Talk:Russian language/Archive 3

Ninilchik Russian language/dialect
User:Olegwiki, who is of Russian creole origin in Alaska, just posted this very interesting link on the Russian America article. I figured it was worth informing editors of this page about it....maybe a broader article on Russian-as-spoken-in-Alaska would be worthwhile (liturgical Russian is still used there as well, of course).Skookum1 (talk) 16:47, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I just like to clarify that I am NOT a "Russian creole origin in Alaska". I am actually a Russian citizen of Jewish origin living in Moscow. I have just found the link to the article about Ninilchik dialect in a good Russian language forum (the forum includes discussions regarding translations (English/Russian, in particular), as well as other language-related staff). Olegwiki (talk) 09:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

TORFL - (Test of Russian as a Foreign Language)
TORFL seems to be getting standardised and is offered in a number of Universities. Can someone write a section or an article about it?
 * The St. Petersburg Times - Education - Russian Language Tests for Foreigners
 * Saint-Petersburg State University - Russian for Foreigners - About the Center
 * TORFL - Standardized Test of Russian as a Foreign language. Moscow State University (MGU)

Apart from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, the test and training was mentioned in Blagoveschensk State Pedagogical University in Blagoveschensk, Russia. Anatoli (talk) 21:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm currently writing an article on it. Will have it up within the next few days.VsevolodKrolikov 13:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by VsevolodKrolikov (talk • contribs)
 * It's now up at Test of Russian as a Foreign Language. My first ever page(*^o^*). Please add what you can; I've just put out the framework. VsevolodKrolikov 15:05, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Scientific literature in Russian
It says in the preface that "Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian". The source is not well documented. Personally, I don't believe the claim. Kasper kala (talk) 09:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I beleive it. They have the most number of specialised institutes as well. Keep in mind that many scientists publish 3-4 articles a year, and constantly are going off to conferences and being paid to attend. Also keep in mind that the word science in Russian alos includes most academic endeavours such as music, and arts which inn the West we do not. Also most publicataions (journals and books) come out in 50-100 copies (talk) 19:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Dialects?
Hey, what's this? We haven't any dialects in Russia. This article is totally bullshit! from where have you gotten that? --ArthurArthur (talk) 16:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

We haven't any dialects in Russia. We have only different variants of pronunciation.--Валерий Пасько (talk) 12:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

GA Review
General impression about the article is good, but revisions are necessary. I will help wherever I can with rewording and advice, but the writers/nominator(s) should do their job first. The comments will pile up gradually. Please do not wait, but start addressing them as soon as they arrive:

1) Get rid of {{who, {{fact, {{what by reformulating or providing references. I haven't put {{fact}} notes in the History section, but it clearly needs references.

2) Reformat the references into "cite web" or another appropriate templates (just search for "ref>[").

3) Section Grammar must be rewritten entirely, preferably in a language understood by most readers. Russian grammar has its specificities, such as exactness, difficulty to learn by foreigners, etc., none of which is reflected in the article.

4) Borrowing of words, due to Peter I (who spoke dutch himself and started bringing europeans to russia) should be mentioned. Russian has significant number of dutch and french words, most of which are modified either due to grammar or simply because "plain people" couldn't pronounce them (or maybe just mocked them up).

5) Defintely "abracadabra" (i.e., transliteration of Russian using latin alphabet, widely used, e.g. in emailing) and maybe "student slang" should be mentioned in this article.

NIMSoffice (talk) 07:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Started reformatting references yesterday. All of them are reformatted by now. SkyBon{{sup|Talk\Contributions}} 13:21, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Written pre-version of "Transliteration" section. SkyBon{{sup|Talk\Contributions}} 16:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. The major cause of using transliteration is/was not encoding but availability of russian keyboards. Transliteration is very popular among russians living abroad (I would rank it like translit<enlgish<cyrillic). Surprisingly, it is also used by people living in Russia. NIMSoffice (talk) 03:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Added about keyboards. I don't think I'll be able to do points 3 and 4. Professional linguist is needed. Also it's a pain in *ss doing point 1. SkyBon{{sup|Talk\Contributions}} 15:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Crimea de facto language
Someone has just removed the listing of Crimea (de facto) as an area that speaks Russian. It's not the official language, but it is the de facto language of government business in the area. Should it have been removed? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think so and therefore reverted the edits.Materialscientist (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow - my first "edit conflict" page;-) I was just coming to say that user:Sektor 163 has previously tried to edit out the fact of Russian speaking Ukrainians on the Ukrainians page, so I suspect it may not have been a good faith edit. Thanks for doing the revert. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so and therefore reverted the edits? How about finding references to back it up? I also think Russian is the de facto language 1st language in Krym, but this is not guessopedia (or Fox News). —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  08:48, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Here and here Crimeans complain about the use of Ukrainian in government paperwork. Still can't find any de facto stuff... —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  09:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Here it says "In Sevastopol it is difficult to find a Ukrainian newspaper or book, and most people get their news -- and world view -- from Russian TV and radio.". Here it says

