dynasty , at which time sun worship was transferred to the god Mitra . Additionally, at an early stage, iconoclasm prevailed in Persia and idols of Iranian gods were replaced with sacred fires. It is unclear, then, how the Eastern Slavs would have borrowed

3564-516: The Chronicle , Thietmar describes the Christianization of Pomerania . In 1000, during the congress of Gniezno , Reinbern was appointed bishop of Kołobrzeg . Thietmar further wrote that Reinbern "destroyed the temples of the idols, he burnt them, and, after anointing four stone idols of their demons with holy chrism, he threw them into the lake and then blessed the water to cleanse it". Perhaps

3672-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in

3780-579: The Gothic Wars describes the religion of the South Slavs : Indeed, they believe that a single god, creator of the lightning bolt, is the sole lord of all things and they offer him sacrifices of cows and all manner of victims. The idea of destiny is unknown to them nor do they believe that it has any influence over men, but when death is at their heels because they have fallen sick or are preparing for war, they promise that, if spared, they will immediately offer

3888-555: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of

3996-731: The Novgorod - Severian region (e.g., Khorsovo swamp, Khorsov reservoir) from the 16th-18th centuries, toponyms in Volhynia from the 10th-12th centuries, or Hŭrsovo in Bulgaria , to the right of the Danube . Andrey Beskov notes that in Borova region ( Ukraine ), not far from the village of Horokhovatka  [ uk ] , there was the village of Horsivka, which is now under the Oskol reservoir . Significantly, among

4104-664: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as

4212-478: The Slavic creation myth . According to some scholars, a pair of these gods prove "Slavic dualism ", but there is no consensus on this either, and those who assume that such dualism in mythology may have existed, point out that Slavic dualism was probably not as extreme as in Christianity or Zoroastrianism . South Slavs There are two sources that mention a nameless Slavic chief god . Procopius of Caesarea in

4320-575: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On

4428-694: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to

Khors - Misplaced Pages Continue

4536-428: The ruki rule should remain either as х ( h ) or as š ( sh ) in case the word was borrowed after the rule completion. Iranian etymology also has historical problems. Khors could not have been borrowed during the reign of Vladimir the Great because by that time Persia had already converted to Islam , and the word Xoršid in Persian meant only "sun" and had no religious connotations. The name cannot be derived from

4644-508: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as

4752-465: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home

4860-471: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,

4968-644: The Greek name Χρυσης, Khrisis , or Χρυσος, Khrisos , but according to Aleksander Brückner this is unwarranted: these names are not Christian names, so there was no reason for the Serbs to adopt them, and Χρυσ- is spelled simply as khris- . In Old Russian sources, this theonym is noted as Xърсъ, Xŭrsŭ , Хорсъ, Xorsŭ , Хъросъ, Xŭrosŭ , and in modern Russian literature it is written as Khors ( Russian : Хорс ), similarly spelled by Maciej Stryjkowski - Khorsum ( Polish : Chorsum , modern Chors ). In English, depending on

5076-578: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this

5184-515: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of

5292-497: The Ossetian xorošŭ , хоrsŭ , xorsu meaning "good". Iranian xvar "halo", Indian hāra , hāras "fire" or Persian xoršid "sun", Xuršid "sun-god" are also proposed. The Iranian word was also supposed to be the root word for Krones , the sky god in the Voguls and Ostyaks , and for the word kvar "sky", "air" in the Votyak language . Vladimir Toporov believed that the name Khors

5400-452: The Polish word with preserved original k is karślak "knotty tree", or toponymes Karsy . The Proto-Slavic form of these words is reconstructed as the adjective *kъrsъ "declined, skinny, dwarf", the verb *kъrsati "to decrease, decline", *krsnąti "to lose weight" from PIE. *kr̥ḱós "skinny" (PIE ḱ → PS s ). This interpretation was supported by Michał Łuczyński (2020). According to him,

