The Constitution of the Republic proclaims Belarusian and Russian as the state languages of Belarus. They have absolutely equal rights and opportunities to walk and exist. De facto, the situation looks somewhat different, and Belarusians often criticize the government for insufficient efforts to develop Belarusian as the language of the titular nation.
The fact is that the Russian language significantly predominates in most spheres of the country's public life. Most of the official documents are published on it, it is accepted as the main one in the media and is even more often heard in the everyday life and everyday life of the inhabitants of Belarus.
Some statistics and facts
- In its pure form, Belarusian is used only by villagers in the provinces and the intelligentsia and patriots of the country in cities.
- In regional centers and large villages, Belarusians prefer the so-called trasyanka in everyday speech. Even officials use a mixture of Russian and Belarusian in their reports and speeches.
- In addition to Russian and Belarusian, minority languages are adopted in the country - Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Polish.
- Russian received the status of the state language of Belarus in the 1995 referendum, when more than 83% of the population voted for it as the official language.
- Despite the fact that only 15% of the country's residents consider themselves ethnic Russians, more than 80% of the population of the republic use the Russian language in absolutely all spheres of life.
- In secondary specialized and higher educational institutions of Belarus, up to 90% of the teaching volume is conducted in Russian.
- The most popular newspapers and magazines are published in Russian, and out of 1,100 registered print media, the vast majority are published in two languages or only in Russian.
Eight universities of the republic train specialists in the specialty "Russian philology". 14 out of 18 Belarusian theaters offer their performances in Russian.
History and modernity
The Belarusian language is rooted in the Proto-Slavic and Old Russian languages, which were used by the inhabitants of the region in the 6th-14th centuries. Its formation was influenced by Church Slavonic and Polish dialects of the ancient Radmichi, Dregovichi and Krivichi.
Both state languages of Belarus are quite similar to each other and, despite a number of phonetic differences, can be understood by the speakers of any of them. The peculiarity of Belarusian is a large number of preserved archaic Old Slavic words.
