| Group | Slavic (with Russian, Bulgarian etc.), Eastern branch (with Russian and Ukrainian) |
| Geography | It is the official language of Belarus, also spoken by minorities in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, emigrants in Canada. The total number of Belorussian speakers equals to 8 million people. There are two main groups of dialects: southwestern and northeastern different in some key features of their phonetics. |
| History | Belorussian proceeds the history of the Old Russian language, more exactly its dialects which were spoken by the tribes of Dregovichi, Radimichi, Krivichi on the territory of modern Belarus. |
| Phonetics | Belorussian is peculiar for its [u] sound instead of Old Russian [l] and [v] (Bel. vouk, prauda vs. Russian volk, pravda 'wolf, truth'). Slavic palatalized t' and d' turned to affricate sounds ts and dz' respectively. Prothetic vowels are widespread, mainly at the beginning of the word: arzhany 'made of rye' vs. Russian rzhanoj; imgla 'darkness' vs. Russian mgla etc. |
| Nominal Morphology | Morphology of Belorussian looks quite like that of Russian; they both have lost the dual number and the vocative case, but in general have preserved the archaic structure of declension with three main declension types not correlated with genders. Nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter, the same as adjectives and certain pronouns. |
| Verbal Morphology | The aorist and perfect tenses were lost. Three tenses that remain in the language are present, past and future. Two aspects, imperfective and perfective, verbal adverbs and participles are used practically the same as in the other East Slavic languages. |
| Lexicon | The lexicon suffered a deep influence of Polish resulting from the Polish rule over Belorussia in the 13-18 centuries. Different from Russian, there is practically no loanwords from Turkish and Tatar. |
| Writing | Cyrillic alphabet |
| Close Contacts | Of all Eastern Slavic languages, Belorussian is the closest to Polish and Lithuanian, mainly in pronunciation. This has happened due to long contacts with those languages in the period, when Belarus was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. |
| Sample | Ojča naš, jaki jość u niabiosach! Chaj śviacicca imia tvajo,
chaj pryjdzie carstva tvajo, chaj budzie vola tvaja j na ziamli, jak na
niebie. Chleb naš nadzionny daj nam na sionna; i daruj nam daŭhi našyja,
jak i my darujem daŭžnikam našym. I nia ŭviadzi nas u spakusu, ale
aslani nas as zloha - bo tvajo jość carstva j sila j slava naviečna.
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. |
| Picture |  |
| More info |