5508-555: The Proto-Slavic form of theonym, *Xъrsъ , from the earlier *Kъrsъ , is formally identical with the surnames: Old Serbian Хьрсь and Old Bulgarian Xrъсъ, as well as the toponyms: Old Polish *Kars and *Chars , Serbian Hrs and Old Russian Хорсъ and others, and is derived from the adjective *kъrsъ "skinny". This reconstruction is etymologically correct, and semantically consistent with the lunar interpretation – moon as "skinny", which may have been related to lunar cycles. According to

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5616-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated

5724-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from

5832-494: The Slavic deus otiosus – a passive god who does not interfere directly in world affairs and whose commands are carried out by other gods. It is also possible that they may refer to the replacement of the passive sky god by a more active thunder god, just as the Greek Uranus was replaced by Zeus . Although Procopius and Helmold do not mention the names of these gods, whose names they probably did not know because of taboos , it

5940-555: The Slovak linguist Martin Pukanec (2013), the theonym Khors does not have a Proto-Slavic genesis. He points here to a Slavic TarT/TorT (T = any consonant) switch that occurred around 800. Proto-Slavic T or T in East Slavic languages passed into T oro T, so Proto-Slavic *X or sъ should pass into East Slavic *X oro sъ , and such a notation is not confirmed by the sources. According to him, there

6048-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian

6156-419: The Theologian , and St. John Chrysostom converse. St. John asks: "What was thunder made from?", St. Basil replies: "There are two angels of thunder. For this, the ancient Greek Perun, Khors is Jewish . And there are two angels of lightning". This text combines Slavic, Christian , and Bogomil traditions. He also occurs in other letopis-dependent sources. Mikhail Vasil'yev cited a number of hydronyms from

6264-403: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of

6372-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter

6480-460: The cocks" and "ran along the road of the great Khors", traveled from west to east and thus reached the castle before the cocks crowed, and in this way "overtook" the Sun. It has also been pointed out in the text of the Primary Chronicle where, when listing the statues of the gods, only between Khors and Dazhbog , the sun god, no conjunction "and" is used (unlike the rest of the gods), and this, according to many scholars, would suggest that Khors

6588-409: The comments : "молятся (...) нероуноу. хорсу мокоши ". Some scholars, who also assume an Iranian etymology, believe that Chors was a lunar god, and that the meaning of his name refers not to the rays of the sun, but to the rays of the moon. It is pointed out here that Vseslav was called a "wolf" and werewolfism is associated with the moon, while the prince's journey itself takes place at night when

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6696-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate

6804-460: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language

6912-436: The devils. And they profaned the earth with their sacrifices, and Rus’ and that hill were profaned by blood. But God the merciful, who does not wish the death of sinners, on that hill stands today the church of Saint Vasilij, as we will relate later. The second source mentioning the god is The Tale of Igor's Campaign : " Prince Vseslav was a judge for his subjects, he distributed cities among princes, but by night he ran like

7020-403: The epithet "great" is often used in relation to the moon, e.g. the Polish wielki księżyc , Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian velik mesec , and he further compares the Old Russian phrase to the Old Norse kenning mána vegr "sky", literally "the way of the moon". The interpretation of the name Khors as "emaciated" was supported by linguist Wanda Budziszewska. She reports that the waning moon

7128-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,

7236-402: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or

7344-505: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to

7452-455: The god in the statue with the sun, and the statue itself is supposed to represent Khors or Dazhbog . Some researchers have suggested that the statue belongs to Christian culture. The statue is dated to the 8th to 10th century. Slavic gods Information about Slavic paganism, including the gods, is scarce because Christian missionaries were not very interested in the spiritual life of the Slavs . Also, no accounts written down directly by

7560-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and

7668-408: The idol was deliberately damaged, and only the head is preserved in good condition. According to Russian archaeologist Anatoliy Kirpichnikov  [ ru ] the figure is related to the Slavic paganism. The location of the statue and the sign of the cross coincide exactly with Wunderer's description. The cross, which is an ancient symbol of the sun, is supposed to testify to the relationship of