Upon being elected, Kuchma promised to make Russian an "official language" while keeping Ukrainian as the "state language." The distinction between "state" and "official" is meaningless, however, even though Russian has been made an "official" language in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Moldova. Kuchma never fulfilled his election pledge, but in a December 2001 interview in "Trud" he reiterated his belief that Russian should not be defined as a "foreign" language in Ukraine and should therefore have "official" status. Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov have similarly called for making Russian an "official language," a move that would simply institutionalize a situation that already de facto exists.
 * So I think we might have enough to put back the "de facto" information. Does that satisfy Mariah-Yulia and Jimbo? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:28, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, your sourches say that Russian is most used in Crimea, but not how much Crimean goverment paperwork you can fill in in Russian, I do believe the later is the criteria for the "de-facto" status. —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  07:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The first is circumstantial evidence, but the second source says it is de facto. However, I admit we cannot necessarily take Russian politicians as reliable sources (nor Kuchma...). Have you searched many Russian language sources yet? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

What you really need are sources that say that Russian is the de facto language and a definition of what the term de facto language really means. I was in Yalta and Simferopol for conferences and agree that Russian predominates in Crimea, but Ukrainian is also used, and newspapers in Ukrainian are available, although the bulk of magazines are in Russian .. but the term de facto .... first time I have come across it. Bandurist (talk) 10:00, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Ukrainian appears to be there largely through the efforts of Kyiv; its presence in the media may not indicate its use. Most schools are Russian-medium, by far the largest part of the media is Russian. What are the local laws published in? In any case, it's possible for two languages to be "official", with one de facto and one de jure. The frustrating thing is that we all get the impression it's true, but we can't source it convincingly.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:04, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I thought that the criteria for a "de-facto official" status is: can one fill in Crimean goverment paperwork in Russian. I have heard you can but not as much as before (but that is WP:OR). Tried to find some references in Ukrainian but my grasp of Ukrainian is too limited not to get drowned in a google search sea... I know some Crimean youngsters who don't mind to speak Ukrainian and are happy to be part of Ukraine, so I'm not sure Ukrainian appears to be in Crimea largely through the efforts of Kyiv. Because media only talks to radicals from both sides it doesn't look a realiable sourche to me, they seem to be "looking for a fight". —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  10:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Last year I was in Yalta for a conference. I heard alot of Ukrainian in Simferopol and Yalta, but not much in Sevastopol. I visited the Ukrainian schools in Yalta, the University where the conference was held, (under the Umbrella of Moscow University) which was all in Ukrainian, the Lesia Ukrainka museum, the Stepan Rudansky sites. Met up with the minister of Culture (who happened to be originally from Ternopil, went to Ukrainian Catholic services in Yalta (I'm not a Catholic) but the services were in Ukrainian - the priest was ethnically Hungariuan by the way. 15 years ago it was more Russian. The picture that is often painted currently is not very accurate. Bandurist (talk) 14:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Russian is the official language of Crimea along with Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian as the state language. Moreover Russian has been granted a regional status by several oblast and city municipalities, e.g. Sevastopol or Donetsk Oblast (see ru:Политическая борьба вокруг русского языка на Украине. It should be depicted in the article. — Glebchik (talk) 15:46, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Although a number of city councils have voted to give the Russian language official status in their regions or cities, in all cases the resolutions that they passed were not within their juristiction and their resolutions go are unconstitutional. If the constitution were to be changed this could change, or if Ukraine joins the European Union, Russian would be granted greater rights as the language of a national minority. Bandurist (talk) 17:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Why unconstitutional? It doesn't contradict the constitition. In addition Ukraine has signed European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, according to which Russian has the status of a language of ethnic minority.
 * But I wouldn't call it a "minority language", rather a majority language in fact. — Glebchik (talk) 18:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I once find out that Ukraine did not sign all parts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. I wrote that down somewhere else on Wikipedia but I can't find it :( —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  06:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Found it!:

