Ruthenian
historical Slavic language, ancestor of Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian; official, literary and spoken language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moldavian principality and East Slavic voivodeships of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Key facts
- Native to
- East Slavic regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Extinct
- Developed into Belarusian and Ukrainian
- Language family
- Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ruthenian
- Early forms
- Proto-Indo-European Proto-Balto-Slavic Proto-Slavic Old East Slavic
- Official language in
- Grand Duchy of Lithuania (later replaced by Polish )
- Iso 639 3
- None ( mis )
- Linguist list
- orv-olr
- Glottolog
- None
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
Ruthenian (see also other names) was a written language used from the 14th to the 18th centuries within the East Slavic-speaking regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Literary Ruthenian is considered to be a historical precursor to the modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages (occasionally also to Rusyn), although neither standard language directly continues the Ruthenian written tradition.
Several linguistic issues are debated among linguists: various questions related to classification of literary and vernacular varieties of this language; issues related to meanings and proper uses of various endonymic (native) and exonymic (foreign) glottonyms (names of languages and linguistic varieties); questions on its relation to modern East Slavic languages, and its relation to Old East Slavic (the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus' in the 10th through 13th centuries).