7776-591: The inhabitants of this village were bearers of the surname Khors . God was also to be preserved in the Old Serbian name Хьрсь, Old Bulgarian Хръсъ, Serbian Хрс, Hrs , Хрсовик, Hrsovik , Old East Slavic Хорсъ in analogy to the Polish name Dadźbóg , from the god Dazhbog . It is also possible that he was preserved in the Old Czech name Chorúš . It has been proposed that the Serbian names should be regarded as alterations of

7884-664: The location of the statues he described. The camp was located south of Pskov and lay on both sides of the Promiezhitsa stream, which separated the flat terrain around the city from the wooded hills and mountains that stretched all the way to the Cheremcha river, and the statues must have been located near it. The existence of the idol was unexpectedly confirmed when, during excavations in 1897, the so-called stone baba (a conventional name for stone statues depicting people in Eastern Europe)

7992-466: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on

8100-680: The most important deities. Listed in this paragraph are those whose Panslavic range is most often recognized. In addition to these, the East Slavic Mokosh (a presumed toponym in the Czech Republic ), and the East Slavic Stribog (toponyms in Poland ) are sometimes indicated. Based on the reconstructed myths around the figures of Perun and Veles , some scholars believe that both of these gods are chief deities. They are primarily found in

8208-516: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of

8316-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to

8424-500: The other roosters"). As phrases beginning with "до" meant night and morning phrases starting with "со" (cf. со вторыми кочетами), it can be concluded that Vseslav arrived in the city at night, not in the morning. Łuczynski also points out that the epithet "great" (OES великому, velikomu ) used in relation to Khors in The Tale , which is usually taken as an argument for the solar interpretation, can be understood differently: in Slavic folklore

8532-401: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,

8640-416: The pagan Slavs exist. During the Christianization missions, the deities, on the one hand, were demonized to deter from worshipping them, on the other hand, their characteristics and functions were assumed by the saints , which was supposed to make the new religion less alien. Because of the small number of sources, there is no consensus among scholars of Slavic mythology on the extent of the worship of even

8748-472: The pagan Slavs; Helmold, writing about the god of gods , clearly borrowed the term ( deus deorum ) from the Book of psalms (50:1). In the case of Procopius' text, for example, Aleksander Brückner argued that the text was a calque, an image with a Hellenized tinge imposed on Slavic paganism. Scholars who accept at least partial authenticity of these messages believe that they may convey information about henotheism ,

8856-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held

8964-593: The passage in this message is about the sea god. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of

9072-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or

9180-455: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian

9288-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in

9396-475: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration

9504-466: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,

9612-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed

9720-402: The spelling of Old East Slavic sources confirms Brückner's view: the lack of a conjunction often occurs in the enumeration of choronyms , ethnonyms , hydronyms , anthroponyms , and theonyms, e.g.: copy of Novgorod First Chronicle : "... и стриба сенмарекла мокошь ", Sermon and Revelation by the Holy Apostles : " пероуна и хорса дыя и трояна ", Sermon by Saint Gregory, found in

9828-431: The statues of Khors and Uslad that were supposed to be located near Pskov: In front of the town we saw two idols, set up in olden times by the priests who worshipped them, namely, Usad, whose stone statue holds a cross in his hand, (and) Khors, who stands on a serpent, with a sword in one hand and a thunderbolt (literally, a ray of fire - A.K.) in the other. In his diary, Wunderer described Pskov freshly, although when he

9936-461: The sun is absent from the sky, thus he could not cut the path of the sun but the moon. Additionally, it is also pointed out that Tmutarakan is not located from Kyiv to the east, but to the southeast. A probable misunderstanding of the phrase "to the hens" is also pointed out. In Old East Slavic this phrase meant "until late; at night", "until dawn, before dawn", and Russian dial. phrase "до вторых кочетов" meant "until late; after midnight' (literally: "to