''I still wonder how legal this "regional staus of Russian" is since Ukraine didn't sign the wole treaty... see. Ukraine undertakes obligations under Parts I, II, IV, V of the Charter except paragraph 5 of Article 7 of Part II. See treaty here >. As far as I can see de facto Ukraine didn't sign the treaty at all since this article 7 seems to be the heart of the article.... Mariah-Yulia (talk) 21:38, 29 November 2008 (UTC)''
 * Hope this info is of some help. —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  07:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

A bill in Ukrainian parliament that proposes to give the Russian language a regional status in 13 Ukrainian regions has been was registered today. Does that not mean shush "regional status" does not exist in current Ukraine? —  Yulia Romero  • Talk to me!  15:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't. This (page 13), however, strongly implies that your conclusion is indeed correct. I also notice that there are no sources in support for the claim that Russian has an official status of a regional language in Ukraine, so I'm replacing the "dubious" tag with fact. --illythr (talk) 20:24, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The Map
Yes, I know this is an overdebated issue at almost all language articles. Sorry for bringing it up here once again... But the map must be changed it's ridiculous when one can see that Russian is "Widely spoken and understood" in Vietnam (which it's not btw) on the Russian map while Sweden is completely grey on the English map although 89 % claim that they speak the language. I suggest that the "light red countries" (e.g. the USA, China, India, Norway etc.) should be coloured grey and instead get small dots where Russian is spoken. Like the map for German: Aaker (talk) 16:11, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. I am almost sure that more people speak Russian on the U.S. East Coast than in Oklahoma or Montana. There may be a number of Russian speakers in America but that's not true for the whole nation. I like the idea of placing dots where there are numerous RU speakers in a country that can't be considered fully Russophone.
 * Some countries (like Ukraine) I think can definitely get a mixed coloring (although Russian is widely spoken and understood say in Crimea and Donetsk, Russian is almost unheard of in the country's west (places neighboring Poland, etc. where Ukrainian is the main spoken language). ddima.talk 17:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Study Languages Online: Learning Russian
Please consider adding this external link: Study Languages Online: Learning Russian. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

"Claimed by Georgia"
In the current infobox Abkhazia & South Ossetia are "claimed by Georgia". I propose we change "claimed by Georgia" into "disputed territory" cause that looks more like WP:NPOV language to me. —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  21:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

widely taught in primary and higher education as a foreign language in many countries all over the world[vague][citation needed].
Eastern Bloc, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia, Cuba... and that's just where Russian was widely taught at primary-school level as a foreign language, in some places - compulsively. Add lots of smaller countries at university level for diplomatic and business reasons during the Cold War and loads of Russian Studies in NATO's military. This stuff bordering on "water is wet", as in TOO ridiculous to cite... Aadieu (talk) 00:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Without a footnote it's too vague for an encyclopaedia. It would be good to have a footnote showing where the information is available on what countries and how many years of study.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Russian Accelerator Method
Recently, User:Brad Marhsall added a link to the Russian Accelerator Method, a page which he created. The page has been tagged for numerous issues, and includes a reference to "Promotional Materials." I felt that this was very possibly a conflict of interest or even spam, so I removed it in order to start a discussion. Any thoughts? Cocytus  [»talk«]  20:01, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

всё круто е
In the phrase "всё круто е!", what is е? (or is it йе?) —Stephen (talk) 08:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's actually "yo" (ё; and yes, I linked it correctly). Consider it a loanword of sorts :)
 * In future, please consider posting questions like this at WP:RD/L. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 11:51, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Official language in San Javier, Uruguay
I really think this is unencyclopedic. In what sense does this town "officially" speak Russian? There's nothing in its article about this officialness. There are many places like this, eg. Harbin, China. Official languages are determined at the national or sub-national level, not at the township level. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Russian phonology
A lot of linguists don't consider consonant /ʑː/ existing in Russian language. It concerns with two ways of pronouncing such words like дождь (rain): /doʂtʲ/ or /doɕː/; дожди (rains): /doʐdʲi/ or /doʑːi/. In the case of дождь the second pronunciation gives a sound that the letter Щ says and this consonant exists in the language. The other case can give us a sound used by only a part of native speakers.

