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The Russian language is a Slavic language that belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is the most widespread Slavic language as it is spoken widely in some countries in Europe and Asia. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is one of the three surviving members aside from Ukrainian and Belarusian. It is one of the official languages used by the United Nations today. It has been the Russian Empire’s official language since 1917. Early Russian vocabularies and syntactic structures have been observed to carry the properties of the common Slavonic language. However, the modern language now exhibits a wide stock of internationally borrowed words pertaining to science, technology, and politics. In its spoken form, Russian's closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and other languages under the East Slavic language group. It is mainly spoken in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and other unrecognized countries such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. In Russia, the Russian language is mainly used in education, commerce, politics, and media. The actual number of Russian dialects has not yet been totally established. Some linguists consider only two --Northern Russian and Southern Russian—but others also consider Central Russian as another Russian dialect. The basic vocabulary, word formation processes, and literary inflections of the Russian language have been greatly influenced by the Church Slavonic language. The other languages that have influenced its vocabulary are Latin, Greek, English, French, and German. Modern Russian features a significant number of words originating from Tatar and other Turkic languages. In its written form, Russian uses the modern and modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters with five vowels and 28 consonants. The spelling of Russian words is phonemic. They are written as how they are spoken or heard. RRussian grammar preserves the synthetic-inflectional structure of Indo-European languages, with only a few leveling and changes. It features a high level of synthetic morphology and a syntax fused with a Western European style, a Church Slavonic inheritance, and a polished vernacular foundation.
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