10044-675: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In

10152-508: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to

10260-493: The theonym in question, contain a vowel between -r- and -s- . Such a reconstruction would indicate functions similar to those of Perun , the god of storms and oaks. Scholars who assume an Iranian etymology most often attribute the solar features to Khors. The main argument is the root of the theonym meaning "sun" in the first place, regardless of which exact word that root was. Moreover, according to The Tale of Igor's Campaign , Prince Vseslav , who "came to Tmutarakani before

10368-592: The transliteration system, the name is written as Khors , Hors , or Xors . Currently, the most popular view regarding the etymology of the theonym Khors is Iranian , and this etymology has been proposed since the 19th century. The Russian historian Pёtr Butkov, who called Khors "the Slavic Apollo ", was one of the first to connect his name with the Persian خورشید , xuršit and the Ossetian xur , xor "sun," and with

10476-770: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic  * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature

10584-506: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to

10692-420: The word xwaršēδ / xoršid from Persia in such a short time, made a radical phonetic change, and placed Khors so high in the pantheon. Vasil'yev tried to solve this problem by suggesting the existence of a hypothetical Sarmatian-Alan word *xors / *xūrs "King-Sun" obtained through a complex chain of assumptions, but here too the phonetic problems mentioned earlier arise. A comprehensive critique of Iranian theory

10800-530: Was also made by Andrey Beskov. Aleksander Brückner (1918) also proposed a Slavic origin of the theonym. According to him, Chъrsъ in Polish would sound like chars and he finds this word in Polish dated phrases przecharsła koza or wycharsł mężczyzna meaning "emaciated, haggard, pinched, drawn" creature, or in Czech words krsati , krsnouti "to emaciate, haggard", krsek "dwarf", zakrsly , krs " dwarf shrub " with typical interchange of ch and k –

10908-503: Was brought to Kyiv , along with the solar cult, by soldiers from Khwarazm , who were supposedly stationed there during the reign of Vladimir the Great , but this theory has been heavily criticized. Mikhail Vasil'yev stated that the name could not have been borrowed from Middle Persian , but from Sarmatian - Alan peoples in the first millennium BC (so-called Iranian inversion). Besides the Iranian etymology, there were other theories. For example, an early loan from Ossetian xorz "good"

11016-505: Was called "puny, frail" among the Slavs: Polish dial. ( Podhale and the Kraków area) wietek , wiotek , Old Czech vetech , Belarusian v́òtak and Russian vétoch . In Old Polish, the word wiotchy meant "frail because of wear, use, old age" (PS *vetъxъ ). The German traveler Johann David Wunderer, who traveled in Russia from 1589 to 1590 and described Pskov in his memoir, mentioned

11124-447: Was editing the manuscript, he added elements that are borrowed from other sources, and they add more detailed information that, however, are easily identifiable. Wunderer could not have known the names of the gods depicted on the stone primarily because the Uslad he mentions is in fact a pseudodeity , his name came about as a result of a distortion of a passage in Primary Chronicle in which

11232-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian

11340-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of

11448-455: Was found between Promiezhitsa and the factory. The statue was probably not found in its original place, but that place must have been nearby anyway. During World War II , the statue, which was in the Pskov Museum, was lost, but photographs from 1928-1929 have survived. The idol was about 100 cm. long, and had a cross on its chest, which was made at the same time as the rest of the sculpture, but

11556-433: Was proposed, which would also explain the Russian word хороший, khoroshiy "good," which was originally supposed to mean "of Khors, belonging to Khors", but this possibility was rejected by Vasmer. Toporov, who also rejected borrowing from Ossetian, wrote: The only Russian word which has really been connected by researchers with the name of Khors is – khoroshiy . This link now appears unquestionable [...]. Unquestionable

11664-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between

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