A few words about vowel system. Despite to the six phonemes a quantuty of vowel sounds in Russian is not less than twelve. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.100.228.8 (talk) 16:49, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There is an IPA explanation of consonants, but unless I and the search functIon are blind, THERE IS NO CHART FOR VOWELS. 211.225.30.91 (talk) 00:42, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I at first suspected some long-missed section blanking vandalism, but having checked the article's history as far back as 2007, that doesn't seem to be the case. For whatever reasons, the vowels are indeed not covered here, although you can find a bit on them in the Russian phonology article.  Someone probably should add a brief recap here as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 14, 2010; 13:15 (UTC)

Cursive Print
Is there a reason for the sudden emergence of this horrible Cyrillic cursive font on wikipedia? Is there any reason why we can't just use the traditional block font? Especially since the section on the Cyrillic alphabet makes no mention of the characters that are drastically different between the two fonts. (72.181.44.163 (talk) 11:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC))


 * Which cursive font do you mean? You mean this one: только что из того? If so, what’s horrible about it? —Stephen (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what the anon means either. Cursive proper is not used in Wikipedia at all, and even using italics is explicitly advised against (see para 3 of that section).  Perhaps his/her font settings need tweaking? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:57, December 14, 2009 (UTC)
 * Italicized forms are still found around the place. We do allow italics for book titles as well.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  16:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, completely unreferenced and poorly formatted articles are also still found all around the place; it doesn't mean we should be encouraging creating more of them :) And book titles are another matter entirely.  Anyway, I personally don't have an issue with Cyrillics being italicized, but there've been more than a few occasions when users complained about italics being confusing; hence the MOS guideline.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:45, December 14, 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I totally agree. I was just responding to the claim that "Cursive proper is not used in Wikipedia at all."  The user in question may not have to tweak their font settings if they're looking at text at Wikipedia that actually is in italics. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  02:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, that. I didn't mean italics when I said "cursive proper isn't used"; I meant the hand-written form, which is actually very different from both standard and italics print fonts.  Oh well; I wish the anon returned and clarified for us what the perceived problem really is :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:07, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Change of status in Ukraine?
According to this article, the new president of Ukraine has not granted Russian official status, but: "“Taking the European Charter of Languages as a guide, we have prepared a very good law, which the President will present in the next 15-20 days. In that draft law, we give the regions certain rights [in relation to the Russian language]. If, in certain regions, they don’t want to implement that, then it’s up to them,” said Boris Kolesnikov, the deputy head of the Party of Regions."

What does that mean in terms of status? Are there any EU countries with comparable situations? LokiiT (talk) 03:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The means we should first wait these 15-20 days and find out. ;-) It'll probably be the same as in Moldova - official status in certain regions. --Illythr (talk) 20:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

As of June 9, there still working on it... Since a party member of the President's party slammed Crimea's decision to use Russian as regional language it looks doubtful Russian will have an official status in some Ukrainian regions... According to a opposition lawmaker Crimea can't do this on its own anyway... —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  20:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

язык
No stress on я. It is not pronounced yazyk. It is pronounced more like your American yi. Who are you, a bunch of Ukrainians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.131.72.253 (talk) 03:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

What's with the categories?
What possible justification could there be for saying Russian is a "Language of Canada," or the United States, or Australia? It's not an official language, nor a language of a majority of the population. And I wouldn't even say it's a significant minority language.

For now, I've removed the "Languages of Country X" categories for Australia, Canada, the U.S., Israel, New Zealand, and China, as I think I can safely say those are ridiculous. I'm guessing some of the remaining eight or ten categories are also superfluous, but I don't know enough about those nations to remove them myself.

If anyone is familiar with those countries, please check and make sure the category is reasonable.
 * By what criteria do you judge whether or not these categories are justified? Can you reference a specific language wiki-policy? There are significant Russian speaking communities in all of those listed countries. I'm a little baffled as to why you removed Israel especially. That makes it pretty clear that you're out of your area of expertise and should be engaging in discussion before making changes. LokiiT (talk) 05:12, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are any rules for category inclusion other than common sense. I'd say, for the "Languages of X" cat, a good rule of a thumb would be "Include if the language is either native to this country or spoken by a significant minority" with the significant minority being at least 1% of the population or so. --Illythr (talk) 09:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup
Hi, I'm going to remove some info which is not supported by sources: --windyhead (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * header table - remove Crimea from "Official language in" - only Ukrainian is the official language there
 * remove "RussianLanguageMap" as original research
 * de facto official language of the unrecognized country of Transnistria and partially recognized countries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - "de facto official" is a nonsense
 * as well as many of the former Soviet republics - no source
 * Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics - the source doesn't talks about "most of the former Soviet republics
 * Regarding those last two points, it's simply a matter of common sense here. When the majority of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Kazakhs speak Russian, we don't need a source to state that it's still important for children in those countries to learn Russian. This reminds me of the time someone put a source tag beside the line "Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941". Common sense people! But anyways, here is your source. LokiiT (talk) 18:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

