Celebrate Russian Language Day!
Caitlin Nicholson
Did you know that tomorrow (June 6th) is Russian language day? In 2010, the United Nations created language days for each of their six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Their goal is to promote multilingualism and cultural diversity. June 6th was chosen as it is the birthday of Alexander Pushkin, the Father of Russian Literature. At LinguaLinx, we love languages. Words are our business, and our passion. In fact, our President, David Smith, holds degrees in Russian Language and Literature as well as Russian Translation! Let’s take a moment and celebrate Russian!
Currently, there are about 155 million nature Russian speakers in the world (about 2.33% of the total population.) Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. It is also an important secondary language in other countries due to the influence of the former Soviet Union. Nine Fast Facts about the Russian Language: 1. The Russian alphabet uses Cyrillic script and has 33 letters. 2. Russian is called an “International Language of Space” – astronauts must learn it on the international space station. 3. Russian is the seventh most used language on the Internet with over 87 million users! 4. A lot of modern words related to computers are borrowed directly from English Example: компьютер = computer Example: чат = chat 5. Russian has no word for the, a or an. 6. There are only about 500,000 words in the Russian language. (There are over 1,000,000 words in the English dictionary!) 7. Only about 2,000-2,500 of these words are used frequently. 8. There are three genders in Russian language: masculine, feminine and neuter. 9. Russian’s closest language cousins are Ukrainian and Belorussian.
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