russian language map
the language map is very wrong! in romania there are 20.000 russian lipovans concentrated in two villages, and another 10.000 distributed in the rest of the country. romanians speak almost no russian, less then 1-3% speak russian. in schools russian was abolished after the soviets withdrew.--Prometeu (talk) 13:50, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Official in Latvia?! Now that's something weird. --Illythr (talk) 20:42, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Glyphs
In Russian, tvvo letters are visibly different from their original scripts. These are Д "de" and Л "el". These are displayed (if italicised vvith the Garamond font) similar to the Alexander font. The characters of these letters in Garamond font are rendered as follovvs: Д (Cyrillic letter "de"), and Л (Cyrillic letter "el"). The letters are similar to the Greek Δ "delta" and Λ "lambda", as the Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet.
 * My question vvas, can I show the display variations (at least in this page) as a note? so that people are avvare of Cyrillic deriving from Greek? Thnx! :D
 * 序名三「Jyonasan」 Talk Stalk  23:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That might be better placed at Cyrillic alphabet or Early Cyrillic alphabet, since it's not just the Russian variant that this happens in (right?). — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  00:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Correct. So... VVould I be able to add a note to the letters, at the bottom the note vvill describe my explanation. VVould that be ok? 序名三「Jyonasan」  Talk Stalk  03:01, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct Transliteration
There is a vvebsite that allovvs you to transliterate to and from the major transliteration (romanisation) systems.
 * http://www.translit.cc/

I have found a vvebsite, vvhich agrees vvith Russian dictionaries and transliteration tools. But the reason vvhy I also agree vvith it is because (according to my grandfather's Russian books on transliteration), this transliteration systems are more favoured, and complied vvith Russian grammar/spelling.
 * http://moscow.usembassy.gov/transliteration_e.html

There is another favoured transliteration system: | ISO-9 1995 The most frequent problems vvith Russian transliteration are the letters:
 * е, ё, ж, и, й, х, ц, ч, ш, щ, ъ, ы, ь, э, ю, and я.

There should be a "transliteration compromise" that combines the most used transliteration systems, so transliterised vvords could be accurate. Here is a vvebsite that shovvs all the transliteration systems Compromised! http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ru.htm
 * 序名三「Jyonasan」 Talk Stalk  01:42, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronounciation
Even though the Russian letter <Ж> sounds like a Voiced retroflex fricative, in many dialects in major cities (especially in Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.) it is a Voiced postalveolar fricative. Here are the features of a Voiced postalveolar fricative:
 * Its manner of articulation is fricative, vvhich means it is produced by constricting air flovv through a narrovv channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
 * Its place of articulation is postalveolar vvhich means it is articulated vvith the tip of the tongue betvveen the alveolar ridge and the palate, but closer to the alveolar ridge than for alveolo-palatal consonants.
 * Its phonation type is voiced, vvhich means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
 * It is an oral consonant, vvhich means air is allovved to escape through the mouth.
 * It is a central consonant, vvhich means it is produced by allovving the airstream to flovv over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
 * The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, vvhich means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
 * This includes many features in the letter Ж. So, vvhy is the Russian letter Ж classified ONLY in the phonology category of a Voiced retroflex fricative and not also in the category of a Voiced postalveolar fricative? There is a vvebsite that allovvs native speakers from their native countries to pronounce words (letters in this case) in fluent Russian, and here is "Zhe" (transliterised as either <žɛ>/<ʒɛ>, or in the case of a Voiced retroflex fricative: <ʐɛ>):
 * | Forvo Ж
 * Here is another vvebsite, shovving all the Russian letters pronounce by Russian natives: http://listen2russian.com/lesson01/a/

Please, If it is possible to consider BOTH VVIDELY KNOVVN DIALECTS OF RUSSIAN (Both vvhich are considered official to the USSR [Soviet Union] novv knovvn as the Russian Federation.) Thank you. :D
 * 序名三「Jyonasan」 Talk Stalk  01:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * People generally transcribe it as if it's palatoalveolar. I suspect the retroflexion is not well understood, though it is widely attested. If you find a source that talks about dialectal variation in Russian postalveolar fricatives between retroflex and palatoalveolar pronunciations, that's welcome here and at Russian phonology. I'm skeptical, though; all the sound files you've provided sound fairly retroflex to my ears. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 01:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Sevastopol
Sevastopol is part of the Crimea, and the Crimea is listed separately.

Is there still cause at this point to maintain Sevastopol on the list independently?

Varlaam (talk) 06:29, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

"Stress marks are mandatory in ... books for children"
Not some I've seen. If that is a more recent publishing requirement, then perhaps that sentence could be clarified.

Varlaam (talk) 17:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

tweak header
Tweaked header by moving up a couple of lines from the 'geographic distribution' section - to make the intro a bit more specific. teinesaVaii  (talk)  09:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Finnic influence
The statement about the Finnic influence is much exaggerated. The Finnic languages are very different structurally from any Slavic and Russian especially. Russian has nothing to do with any Finno-Ugric, they are totally different at all levels. As it turned out this paragraph was added by an anonymous in 2006, but since then nobody contests it. It seems to be from modern fringe theories and should be deleted.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 23:25, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Westernization vs. Modernization
There was an edit today changing Peter the Great's project from "Westernization" to "Modernization". I would have said the former is more accurate. Any views? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:01, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I am GA referee of this article. I absolutely agree, and I will change this back. Thanks. NIMSoffice (talk) 06:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Peter's reforms contained many things that having nothing to do with modernization. How about cutting off beards?VVPushkin (talk) 15:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Why not use both terms, although they have areas which overlap, they do have some meaning that does not. Bandurist (talk) 14:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Classification
"The next closest relatives are the West Slavic languages, especially Polish and Slovak; next are the South Slavic languages, although Bulgarian especially has somewhat different grammar." Are you serious? You claim that Polish and Slovak are closer to Russian than Bulgarian? complete rubbish... I don't know who made up this classification but I can read and understand Bulgarian better than Ukrainian or Belorussian (I am native only Russian speaker with no any significant other Slavic influence) Extreemator (talk) 04:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Trained scholars and linguists classify it that way. Duh.  HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, this chapter should be rewritten. Except for Ukrainian and Belarusian the sole language which can be closer is Bulgarian. But it can be applied only to vocabulary, the Bulgarian grammar is rather deferent. You can not properly understand some vast Bulgarian texts without knowing the grammar, it will be just a set of some familiar words.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 06:47, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

When comparing nouns between Russian and Ukrainian there is a 64% correlation. Between Ukrainian and Byelorussian 84% correlation. Byelorussian and Russian 72% correlation. Ukrainian and Plish 82% correlation. Between Russian and Bulgarian 93% correlation. Ths is based on the most commonly used nouns and does not take into account pronounciation or grammar. Bandurist (talk) 01:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This work disagrees with your calculations. Could you tell us the source of your numbers?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 13:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If Bandurist is using the numbers I think he's using, then it is his own original count, which, as I recall, included his own list of "the most common words", which included a number of items that linguists would never in a million years include in a list of "core vocabulary". It's unreliable, so these non-linguistic comments about Bulgarian are simply personal musings based on recognizing some vocabulary, and not based on the actual science of linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 15:10, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

velarization before back vowels?
This unsourced statement -- "The hard consonants are often velarized, especially before back vowels, as in Irish, although in some dialects the velarization is limited to hard /l/" -- is contradicted by Russian_phonology, which says "Velarization is clearest before the front vowels /e/ and /i/". (97.131.209.94 (talk) 01:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC))

rate
(7)this is a great resource site but  (10)Google is better its amazing  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.251.34.139 (talk) 02:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Not number one in Mongolia
"It is currently the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and has been compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language since 2006.[29][30]" The first ref, which is too old, does not support the statement; the second is also old. In fact, the government already has English as the most commonl taught foreign language. Since I don't have a ref., I won't change the page, but I hope some-one will get a recent government statistic on foreign-language teaching in Mongolia.Kdammers (talk) 14:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The New York Times article says that Russian was to be replaced as the first foreign language in autumn 2005, so I changed the statement from "currently" to 2005. --illythr (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * But now it says that it IS compulsory, since it says "since 2006." This is still wrong:  students do not have to take Russian. Kdammers (talk) 12:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's what the last available source says. Can you provide another, more modern one stating what you say? --illythr (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is one of the really frustrating things about Wik's policies. If we have an old source that says the night sky over New York city is black, we are stuck with it, because, even though it is obvious to millions of New Yorkers that it is not [i.e., no longer] true, since nobody has pointed out the well-known fact in a citable source, we stay with [personally verifiably] wrong statements.  I can't cite students, school headmistresses, parents, education officials spoken words or use my own observations in my class-rooms to state this fact.  For some reason, the Ministry of Science and Education doesn't put this kind of information on its WWW site.Kdammers (talk) 12:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's actually worse than that. You have one respectable scholar make a translation error, other scholars reference his wrong data and then have this data solidly rooted in a Wikipedia article, because no one bothered to check the original source and your contacting the original author and getting him to state the obvious qualifies as original research. Still, to profane Churchill, while the system sucks, no better ones have been found, to date. As the Essjay controversy had demonstrated, nothing can be assumed of Wikipedia editors' expertise and knowledge when it comes to editing mainspace content (well, except good faith, heh-heh). Without sources to back you up, another user may appear and rewrite the text into stating the opposite citing his own personal experience with Mongolians he's acquainted with.
 * I suspect, the necessary information is widely available in the Mongolian sector of the net, though. It's just that, well, nobody cares enough around these parts. --illythr (talk) 19:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, the necessary information does not seem to be widely available "in the Mongolian sector." The relevant Ministry doesn't list or link to the information on either its Mongolian or English pages, and searches using relevant terms in Mongolian in Google and in a standard Mongolian newspaper turned up nothing.  I'm sure if I went down to the Ministry' s Office I could come up with a citable source.  But I don't feel like spending half a day on doing that. Kdammers (talk) 11:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I sent an inquiry to the Mongolian Edu. Ministry on this-hopefully they will provide a useable response.HammerFilmFan (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Did you get a response? I teach English in Mongolia and can get no citable source.  Since the statement was patently wrong, I have changed it by making it past tense, leaving mention of current status blank.  Thus, I have complied with Wik policy and still got rid of a wrong statement.Kdammers (talk) 06:36, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No I didn't - damn their eyes! :-) HammerFilmFan (talk) 21:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

russkiy yazyk --> russkij yazyk
Should the transliteration scheme used here be changed to the GOST 7.79 (2002) standard? The Romanization of Russian page states that is the official standard of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Nicole21532 (talk) 17:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but since this is the English Wikipedia, what difference does it make which standard is official in Russia? In absence of one official transliteration standard in the English-speaking countries, we use one that's arguably the most common (BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian). Such approach is consistent with the overall Wikipedia philosophy of using the names/titles/spelling variations/romanization systems most common in the English language.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 17, 2012; 17:33 (UTC)

The map
I'm to delete the map "russian language in eurasia" because it contains incorrect information. It shows russian as minority language in plenty of regions, in which russian is actually native for absolute majority. 94.180.30.214 (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Number L2 speakers
We need a new source for the number of L2 speakers. I deleted the Ethnologue figure, which was obviously wrong: They say there are 137M L1 (2010 census) and 110M L2 speakers in Russia, a country of 143M people. Perhaps this is a figure inherited from the USSR, and copied over as if Russia were the same thing? If that's the case, it's badly outdated anyway. (No date is given.)  — kwami (talk) 18:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * the Russian Federation is down to 143M people?? That's quite a reduction, even taking into account the areas lost to independence from the USSR days.HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Russian intonations (From IK-1 to IK-7)
I think there should be a new article on the Russian intonation system, from IK-1 to IK-7. Komitsuki (talk) 02:49, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Russian cases
I've started to add an explanation of Russian noun cases. I've just added a basic overview thus far, so feel free to add and elaborate. I've referenced the website Master Russian, a well established and (in my experience) reliable Russian language website. U65945 (talk) 21:30, 31 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by U65945 (talk • contribs) 21:22, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Your enthusiasm is greatly appreciated, but please bear in mind that you're also working on the main article. For the purposes of this article (per WP:TITLE), it looks as if you're already going into detail outside of the scope of this article (see WP:OFFTOPIC). A relevant summary of the Russian grammar article is all that is required. Please don't simply reiterate everything you're adding to that article. Thank you for your understanding. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Come to think about it, I have noticed that the Russian grammar section is sort of heavy right now. I think it's a good idea to make a separate article on Russian numerals, and include something about counting form (счётная форма from the Russian Wikipedia). Komitsuki (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Definition of 'native to'
I think we should tread carefully when defining a language as being 'native to' in the infobox. The same discussion came up on the "Russians" article (see the talk page). While that discussion was focussed on ethnicity, unless there are RS defining Russian as being native to Israel, it's WP:OR. There's a distinct difference between long-standing diasporic ethnic populations and Russophone populations as the by-product of a language having become lingua franca, and that of an historically recently formed diaspora in Israel. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:07, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Strictly speaking, languages can't be described as being "native to" anywhere. People are "native to" a place, not languages.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 00:26, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, if we were to follow that line strictly speaking, there are are languages associated with long-standing indigenous populations (i.e., Australia had 250 Aboriginal 'countries' with indigenous languages, and Aboriginal inhabitation spanning back 50,000 years), yet English is considered the 'entrenched' language (see Australia). It's a matter of some form of consistency in the handling of languages across Wikipedia. While English is no longer even the language de jour in Australia, it's still represented as being 'native' for the English language article. Perhaps it's a broader question of the Template:Infobox language needing to be better qualified. I find the use of 'native language' awkward and a bit OR-ish, full stop. First language? Primary language? It's more complex than it seems. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Russian language
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Russian language's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "perepis-2010.ru": From Russia: </li> <li>From Demographics of Russia: ВПН-2010</li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 03:31, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, ! Full citation now added. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Ah, yeah, I added that reference but forgot to add the complete citation. Thought the bot would automatically add the rest of it. My thanks to you, and Iryna Harpy - LouisAragon (talk) 17:11, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Not a problem, . The poor ol' bot was confused by its being referenced in third article under a different ref name. At least it gave me an opportunity to clean up a couple of other refs with both badly formed and missing parameters (as well as translations of the titles into English). Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Map of the Russian language
It would be interesting to see the distribution of russian in Russia, because it also has many native languages and although i know that over 96% of the population speaks Russian, in areas of siberia, there has to be regions where most people don't speak Russian. Also it just makes sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lojinmagima (talk • contribs) 19:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I couldn't find such a map in Wikimedia Commons, but you can anyway find a map in Google. However, I want to warn you, that such linguistic maps do often inflate the area of distribution of non-Russian languages. For example, such regions as Karelia, Mordovia, Evenkia or Yakutia can be coloured entirely in the colours of the respective language. But it must be beared in mind, that in some regions (like Karelia or Mordovia) only some districts indeed still have a significant number of speakers, while in others (like Evenkia or Yakutia) the population density is very low so in fact the speakers do not inhabit all the area but live in small settlements scattered across the area and even though the settlements may be half or more Russian.
 * Anyway, even if the map of the languages is lacking, but there is a map of ethnic Russians, usually the distributions of ethnic groups and the languages are directly interrelated.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:28, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:16A2:751:6900:78E1:81B2:6F48:AA38 (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Finland?
Who only one Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. 188.32.102.14 (talk) 05:44, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Please clarify your statement or question. -- ‖ Ebyabe talk - Border Town  ‖ 05:50, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 August 2016
Change File:RussianLanguageMap.png to only editing admins, where it is spoken. 188.32.105.144 (talk) 05:22, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Your request is unclear. Please clarify. -- ‖ Ebyabe talk - Border Town  ‖ 05:28, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

New audio file request
I would like an example of somebody talking in Russian on the article. Sausagea1000 (talk) 13:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 4 external links on Russian language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.abkhaziagov.org/ru/state/sovereignty
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://cominf.org/node/1127818105
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Spelling of the language name in Russian
The first page of the article shows both ру́сский язы́к and русский язык, which is right and what is the difference? Jony (talk) 13:15, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The acute accents in ру́сский язы́к show which syllable is stressed. They are sometimes written (mostly in dictionaries or books for language learners) and sometimes not. — Eru·tuon 18:27, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't this be indicated in the article? After all, it is intended for readers who do not know Russian.--Jony (talk) 13:49, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sure, but I don't know how this can be indicated unobtrusively. — Eru·tuon 00:46, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In fact the accents are not part of the orthography, so they may be removed (the stressed syllables are shown in the IPA). Шурбур (talk) 13:49, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This has been discussed at length at least two times.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:48, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Infobox - translit.
The transliterated version of русский язык appeared above the Cyrillic, which could lead to confusion that it is a valid way to write the name of the language in the language itself. As a result, I have dropped the translit name from the infobox to avoid confusion.  ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich  Talk  18:37, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Марсианский.
Сомнений - быть не может ! 176.59.208.31 (talk) 05:26, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Transliterations and/or transcriptions
Every piece of Cyrillic text poses a problem to a common, non-expert Wikipedia reader if not transliterated or transcribed. I suggest that we add transliterations and/or transcriptions whenever possible. -- P ětušek 17:12, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Transliteration now added JaAlDo (talk) 11:59, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Errors
The article contradicts itself: it says that less than three million Russian speakers live in Asia but then more accurately gives more than ten million in Kazakhstan alone (almost all of Kazakhstan is in Asia, and the small part that isn't has only a few Russian speakers).

It is also wrong (i.e., outdated) in stating that Russian is compulsory in Mongolian schools. English is now the favored second language. Kdammers (talk) 15:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

"Areas where Russian is the majority language" - I have a question, where does it come from, in what language, according to the data source, do the peoples of Siberia speak. Is this data from American school books? Most of the population of Siberia is the population of industrial cities formed from the inhabitants of the European part of the country. Siberia was joined to Russia in the 15-17th century, all the cities in Siberia were built by Russians, where can there be other main languages? It's not that annoying, it's just ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.113.15.60 (talk) 16:07, 31 December 2019 (UTC)